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>Not in Our Brain
More details
Publisher:
Year:
2019
Catalog number :
45-005939
ISBN:
978-965-7008-01-0
Pages:
328
Language:

Not in Our Brain

Consciousness, Body, World

Synopsis
In his article entitled “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”, David Chalmers divides the study of consciousness into two parts: the easy problems and the hard problems. The easy problems are those related to neurological/functional/cognitive processes. In contrast, the hard problem is the study of consciousness which is related to the subjective experience. In recent decades brain researchers have joined the race to understand consciousness. Most of them adopt an approach according to which any advance made in the study of neurological activity is also an advance in the study of consciousness. I contend that the gap between brain activities and the subjective experience cannot be bridged, among other things because consciousness is not confined within the brain. This book hence proposes that consciousness extends from the brain to the body and from only from there does it burst forth into the world. One of the book’s main arguments is that the world itself serves as our best model, without any need for representation or a central control system within our brains. Therefore, to better understand the subjective experience we must examine how human beings are present and act within the world.
Reviews

"According to Ataria, there is no “flow of consciousness” that establishes our sense of self. There is no continuous consciousness at all, but rather flashes of mind. The internal sense of continuity, with which we are as familiar as we are with the palm of our hand, is based on the experience of our bodily encounter with the world." - Tomer Persico's blog, September 2019