Conscious: a brief guide to the fundamental mystery of the mind

by Annaka Harris

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philosophy consciousness panpsychism
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The first thing you should know is that this book is only 2 hours long in audio form. That’s short! She managed to get into the difficult details while keeping the jargon accessible. (It helps that we literally know nothing about consciousness.)

This book argued alternately for neuroscientific, illusionist, and panpsychist theories of consciousness. It explains the hard problem of consciousness, and then later really explains why it’s so hard. As a science-oriented person, t’s so easy to forget why it’s hard and start to explain things purely physically. When I do that, I end up thinking there’s got to be a neuroscience explanation. When I pay attention once again to my own experience, I lean towards some kind of panpsychism. The author really lays bare her own thoughts, and carefully spends time walking us through simple thought experiments to fight off the assumptions that we bring to the word “consciousness”.