The Ego Tunnel
The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A "groundbreaking" (Booklist) investigation of the mind and consciousness that asks whether the self even exists
In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher and cognitive scientist Thomas Metzinger argues that neuroscience’s picture of the “self” as an emergent phenomenon of our biology—and the attendant fact that the self can be manipulated and even experimentally controlled—raises novel and serious ethical questions. If, as Metzinger contends, our conception of the self is a sort of tunnel-vision-like experience of the world, with little left in and much left out, can there be better or worse states of consciousness? And if so, what should we do to try to achieve them?
In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as the science of evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a step toward a morally sensitive philosophy of the mind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Consciousness, mind, brain, self: the relations among these four entities are explored by German cognitive scientist and theoretical philosopher Metzinger, who argues that, in fact, "there is no such thing as a self." In prose accessible mainly to those schooled in philosophy and science, Metzinger defines the ego as the phenomenal self, which knows the world experientially as it "subjectively appear to you." But neuroscientific experiments have demonstrated, among other things, that the unitary sense of self is a subjective representation: for instance, one can be fooled into feeling sensations in a detached artificial arm. So the author argues that the ego is a "tunnel" that bores into reality and limits what you can see, hear, smell and feel. Metzinger tests his theory by ranging over events of the consciousness such as out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming and free will, and he concludes by probing ethical actions and what a good state of consciousness would look like. Most readers will have difficulty penetrating Metzinger's ideas, and those who do will find little that is genuinely new.
