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Agree that illusions are one set of observations relevant to the "nothing has meaning besides the meaning the brain gives it" story. There are for me a variety of others at least some of which I hope we'll get to. But looking forward to your further thinking about what makes it an appealing story for you. And agree it has "interesting pragmatic implications," also to be further explored.

And yes, of course, we'll want to talk more about including "thoughts/ideas and the notion of the self" in the brain, and be sure we know what kinds of observations support that story as well. "Answered"? No, of course not. But there are indeed relevant observations since, for example, Descartes (some in the Calvin and Ramachandran articles), with more appearing every day. Can thoughts affect "neural firing"? Yes, indeed, precisely because they seem to be "neural firing" (which helps to clear about a little problem with dualist approaches, how do immaterial things affect material ones? and vice versa).