What are you reading right now?

[PassedPawn]

[myuserid]

[sgreger1]

Has anyone ever read or heard of this book: "The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self ", by Thomas Metzinger?


It's about consciouseness and "what" it exactly is. The whole preface of the book is that there is no soul, and that there is no self. The argument is that there is no part of the brain that causes consciouseness or self awareness, but rather consciouseness or the feeling of existing is a byproduct of multiple systems running in the same place all at once. You take in sensory data, it is interpreted by various sites of the brain, and then compiled into what you consider reality. The thing is, it is not all compiled in one place, and there is no "us". What I experience as "me" (my personality, me being alive etc) is actually just the by product of my local system (my body) doing shit and noticing that it is doing it.



Same thing with dreams, his theory is that during the day our "reality" consists of information being gathered by the sensory organs and then compiled into the picture you see through your eyes, but at night time, dreams are just the same brain functions occuring but sans the sensory input.




This is why in our dreams we are similar to the anosognostic patient who lacks insight into a deficit following a brain injury. (It's why retarded people don't know they are retarded, their existence, their "self" is only a combination of the parts.






Too long;didn't read version: There is no soul, no "you", no consciouseness. No one part that is you. There are only many systems operating simultaneously in your body at once, and this gives the perception of "existing".

[Darwin]

Of course there is a "self" it's just that its an emergent property of all that makes us up. An analogy, possibly not a great one, is a picture on a computer screen that is not a "real" image but merely a collection of pixels that when viewed appears to a real image. Even a film image is composed of fine grains that make up a visible image. A human is fine-grained indeed so the trillions of bits of sensory, locomotive, and chemical reaction output and input we process constitute an emergent whole each of which is slightly different.

There may be no "soul" in the traditional sense but there are billions of selves on the planet whose emergent awarenesses and bodies have virtually unlimited power to radically alter local/planetary environments for their own purposes--good, bad, or indifferent. That's a lot of power for entities who's realization as a "self" is merest perception. A whalloping bunch of what occupies the modernist philosophical mindset simply breaks down to irrelevance in the combat zone of daily existence.

[ratcheer]

Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough.

Tim

[bill77.017]

The Human chord - Algernon Blackwood.

[Nuusku]

Anne Rice - Tale of the body thief

[sirloot]

[Nuusku]

I've red that book

[deadohsky]

Currently reading And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.

[Roo]

I just started re-reading an all-time favorite, Tom Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"

[CoderGuy]

Just finished Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (13th Dresden book)

[desirexe]

I am bored so decided to pick up a classic, somehow I "avoided" having to read Catcher in the Rye in hs and college. I now can say I "missed out" in reading this sooner..it is pretty good!!

[Mawdryn]

I've actually been re-re-reading "Dune"... Just as stunning as I remember. Next up? I think "Something Wicked This Way Comes"...on a fantasy/sci-fi/horror kick right now...

[bill77.017]

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Great stories set in Lovecrafts world.