Only stand out dream I have is to get a book I have written published. It doesn't have to sell, As long as some one thinks it is good enough to try sell. That is enough, none of that self publishing nonsense though.

Religion destroyed my longest held dream of being a film maker. I abandoned the dream because I believed God was calling me into the ministry. I actually viewed the abandonment of my dream as a sacrifice to God. I went to a Baptist college and then seminary only to discover it was all bullshit in my early 30's. So now here I am, 36 years old, married with three kids, and working as a middle school computer tech which currently has "imminent layoff" written all over it. Going to film school just isn't a realistic option for me any more.

My new dream is to get a book published. We'll see.

My dream is to determine whether neurons fire consciousness ( Dennett) or consciousness fires neurons ( Chalmers )

At one time, I wanted to rule the world.  That didn't happen.

And then I was going to be CEO of some mega-corporation.  Not only did that not happen, now I wouldn't take the job without some serious money - you know, hundreds of millions per year sort of money.

So now, I'm just dreaming of being comfortably retired some day.  House fixed up and paid off, bills down to just utilities, able to hire someone to do the heavy work.  I don't want to have a motor home, but I might like to take a few trips to other countries.  It would be really special if I could have a vacation home on the Oregon coast. 

Not very ambitious at this time.  Maybe the master's degree I'm working on will help me get a job where I can afford that vacation home.

 NoID10t I sympathize. I was part of Christian hardcore band which wasted a ton of my creative energy. I also feel you working for a school system with an imminent lay off going on. We have a lot in common here. 

But life is still its own opportunity. 

What do you write? 

Do you have your book written yet?

What do you write about?

This instant, I'm still a post-bac.  But I would like to have a master's in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Security.

Software engineers get paid real good money around here, and it is reasonably interesting.

 C.J. I am rooting for you. I have also considered in getting into computers. I am teaching right now, but budget cuts are coming in a big way. I am expecting to be in a job that I could have gotten without my degree very soon. 

I merely suggest that atheists may have more of a motive to succeed since there is no milk and honey for us beyond the grave. 

If it sounded like I suggested only atheists could have dreams or goals I apologize for sounding so terminally retarded. 

Like Tapey stated, I would like to see some of the short fiction and stories that I write in my spare time published.

The only other thing I really desire is more travel.

I have been lucky enough to ride across much of the United States, both on motorcycle runs and riding alone.

I'd  love for the opportunity to ride across Europe and Japan one day.

It sounds like you have your hustle well planned. Have you heard the "Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing" podcast. They have a lot of fantasy authors on that show and its mostly geared towards publishing your own work through a major publisher. 

Would you like a link?

No, I'm 56 with a 23 month old boy so not much time for school. I love reading Krick/Koch, Susan Blackmore, the Churchlands, Penrose, Searle etc.;  My degree was in theology. I did philosophical studies as well.  But given my temperment I do better doing my own research. I'm reading Sam Harris's The Moral landscape presently. Have you run across Chalmers new book yet? Where are you at with your studies?

 TgBaker, 

I have not read Chalmes, but I am familiar with the zombie masters argument. I will have to read him though. I am hugely into Dennett, and I love Blackmore. In fact, it would be safe to say that I am obsessed with meme theory.  I have not read Sam Harris's new book, but I know many of his positions and tend to agree with Sam about pretty much everything.  I have watched the Churchlands give lectures on the internet and am definitely persuaded by what I have heard. 

You've probably already read it but if not, Demasio's "Feeling of what happens?" is an excellent book on consciousness. 

For me this is all just interesting food for thought. This stuff and memes are still very much driving my day to day life. (metaphorically and possibly literally). 

My hobby, my dream, is all heavily centered around art, particularly comic book art, so I have been reflecting in my own writing about what are the implications of meme theory for every day life, our human experience, etc.  Of course I would like people to think more about questions of consciousness as well, and this is also a part of what I am into. 

I tend to fall in the Dennet camp pretty solidly. I may even be a kind of epiphenominalist. But I say all this tongue in cheek. I know a lot about the physiology of the brain, and it definitely still fascinates me. But my day job is teaching fifth grade, and my real passions are not so academic. 

I guess my goal has more to do with getting people who are not into this kind of stuff already to start thinking about it. 

Could you tell me what you find appealing about Chalmer's position?

 I accidently posted twice and cant figure out how to delete. Sorry. 

I dont know what I keep doing to double post, and I still haven't found the delete option. Sorry. 

I have a buddy of mine, a philosophy student who wrote an essay against qualia. I am going to see if I can dig it up for you. Perhaps we could discuss it?

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Here is where I am stuck:

Mary was born with complete color blindness. Yet she had an acute gray scale ability of discernment. She could usually tell a color by comparing one shade of gray with another. This was certainly a factor that led her to major in and devote her life to neuroscience. She was an expert in the area of the brain that processed color. She could tell you all about the color red in scientific detail and point it out when she say that particular gray shade of a rose. One day she dropped a book she was carrying on her walk to work. When she bent over to pick it up she was struck by a passing car. Surgery had to be done to the left side of her brain As the surgeon repaired her brain she also removed a small lesion near the area damaged by the accident. After several days Mary woke to a world of color. The first thing she saw was the dozen roses her boyfriend had brought. The first thing that Mary said was, “So that is red!”

