DA: "The key problem in that paragraph is the word 'create'.  In what sense might the brain create ''the gloriously varied content of consciousness'?"  

I use the word "create" in the sense of the brain constructing the phenomenal content of consciousness. I probably should have used the word "construct" instead of "create"


DA: "The claim seems to rule out the function of anything we might call a mind (since what purpose would it serve if the brain did all the creating?)  Are we in a position to do that in such a confident manner?"

We are getting there. As I wrote in The Cognitive Brain (MIT Press 1991), "It is the total specific content of cognition, the current physical state of specialized mechanisms in an individual brain shaped by encounters in a world both real and imagined, that constitutes a mind." You, of course, might disagree. But open discussion of the evidence pro and con can only help our enterprise of understanding the mind.