[extropy-chat] Fw: Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity

[Jef Allbright]

I received my copy of this book from Amazon and it exceeded my expectations.
The first chapter describes what I think are the key issues today in
undertanding the illusion of self that colors so much of the thinking and
discussion on this list.  The text is dense, not for the casual reader.
Highly recommended for those seeking a wider view of consciousness that
encompasses the "paradoxes" of qualia and subjectivity and David Chalmers'
so-called "hard problem of consciousness."

- Jef


Human Nature Review wrote:
> Human Nature Review  2003 Volume 3: 450-454 ( 17 November )
> URL of this document http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/metzinger.html
>
> Book Review
>
> Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
> by Thomas Metzinger
> MIT Press, (2003), pp. 699, ISBN: 0-262-13417-9
>
> Reviewed by Marcello Ghin.
>
> The notion of consciousness has been suspected of being too vague for
> being a topic of scientific investigation. Recently, consciousness
> has become more interesting in the light of new neuroscientific
> imaging studies. Scientists from all over the world are searching for
> neural correlates of consciousness. However, finding the neural basis
> is not enough for a scientific explanation of conscious experience.
> After all, we are still facing the 'hard problem', as David Chalmers
> dubbed it: why are those neural processes accompanied by conscious
> experience at all? Maybe we can reformulate the question in this way:
> Which constraints does a system have to satisfy in order to generate
> conscious experience? Being No One is an attempt to give an answer to
> the latter question. To be more precise: it is an attempt to give an
> answer to the question of how information processing systems generate
> the conscious experience of being someone.
>
> We all experience ourselves as being someone. For example, at this
> moment you will have the impression that it is you who is actually
> reading this review. And it is you who is forming thoughts about it.
> Could it be otherwise? Could I be wrong about what I myself am
> experiencing? Our daily experiences make us think that we are someone
> who is experiencing the world. We commonly refer to this phenomenon
> by speaking of the 'self'. Metzinger claims that no such things as
> 'selves' exist in the world. All that exists are phenomenal
> self-models, that is continuously updated dynamic
> self-representational processes of biological organisms. Conscious
> beings constantly confuse themselves with the content of their actual
> phenomenal self-model, thinking that they are identical with a self.
> According to Metzinger, this is due to the nature of the
> representational process generating the self-model. The self-model is
> mostly transparent - the information that it is a model is not
> carried on the level of content - we are looking through it, having
> the impression of being in direct contact with our own body and the
> world. If you are now thinking that this idea is at least
> counterintuitive, you should read Being No One and find out why it is
> counterintuitive, and yet that there are good reasons to believe that
> it is correct.
>
> Full text
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/metzinger.html
>
> Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
> by Thomas Metzinger (Author)
> Hardcover: 584 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.56 x 9.25 x 7.32
> Publisher: MIT Press; (January 24, 2003) ISBN: 0262134179
> AMAZON - US
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134179/darwinanddarwini/
> AMAZON - UK
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134179/humannaturecom/
>
> Editorial Reviews
> Book Info
> Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz, Germany. Text introduces two
> theoretical entities that may form the decisive conceptual link
> between first-person and third-person approaches to the conscious
> mind. Explores evolutionary roots of intersubjectivity, artifical
> subjectivity, and future connections between philosophy of mind and
> ethics.
>
> Book Description
> According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the
> world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal
> selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self,
> however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of
> a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German
> philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a
> representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously
> experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge
> between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he
> develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of
> unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and
> hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the
> concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How
> exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out
> of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to
> determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience
> of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal
> self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also
> asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences
> as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately
> rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious
> minds. Metzinger introduces two theoretical entities--the "phenomenal
> self-model" and the "phenomenal model of the intentionality
> relation"--that may form the decisive conceptual link between
> first-person and third-person approaches to the conscious mind and
> between consciousness research in the humanities and in the sciences.
> He also discusses the roots of intersubjectivity, artificial
> subjectivity (the issue of nonbiological phenomenal selves), and
> connections between philosophy of mind and ethics.
>
>
>
>
>
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