ToadMan11

how else can what were originally perceptual patterns be explained, except by positing that there is a camera-like entity in the world (attached to some physical body) that generates such percepts?

This sentence makes a big leap. Here, you've vaguely defined consciousness as a camera-like entity that generates such percepts; the percepts in question being, apparently, just those percepts that are too difficult, complex, or high-level to explain in the manner that you were able to explain shapes as percepts derived from pixel maps.

That's why it's a leap in my opinion; you build up from raw percepts to pattern recognition, and from there, to an unspecified level of understanding the world somewhere between... (read 362 more words →)

I think the comments so far are focusing too much on the biscuits, and not enough on the free market. The conundrum, after all, is not the biscuits themselves, but rather their apparently counterintuitive absence from the market.

I'm sure the biscuits are good, fantastic in fact. But the free market is absolutely inundated with food. Food is an easy problem to solve: everyone needs it and everyone likes it, and every civilization throughout history has unsurprisingly churned out thousands of varieties of it. A single average supermarket will contain thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different foods to choose from, no doubt including several hundred types of desserts and pastries. Many... (read more)