Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human

by Susan Blackmore

In Conversations on Consciousness, Susan Blackmore interviews some of the great minds of our time, a who's who of eminent thinkers, all of whom have devoted much of their lives to understanding the concept of consciousness.

The interviewees, ranging from major philosophers to renowned scientists, talk candidly with Blackmore about some of the key philosophical issues confronting us in a series of conversations that are revealing, insightful, and stimulating.

They ruminate on the nature of consciousness (is it something apart from the brain?) and discuss if it is even possible to understand the human mind. Some of these thinkers say no, but most believe that we will pierce the mystery surrounding consciousness, and that neuroscience will provide the key. Blackmore goes beyond the issue of consciousness to ask other intriguing questions: Is there free will? (A question which yields many conflicted replies, with most saying yes and no.) If not, how does this effect the way you live your life; and more broadly, how has your work changed the way you live?

Paired with an introduction and extensive glossary that provide helpful background information, these provocative conversations illuminate how some of the greatest minds tackle some of the most difficult questions about human nature.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Brain, Biology

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Susan Jane Blackmore is a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. She has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation. She practices Zen and campaigns for drug legalization. Sue Blackmore no longer works on the paranormal.

She writes for several magazines and newspapers, blogs for the Guardian newspaper and Psychology Today, and is a frequent contributor and presenter on radio and television. She is author of over sixty academic articles, about fifty book contributions, and many book reviews. Her books include Dying to Live (on near-death experiences, 1993), In Search of the Light (autobiography, 1996),Test Your Psychic Powers (with Adam Hart-Davis, 1997), The Meme Machine (1999, now translated into 13 other languages), Consciousness: An Introduction (a textbook 2003), Conversations on Consciousness (2005) and Ten Zen Questions (2009).

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Artic...

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished reading Susan Blackmore's Conversations on Consciousness today (aah, the benefit of being under the weather over shabbat). This book is definitely worth reading, because over the course of doing so, I became convinced that none of these thinkers are any closer to understand the central riddle of consciousness than the blind men grasping the elephant. There is not widespread agreement on problem definitions, basic methodologies, or even what the known elements are. I wouldn't say that we've progressed much past the era of Plato's Cave in our thinking.

I noticed something as I was reading this multiplicity of views on fundamental topics: Western religious thought was completely absent. The predominant viewpoint was functionally athiestic, and those who admitted any spiritual or religious thinking were either Buddhist or Hindu in their background or thinking. Kabbalah was mentioned in a way which equated it with Eastern mysticism (which shows a profound misunderstanding of both, honestly), and that was the closest to any Abrahamic tradition cited.

It is a shame that no inspiration is drawn from the rationalist notions of the Talmud - there, the point-of-view is assumed, and the idea that one may witness event X in a reportable manner but witness event Y in a non-reportable manner is also a given. The Talmud is pre-Gödelian, in that it assumes that it is inconsistent (c.f. eilu v'eilu) *and* incomplete (c.f. teiku) - the only complete understanding of all of the possible truths in existence is that possessed by God Himself, and we are sparks of His creation who dwell in reflected glory. The idea of a soul is pretty much derided by these thinkers, and that's unfortunate. I'm reminded of J. Michael Straczynski who said "faith and reason are shoes on your feet; you get much further with both than with just one."

Back to the book.

Blackmore is a good interviewer, and she asks interesting questions. Two she asks of all of her thinkers are "do you think you have free will?" and "do you believe in the philosopher's zombie?" (NOTE: the philosopher's zombie is a being who is externally indistinguishable from a normal person, but is not conscious inside. This should not be confused with the zombies of either Jonathan Coulton or The Franchise fame)

Now, to my untutored eye, these questions are both ridiculous. Of course I have free will (or at least "free won't" in the Hofstaderian sense - I can't will myself to fly around the room, but I can will myself not to get off the couch), and I would firmly place the burden of proof on anyone who would suggest otherwise - they should have to construct a testable hypothesis rather than a mere thought experiment, and once this has been done I'll entertain it. Until then, I'll lump the "no free will" folks fit into the same category as the flat earthers and people trying to patent perpetual motion machines (sidenote: the USPTO doesn't normally require working copies of patented machines, unless the stated claim violates the second law of thermodynamics...). But what about the Zombie? Um, what about him? I already can't know anyone else's internal state - this would speculate that there are beings with internal states which are qualitatively different from me who interact with me in ways where I can only experience their external actions? OH NOES! That just described everyday existence.

