What do we mean by "consciousness"? Questions about consciousness are really questions about our recent past. "Why is it so hard to talk about our present state of mind? We've already seen several reasons for this. ONe is that the time-delays between the different parts of a mind mean that the concept of a `present state' is not psychologically sound." (NB: See also Dennett's attack on the Cartesion Theatre in his book Consciousness Explained.)
"It is unlikely that any part of the mind can ever obtain complete descriptions of what happens in the other parts, because, it seems, our memory-control systems have too little temporary memory even to represent their own activities in much detail." (NB: This strikes me as a critique of introspection, in the sense that limited capacity will limit the accuracy of introspection. This could be viewed as another move against lay theories of the self/mind, as were developed earlier in the book.)
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