Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore Contents Section One: The problem What's the Problem? What it's like to be ...? What does consciousness do? Section Two: The world Attention and timing The theater of the mind The grand illusion Section Three: The self Egos, bundles, and multiple selves Theories of self Agency and free will Section Four: Evolution The evolution of consciousness The function of consciousness Animal minds Section Five: Artificial Consciousness Minds and machines Could a machine be conscious? How to build a conscious machine Section Six: The brain The neural correlates of consciousness The unity of consciousness Damaged brains

Section Seven: Borderlands Unconscious processing The paranormal Reality and imagination Section Eight: Altered States Drugs and altered states Sleep, dreams, and hypnotic states Exceptional human experience Section Nine: First-person approaches The view from within Meditation and mindfulness Bhuddism and consciousness

Introduction

Welcome Perplexity

• If you think you have the solution you don't understand the problem.
• The problem is "mind-boggling, brain-hurting, I can't bear to think about this stupid problem anymore" perplexing (p1)
• Three senses of "conscious" and consciousness
  
• being responsive or awake: e.g., "the patient regained consciousness"
  
• being aware of something or aware that something is the case: e.g., "I was conscious of thumping noises coming from the next room."
  
• having "'subjectivity' or personal experiences" which is "the sense in which it is used throughout this book" (p.2)
  
• The Organization of the Book
• Nine 3 chapter sections
  
• Each chapter contains
• core text
• profiles of selected authors
• explanations of key concepts
• exercises and questions
• suggestions for group exercises and discussion
• suggested readings
• interesting quotations
  

Putting in the Practice

• Consciousness is a topic like no other.  I imagine that right now, this very minute, you are convinced that you are conscious -- that you have your own inner experience of the world -- that your are personally aware of things going on around you and of your own inner states and thoughts -- that your are inhabiting your own private world of awareness -- that there is something that it is like to be you.  This is what is meant by being conscious.  Consciousness is our first-person view of the world.
• "third person" vs. "first person" items of concern
  
• Other scientific studies concerned "with third-person views -- with things that can be verified and agreed upon (or not) by everyone."
• "But what makes consciousness so interesting is  that it cannot be agreed upon in this way.  It is private.  I cannot know what it is like to be you.  And you cannot know what it is like to be me."
• Exercise: Ask yourself "What am I conscious of right now?"
  

Getting the Balance Right

• 3rd person (objective scientific) perspective: the objective causes & accompaniments
  
• 1st person (subjective experiential) perspective: consciousness as I, its subject, experiences it
• "What's jazz?"   "If you have to ask," L. Armstrong remarked, "you ain't never gonna know."
  

Warning

• "None of us can expect thoroughly to 'understand consciousness'."
• "It is not possible to study the nature of self and consciousness, while labeling God, the soul, the spirit or life after death 'off limits'."