I still haven't gotten the hang of the quote function here - bit of a counter intuitive platform...

Anyway, not that it is important at all, and I can happily live with absolute logical proof of the existance of my mind (if not for anyone else's), but surely there is still room for some doubt. I mean there is something there pretty conclusively, but we can never be absolutely sure of what it is. Some random noise creating a momentary illusion of a cohesive mind. Something exists, maybe it's my mind. And anyway, I really don't think any of this as any crucial matter. In all important things - and maybe even in this - there will always be room for doubt, mostly very insignificant and unimportant room but still.

Cheers! I didn't find any thread to introduce myself, so I just plunged in :)

The way our experience of being in the world is constituted precludes any absolute certainty. On the other hand both Descartes and Hume used front doors when departing buildings and not 4th floor windows. It doesn't seem very fruitful to doubt the solidity and predictability of the material world.

Oh, I have. Actually in my distant youth I engaged in long passionate debates about him and his obscure metaphysics. A long story. And he wasn't much of a Nazi, though unrepentant for whatever he was. But that Latin quote is apt nevertheless. Anyway, I think you are right, I have had my fill of him.

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus - Heidegger encapsulated. Yes, modern, materialistic experience can be pretty soul destroying and shallow, often is. Not as soul destroying and shallow though as some inexplicable hankering after some effing romantic "Blut und Boden". The solution makes the problem seem like a paradise.

I believe some researchers think that the mind is an evolutionarily useful illusion created by the brain: to deal with all the myriad stimuli a kind of a user interface has emerged and proved itself to be very useful. But in actual material fact that interface rises from the various and almost random physical brain states and is entirely secondary to them. There is no coherent "I", just momentary special effects to that effect, no continuity, no real will.

I find this bit bleak and rather a partial view - and I am no expert on the science of cognition, but I have always found the idea quite intriguing.