Consciousness

Susan Blackmore is a psychologist, TED lecturer, and writer researching consciousness, memes, meditation, and anomalous experiences, and is Visiting Professor in Psychology at the University of Plymouth. She is the author of multiple books on consciousness, including The Meme Machine (1999), which has been translated into 18 languages; Zen and the Art of Consciousness (2011); Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-of-Body Experiences (2017); and Very Short Introduction to Consciousness (2017). Emily T. Troscianko is a coach, writer, and researcher affiliated with Oxford University. She is interested in mental health, readers’ responses to literature, and how the two might be linked—as well as what both have to do with human consciousness. Her monograph Kafka’s Cognitive Realism (2014) explores the strange phenomenon we call the ‘Kafkaesque’ and her Hunger Artist blog for Psychology Today investigates the science and experience of eating disorders and recovery.

Introduction Section One: The Problem 1. What’s the problem? 2. What is it like to be …? 3. The grand illusion Section Two: The Brain 4. Neuroscience and the correlates of consciousness 5. The theatre of the mind 6. The unity of consciousness Section Three: Mind and Action 7. Attention 8. Conscious and unconscious 9. Agency and free will Section Four: Evolution 10. Evolution and animal minds 11. The function of consciousness 12. The evolution of machines Section Five: Borderlands 13. Altered states of consciousness 14. Reality and imagination 15. Dreaming and beyond Section Six: Self and Other 16. Egos, bundles, and theories of self 17. The view from within? 18. Waking up