You seem to completely misunderstand the paradigmatic issue. A paradigmatic proposal is paradigmatic whether or not it ever has any impact on anyone! You talk as if I am raising the paradigmatic issue only to get special dispensation from having to justify my theory, on the grounds that my theory will one day turn the world of neuroscience on its head! That happens to be true, it will do exactly that, whether or not this paper ever gets published in BBS! I know it will, by the massive resistance and misunderstanding I am encountering all around, not only from BBS. But that is not why I raise the paradigmatic issue!

I raise the paradigmatic issue because you and some of the reviewers seem to believe that your own paradigm is a statement of fact, rather than merely an unsubstantiated initial assumption. But supervenience and vehicle/content theories are no more valid logically speaking than the alternative identity thesis. Until one or the other is demonstrated to be false or untenable, they are equally viable candidates for a theory of mind-brain relation. And from my viewpoint, it is the vehicle/content theories that can be shown to be untenable, as I now explain in the new section 2.3.

I realize how it must grate on your academic sensibilities to have someone trumpeting their own paradigmatic hypothesis as if they were some kind of self-acclaimed genius. I'm sorry it sounds like that. I know how to be humble and respectful, and I have been so in all my previous journal submissions, and I am by nature a shy and retiring soul, and it grates on my sensibilities just as much as it does on yours. Its just that if I remain humble and respectful now, this paper will never see the light of day just like all my previous submissions. I just don't know any other way to explain it.

It may be that it will still be rejected, in part because of my obnoxious self-aggrandizing tone. But at least this time I will have the satisfaction that I explained it in clear and unambiguous terms, and if you fail to be convinced after this, at least this time I pulled out all the stops and gave it my very best try.

I have never done this before. This is very difficult for me. I ask you for your understanding in what is the most difficult trial of my life. I'm not asking for the theory to be accepted, only that it be heard! Is that asking too much?