To study mind, we must become comfortable with the fact
that mind generally does not work the way it appears to.
This sounds paradoxical. We expect our introspective sense
of mind to serve as a reasonable guide to the actual nature of
mind. We expect it to give us a loose picture that, once
enhanced by science, will represent the workings of mind.
But it is instead badly deceptive. Our loose picture of mind is
a loose fantasy. Consciousness is a wonderful instrument for
helping us to focus, to make certain kinds of decisions and
discriminations, and to create certain kinds of memories, but
it is a liar about mind. It shamelessly represents itself as
comprehensive and all-governing, when in fact the real work
is often done elsewhere, in ways too fast and too smart and
too effective for slow, dumb, unreliable consciousness to do
more than glimpse, dream of, and envy.