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.

Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Metzinger, Thomas

Mental Health

Bradford Books

Elephant And The Blind

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press

An engaging and insightful journey into human consciousness. What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness--what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world's first comprehensive account of states of pure consciousness. Drawing on a large psychometric study of meditators in 57 countries, Metzinger focuses on "pure awareness" in meditation--the simplest form of experience there is--to illuminate the most fundamental aspects of how consciousness, the brain, and illusions of self all interact. Starting with an exploration of existential ease and ending on Bewusstseinskultur, a culture of consciousness, Metzinger explores the increasingly non-egoic experiences of silence, wakefulness, and clarity, of bodiless body-experience, ego-dissolution, and nondual awareness. From there, he assembles a big picture--the elephant in the parable, from which the book's title comes--of what it would take to arrive at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience and create a genuine culture of consciousness. Freeing pure awareness from new-age gurus and old religions, The Elephant and the Blind combines personal reports of pure consciousness with incisive analysis to address the whole consciousness community, from neuroscientists to artists, and its accessibility echoes the author's career-long commitment to widening access to philosophy itself.

The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

The MIT Press

Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (A Bradford Book)

Self-Help

Death & Grief

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brainan internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is a virtual self in a virtual reality.”
But if the self is not real,” why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it? Do we still have souls, free will, personal autonomy, or moral accountability? In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the mystery of the mind.

The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Basic Books

Were used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brainan internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is a virtual self in a virtual reality.But if the self is not real, why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it? Do we still have souls, free will, personal autonomy, or moral accountability? In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the mystery of the mind.

Unser »Selbst« existiert gar nicht. Dies beweisen, so der Philosoph und Bewusstseinsforscher Thomas Metzinger, die Erkenntnisse der aktuellen Forschung. Aber was bedeutet das für unser Menschenbild? Was sind die technologischen und kulturellen Konsequenzen? Brauchen wir neben der Neuroethik auch eine Bewusstseinsethik? Der Ego-Tunnel eröffnet einen ebenso faszinierenden wie fundierten Zugang zur geheimnisvollen Welt des menschlichen Geistes.

Der Ego-Tunnel: Eine neue Philosophie des Selbst: Von der Hirnforschung zur Bewusstseinsethik

Piper Verlag GmbH

El túnel del Yo: Ciencia de la mente y mito del sujeto

Enclave de Libros Ediciones

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Metzinger, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Metzinger, Thomas