Being No One - Thomas Metzinger

Super geeky neuro-philosphy. I personally don't think he's nailed it all, but we're getting closer and closer:

I've read his latest book " the ego tunnel". Mind blowing, the guy is even closer to our conclusions. I'd say it's a must read.

Guys,

Kenneth pointed me in the direction of this video based on some stuff I was talking with him about. Funny you should post something from Thomas Metzinger today as Kenneth sent me this yesterday evening.



"Brain, bodily awareness, and the emergence of a conscious self: these entities and their relations are explored by Germanphilosopher and cognitive scientist Metzinger. Extensively working with neuroscientists he has come to the conclusion that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "self" -- that a "self" is simply the content of a model created by our brain - part of a virtual reality we create for ourselves."

In the neuroscience field I didn't think it was even a question that there is no permanent self. It's like Special Relativity in physics or the periodic table in chemistry. At least that was what I thought. So now philosophers are there, too. Anyone else read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained?" Dennett wrote the book in 1992, I think:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained

Chris,

That was one of the most important books I've read. It's what got me into the dharma lol.

He brings up the concept of the virtual machine model of consciousness, among other things. A highly recommended book.

Yeah, me, too! It made sense when I read it in the early 1990's but I never really "got" it until I had the insights from practice

Here's some interesting stuff from the Wikipedia article:

"Dennett claims that our brains hold only a few salient details about the world, and that this is the only reason we are able to function at all. Thus, we don't store elaborate pictures in short-term memory, as this is not necessary and would consume valuable computing power. Rather, we log what has changed and assume the rest has stayed the same, with the result that we miss some details, as demonstrated in various experiments and illusions, some of which Dennett outlines. Research subsequent to Dennett's book indicates that some of his postulations were more conservative than expected. A year after Consciousness Explained was published, Dennett noted "I wish in retrospect that I'd been more daring, since the effects are stronger than I claimed". And since then examples continue to accumulate of the illusory nature of our visual world."

Yes - his analogy of a word processing machine (a virtual machine) running on top of computer hardware to consciousness (a virtual world) running on top of biological hardware, really made things make sense to me.

I should re-read the book as I'm sure a lot more would jump out at me these days.

www.sechumscm.org/WhereAmI.html

Yes!

This is awesome!

I read Consciousness Explained the year I started meditating. I barely understood any of it, but the very fact that there he was saying that there was no self was very cool indeed.