Faced with the task of extracting useful future out of our personal pasts, we organisms try to get something for free (or at least at bargain price): to find the laws of the world -- and if there aren't any, to find approximate laws of the world -- anything at all that will give us an edge. From some perspectives it appears utterly remarkable that we organisms get any purchase on nature at all. Is there any deep reason why nature should tip its hand, or reveal its regularities to casual inspection? Any useful future-producer is apt to be something of a trick -- a makeshift system that happens to work, more often than not, a lucky hit on a regularity in the world that can be tracked. Any such lucky anticipators Mother Nature stumbles over are bound to be prized, of course, if they improve an organism's edge.

--Daniel Dennet Consciousness Explained