So to sum up, this book is a great review of where we stand in this field, and I would say that we're somewhere in the proto-phlogiston chemistry model of consciousness. I suspect that in 100 years, our descendants be deeply embarrassed by these ideas.

[Sahar Allouch · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب عبارة عن حوارات أجرتها الكاتبة مع مجموعة من الباحثين والفلاسفة العاملين في مجال دراسة الوعي لاستطلاع نظرياتهم وآرائهم (وهي ليست بآراء يمكن تبنيها بطبيعة الحال.. وتطرح الكثييير من الإشكاليات..)

قد تجد تباينًا في المستوى بين الفصول تبعًا للمتحدث.. وربما لن تستطيع الخروج من كل الفصول بفكرة واضحة مفصّلة عن النظرية المتبناة..

لست واثقة بما يمكن أن يقدمه الكتاب من جديد إذا كان القارئ على اطلاع مسبق بالموضوع وتفاصيله..
أما بالنسبة لمبتدئ.. فيسمح الكتاب بالتعرف على "أهم" الأسماء التي تقوم بدراسة الوعي.. وشيءٍ من نظرياتهم.. والجو العام الذي يحيط بمثل هذه الدراسات..
ولعل أكثر ما يصف واقع هذه الدراسات ما قاله Francisco Valera..
"You know, I think we're extremely naive. It's like people before Galileo looking at the sky and thinking they were doing astronomy."

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of interviews served as a great opportunity to compare various points of view and professional approaches to the study of consciousness. Those interviewed fell into familiar categories: neuroscientists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, those interested in Buddhist meditation, and so forth. Some I was familiar with, such as Ramachandran, the Churchlands, Dennett and Searle. Others had interesting ideas, that I might want to pursue, such as Chalmers and Wegner. Still others I could dismiss, such as those who had some variation of Descartes’ pineal gland, a gimmick that would be the point of connection between mind and body.

Susan Blackmore asked a set of fairly uniform questions which ranged from the fundamental, such as the nature of consciousness, the existence of free will and the relationship between mind and body, to the more personal, such as if the study of consciousness had changed the researcher’s life and whether the researcher believed that consciousness could survive after death.

Although I had great respect for the scientific investigators, I found I was most sympathetic to the philosopher’s approach, that of clarifying the concepts involved, or in squaring away our ways of thinking regarding disparate phenomena. For example, even though I disagree with Dennett vehemently on many topics, I could appreciate his arguments against the Cartesian Theater, the idea that consciousness is a little theater inside of our heads in which we duplicate the world. The Cartesian Theater simply duplicates the problem of consciousness on a smaller scale, and thus begs the question. Some of the hardest headed scientific researchers seemed to fall into this error.

I found Ramachandran particularly charming, because he was precise in his scientific observations and yet imaginative in his philosophical conclusions, and because he managed to integrate his scientific researches with a Hindu worldview. Even though I would have liked to reread the interviews I liked best, I regretfully had to return the book, which I had obtained on an interlibrary loan.