What do we use for this new addition in Mary's experience? We certainly do not have to call it qualia. Yet contrary to the implications some derive from the reversed color spectrum argument I think that we all experience something very similar to each other. Your red is pretty much my red simply from an evolutionary/functional perspective. So when we use the word red (verbal) it points not directly to an external stimulus. Rather its reference is this particular mental state we experience which in turn is an objectification or reference to an external condition. I imagine before we learned writing the verbal expression was more directly tied to this experience. Now the written word is tied to its verbal origins and directly to the mental state and directly to the external causal factors themselves.

Even if you throw in the reversed spectrum argument whatever your conscious experience of red is it would function as above. With synesthesia the sufferer often experiences a number as colored such as the number 5 as red. We know that the area of the brain that deals with represented numbers ( the 5) is near the area of the brain that deals with color. Neuronal paths have simply snuck out of their arena. This can happen with the word “five”. And if it happens with the idea of “five” one says that five feels red without any actual visual experience of red!( maybe a semi-zombie moment). Now some of the split brain research seems to indicate as exampled by Ramachandran  that the left brain and right brain may have separate conscious experiences. We also have various experiences that support theories that one can be aware of something but not “conscious” of the awareness. Perhaps the unconscious awarenesses are conscious states that are simply localized in some part of the brain but not unified in the particular state we tend to think of as consciousness. In a split brain patient the left brain may like a dress during shopping but the right brain may not. The left brain may say it does not believe in God while the right brain professes (again examples given by Ramachandran ). Neither is aware of the others thought or experience. It is not these moments of awareness I think are qualia but their experience of them in the “unified state” that may be what is pointed to be qualia. There was a recent neuroscience paper that somewhat shadows Julian Jaynes:

http://www.frontiersin.org/consciousness_research/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004/full

At the outset, it is important to distinguish primary sensorimotor consciousness from higher-order consciousness (Edelman, 1992, 2003). Primary consciousness occurs in animals lacking any linguistic capabilities, and is an essential process even in humans. After the invention of language it was possible to escape the “remembered present” of primary consciousness by referring to internal linguistic tokens. As a result, possession of true language with syntax in humans gives rise to higher-order consciousness allowing its possessor to be conscious of being conscious. We emphasize this distinction to make the point that our overarching task here is to account in biological terms for primary consciousness. At the same time, such an account necessarily depends on investigation of human subjects, with their ability verbally to report, as the richest source of relevant data.

This conscious of being conscious ( the strange loop of Hofstader ) seems to be this unified consciousness that is possibly the result of language if not written language creating a sense of “I”. Syntax wants a subject. Conscious experience is a proto-language dealing with information processing.

So I had a dream of becoming a Game Designer/Developer.  I went to college at IUPUI and took the only game programming class there which was in Actionscrip/Flash.  In the last couple of weeks in the class our instructor told us to create a game of our choosing using the knowledge we learned in class.  I decided to create a turn based RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics.  I really didn't have enough time to make an entire game, but I did make a demo which was 1 stage, a couple enemy slimes with path finding AI.  My teacher was impressed enough to suggest I go a college that would focus on game development.  His idea was Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park Florida.  I took the next semester off school to work to afford the move and start up expenses of going to Florida.  After visiting the college I found out that it was not like a normal college in that I was on a set course from beginning to end and that I would be taking 2 classes ever month instead of semesters which would put me at a Bachelors degree in 21 months. 

After graduating college I was given an offer to be a Network programmer by a company called Flagship Studios.  I took the job and started working on Hellgate: London and Mythos.  After the release of Hellgate: London, and realizing that my interest was not network programming I decided to head back to Indiana.  In Indiana I was contracted to work on a game for the Indianapolis Children's Museum. The project was part of the Lego Castle Exhibit.  After that contract was over, I struggled to find a job for a while and took on a job as just a software developer for Imagine Products Inc.  Due to financial difficulties of the company they had to let me go.

At this time my friend suggest we start making games on our own.  So we decided to start our own company called 2 Cat's 'n a Sack Studios LLC which was started in January of this year.  We are currently working on our first title and hope it will be the start of many.

Now I dream of making games that people really enjoy.

 You know, with all the people on here wanting to publish books, maybe someone on here needs to get into the publishing business. I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to set up and market a website for e-publishing. If you do a decent job at quality control and marketing you should be able to set up regular web traffic. Many e-publishing sites have no editing/quality control, they just post anything which leads to a lot of garbage. If there was a site a person could go to and be reasonably confident that any books purchased would be decent to good I imagine they would come back. The really ambitious person could then invest in printing equipment and sell the books to a series of small bookstores across America. Just saying, seems like a money making opportunity to me.

Man, keep us updated. I think we may be witness to a real powerhouse success story with this. 

Have you guys made a formal business plan?

 This is to all the writers on this thread. 

Scott Sigler (who is an atheist) is a fiction author who has made it to the New York Times list by podcasting his books as audiobooks (for free) building the audience and selling the books. 

He is a real inspiration to me. Here is his website.

He's an atheist?  Sweet.  I love the infected books.  If I ever have to face ripping a triangle off of my junk, I'm just going to shoot myself.  Perry is one of my favorite literary characters.

Man, I would fucking read it. Thats all I'm sayin. 

Hey. Thanks.

Did you see the post "Jesus 101"?

http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/2011/02/jesus-101.html

Hey Thanks, I will definitely check it out. I am one of our horde of aspirant writers for sure.