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The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Thomas Metzinger

Hardcover | Pages: 276 pages

Rating: 4.07 | 2511 Users | 144 Reviews

Details Books In Pursuance Of The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Original Title:	The Ego Tunnel
ISBN:	0465045677 (ISBN13: 9780465045679)
Edition Language:	English

Rendition As Books The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

We’re used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain—an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is “a virtual self in a virtual reality.”

But if the self is not “real,” why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it? Do we still have souls, free will, personal autonomy, or moral accountability? In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the mystery of the mind.

Present Epithetical Books The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Title	:	The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
Author	:	Thomas Metzinger
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 276 pages
Published	:	March 17th 2009 by Basic Books (AZ)
Categories	:	Philosophy. Psychology. Science. Nonfiction. Biology. Neuroscience

Rating Epithetical Books The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Ratings: 4.07 From 2511 Users | 144 Reviews

Evaluation Epithetical Books The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

science fiction writers will enjoy this book. for the rest of us, it's poppycock. i'll never get those hours back. i felt i HAD to go the distance to be sure of his intent and because the purely fictional quality of the book had me stunned wondering how far his "what-ifs" would go. i found out: he wants to rule the world through chemistry and clever (human) boundary stretching. even though (some) current (legitimate) brain research fueled some of his "supportive" details, most of his chapters

This book is good for a few reasons. I appreciated the breakdown of the consciousness problem. It was also interesting to take a dive into the aspects of phantom limbs, out of body experiences, and lucid dreaming. The bad outweighed the good for me however. For a book that does very little to tie what's said to scientific results, and mostly seems to be the synthesis of the authors opinion, I found it difficult to absorb.Other aspects that I did not appreciate are harder to pinpoint, but at

For those seeking some coherent philosophy coming from continental Europe, Thomas Metzinger is your man. A couple of his books are on my reading list. I havent yet read Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, but I hear its good. The one Ive just finished is The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, and it is on a similar subject. So heres a brief review.The big claim of the book is that there is no such thing as a self. Contrary to what most people believe,

ContentsMetzinger T (2009) (10:27) Ego Tunnel, The - The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the SelfAcknowledgmentsIntroduction The Phenomenal Self-ModelPart I: The Consciousness Problem1. The Appearance of a World2. A Tour of the Tunnel The One-World Problem: The Unity of Consciousness The Now Problem: A Lived Moment Emerges The Reality Problem: How You Were Born as a Naive Realist The Ineffability Problem: What We Will Never Be Able to Talk About The Evolution Problem: Couldn't All of This

I approached this book thinking it would be an integration of philosophy and neuroscience. I was wrong, and disappointed. Metzinger - philosopher by profession - seems to explain consciousness as in chiefly philosophical terms, supporting his argument by cherry-picked cognitive neuroscience findings. This cherry-picking is what angered me the most, especially when combined with the moral high-ground from which the author a field of science in which he's not an expert. Approved by a philosopher,

Nice discussion of Metzinger's theory of consciousness. His basic claim is that what humans tend to think of as a "self" is what he calls a "phenomenal self-model" (PSM). As the name suggests, the PSM is the brain's model of the organism as a whole, and includes things such as a model of the organism's body. The PSM is situated within a broader world-model of the environment that the organism exists in. Metzinger claims that the reason why we experience there being thing such as "selves" is that

I feel like I got what I wanted out of this bookthat is, a fairly layman-friendly introduction to Metzingers philosophy of mind. Marking it as read because Im not going to be putting it on hold, as I intend to move onto the more rigorous Being No One instead.