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you have free will? Is this a psychological, philosophical, or biological question? This book contains interviews of psychologists, philosophers and scientists on consciousness and free will. Some of the interviews are totally baffling (worse than listening to politicians) but most can be followed. The author has pretty good grip on the science and pushes to get the same set of topics covered in each interview. Her past dabblings in parapsychology and interests in meditation and memes only occassionally slip in. It can't be avoided of course but some of the breakthroughs that the interviewees said would never happen or were impossible have happened since the book was published in 2006. I wish there were an electronic form of the book which was kept up-to-date but the author had some problems with people changing their answers when they proofed the transcript so I guess solid books are good for capturing a snapshot of thought. I think every one of these people had published one or more books on consciousness in the past. I am glad I read this one which covers the field rather than any single book on a single point of view.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blackmore gathers together interviews from a veritable who’s who of consciousness experts from neuroscience, philosophy, physiology, psychology, and physics. While the interviews are in part tailored to tap into the special insights of the given expert, a consistent series of questions is asked of each of the interviewees. Each expert is asked what they think is challenging about consciousness, what they think about the feasibility of philosopher’s zombies (a popular thought experiment about an individual who seems to behave like an ordinary human but who has no conscious experience), what they think about the existence of free will, what happens to consciousness after death, and what got them interested in the subject. This makes it easy for the reader to see not just differences in thinking across disciplines, but also different schools of thought within disciplines. There’s enough variety to make for intriguing reading. There is also a mix between individuals who have experience with meditation (e.g. the interviewer) and those who don't, and so it's interesting to compare views of those with such insight to those who study consciousness entirely abstractly.

I won’t list all the authors, but they include: David Chalmers (who famously coined the term the “hard problem” of consciousness, which is one of the most widely discussed ideas in the book), Francis Crick (of DNA fame who later shifted focus), Daniel Dennett (a well-known philosopher), V.S. Ramachandran (a neuroscientist famous for work on phantom limbs and behavioral neurology), and Roger Penrose (a physicist who believes that quantum mechanics may prove crucial to figuring out consciousness.)

It’s a straightforward book. There’s an Introduction by Blackmore and then the 20 or 21 interviews (one “chapter” is a married couple – Pat and Paul Churchland -- whose insights are presented together.) The only back matter is a glossary, which is quite in-depth and which helps to clarify the many confusing concepts from various disciplines. There are a few cartoon drawings that lighten the tone, but serve no essential purpose.

I enjoyed this book and found it thought-provoking. It’s quite old at this point – having come out in 2005 – but since consciousness is so intractable, it’s not like any of the questions have been cleared up. (If it were a book on AI, I’d probably say it was worthless at this point, but not this book.) I’d recommend it for anyone looking to understand the lay of the land with regards thinking about consciousness.

[August Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Expectations of this book*: Wow! I'm so excited to learn more about what scientists know about consciousness!

*Tl;dr/Reality of this book*: Microtubules and quantum coherence? Neurons and synapses? Multiple drafts and heterophenomenology? Oh, okay. Got it. No one really has any idea what consciousness is or how to study it.

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Conversations on Consciousness" consists of a number of transcribed conversations which Susan Blackmore has had with scientists and philosophers on the question of consciousness. Topics discussed include: what consciousness is, where it resides, how it arises, whether it is separate from the brain, and the 'hard problem' of the existance of subjective experience in an objective world.

The answers are interesting, although the bottom line is that the science of consciousness is in its very early stages, and that there are more questions than answers (and the answers that exist are loudly debated).

My main criticism of the book is that the questions are repetitious and that the answers are often incoherrent.

Though not central to the theme, the book confirms my suspicion that ‘philosophy’ is largely a nonsensical field of study. In ancient Greece the best pathway to knowledge may have involved sitting around and thinking about stuff, but that is simply not the case today. We have a time tested and reliable means of arriving at truth … it’s called the scientific method. Philosophers, at their best, might be able to phrase a question in a new or interesting way, but they are otherwise irrelevant. Francis Crick (co-founder of the structure of DNA) says it well: “A lot of problems which were once regarded as philosophical, such as what is an atom, are now regarded as part of physics. Some people have argued that the main purpose of the philosopher is to deal with the unsolved problems, but the problems eventually get solved, and they get solved in a scientific way. If you ask how many cases in the past has a philosopher been successful at solving a problem, as far as we can say there are no such cases.”

