It has long been one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy, and it is now, John Searle writes, "the most important problem in the biological sciences": What is consciousness? Is my inner awareness of myself something separate from my body?
In what began as a series of essays in The New York Review of Books, John Searle evaluates the positions on consciousness of such well-known scientists and philosophers as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and Israel Rosenfield. He challenges claims that the mind works like a computer, and that brain functions can be reproduced by computer programs. With a sharp eye for confusion and contradiction, he points out which avenues of current research are most likely to come up with a biological examination of how conscious states are caused by the brain.
Only when we understand how the brain works will we solve the mystery of consciousness, and only then will we begin to understand issues ranging from artificial intelligence to our very nature as human beings.
Review
For sheer intellectual brio, it would be hard to beat John R. Searle's The Mystery of Consciousness. Mr. Searle, a philosopher at Berkeley, casts a critical eye on recent attempts to solve the mind-body problem--how it is that the lump of gray meat in your skull produces consciousness--by eminent thinkers like Daniel Dennett, Roger Penrose and Francis Crick. Often he gives a clearer account of their ideas than can be found in their own books. With vigorous logic, he teases out the contradictions of dualism, materialism and computer-inspired "artificial intelligence," which denies the very existence of consciousness. For evidence to the contrary, he urges the reader to pinch himself--which is the only thing that might detract from the pleasure of this book. -- The Wall Street Journal, Jim Holt
About the Author
John R. Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is Making the Social World. (October 2014)
Description:
It has long been one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy, and it is now, John Searle writes, "the most important problem in the biological sciences": What is consciousness? Is my inner awareness of myself something separate from my body?
In what began as a series of essays in The New York Review of Books, John Searle evaluates the positions on consciousness of such well-known scientists and philosophers as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and Israel Rosenfield. He challenges claims that the mind works like a computer, and that brain functions can be reproduced by computer programs. With a sharp eye for confusion and contradiction, he points out which avenues of current research are most likely to come up with a biological examination of how conscious states are caused by the brain.
Only when we understand how the brain works will we solve the mystery of consciousness, and only then will we begin to understand issues ranging from artificial intelligence to our very nature as human beings.
Review
For sheer intellectual brio, it would be hard to beat John R. Searle's The Mystery of Consciousness. Mr. Searle, a philosopher at Berkeley, casts a critical eye on recent attempts to solve the mind-body problem--how it is that the lump of gray meat in your skull produces consciousness--by eminent thinkers like Daniel Dennett, Roger Penrose and Francis Crick. Often he gives a clearer account of their ideas than can be found in their own books. With vigorous logic, he teases out the contradictions of dualism, materialism and computer-inspired "artificial intelligence," which denies the very existence of consciousness. For evidence to the contrary, he urges the reader to pinch himself--which is the only thing that might detract from the pleasure of this book. -- The Wall Street Journal, Jim Holt
About the Author
John R. Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is Making the Social World. (October 2014)