I wouldn’t pay much attention to what the philosophers are saying in this book. They should step aside and let the scientists do their job.

[Corrie Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Blackmore interviews twenty incredibly bright and accomplished people, ranging from major philosophers to renowned scientists, all of whom have devoted much of their lives to understanding the concept of consciousness. This is the strength of Conversations on Consciousness. It's weakness is it's redundancy - the cliffnotes could have been done with two interviews and 10 pages.

The interviewees fall quickly and predictably into one of two camps. One, that consciousness is a product of the human brain and that neuroscience (and the scientists) will inevitably solve all the mysteries. Or two, that consciousness lies somewhere outside the human brain and we attune to it in some capacity (philosophers).

Why I spent so much time and never gave up on this book after years (yes years) is a bigger mystery to me than the subject of consciousness. Why would I say that, well because your belief systems segregate you to one of the two camps before you crack the spine of the book and these interviews merely cement those beliefs. The smugness of some of those interviewed is also a big turnoff. You don't need me or my review, because the title gives away everything the book is about.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful read. Scientist Susan Blackmore addresses important questions about the nature of consciousness to eminent scientists in the field of neuroscience. Can Zombies really exist, what happens when we die, what is the nature of consciousness - what is it, is it an effect of the brain or something from outside us. I love the little cartoons illustrating important points and the caricatures of the scientists. I was relieved to see that most of the scientist were extremely dubious about the possibility of consciousness continuing after the death of the brain. Good read - not to technical but involved enough that I learned some things.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books hit you with dense philosophical arguments; others lull you into thinking they’re going to be breezy — until you realise you’ve been staring at the same page for fifteen minutes, trying to untangle the last sentence.

Conversations on Consciousness somehow manages to do both. I went into this book expecting a friendly guided tour of modern consciousness studies. What I got was an unpredictable philosophical roller coaster with 20-odd different drivers, each with their own steering philosophy.

The premise is deceptively simple: Susan Blackmore, herself a well-known thinker in consciousness research, interviews many of the most influential philosophers, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists of our time. The names alone make the book a who's who of late-20th and early-21st-century thought — Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, Francis Crick, Patricia Churchland, and many more. Each interview revolves around big questions: What is consciousness? Do we have free will? How does the brain give rise to subjective experience — or does it at all?

The format sounds chatty, and in a way, it is. Blackmore keeps her tone open and curious, never afraid to push back or ask the kind of “beginner” question that actually makes the experts squirm. But the subject matter?

That’s where the toughness comes in. Many of these thinkers have spent decades refining their views, and they express them with a density and precision that requires slow, careful reading. In some interviews, you’re deep in computational models of the mind; in others, you’re balancing on the knife-edge between philosophy and metaphysics.

One thing that struck me — and made reading slow — was how radically these experts disagree. You’ll finish one chapter convinced that consciousness is purely a brain-based phenomenon, a kind of emergent computational process. Then you turn the page, and the next thinker will confidently tell you consciousness is fundamental to the universe and can’t be reduced to matter. The effect is dizzying but exhilarating. It’s like watching a ping-pong match between universes.

A recurring theme, much like in Chalmers’s The Conscious Mind, is the “hard problem” — why subjective experience exists at all. But here, you don’t get a single, sustained argument; instead, you see the same puzzle refracted through multiple worldviews.

Dennett famously denies the “hard problem” exists at all; Chalmers defends it; Churchland sidesteps it with neurobiological pragmatism. This variety is both the book’s strength and its challenge.

Blackmore’s skill as an interviewer shows in her ability to draw out personal as well as intellectual responses. These are not just abstract positions; they’re embedded in the thinkers’ own stories. You learn how Francis Crick’s background in molecular biology shaped his take on the mind, or how Galen Strawson’s philosophical temperament pushes him toward panpsychism. That human dimension keeps the book from becoming an arid compilation of theories.

Reading it in 2012, I found myself taking notes compulsively, not just to keep track of who said what, but to compare my own shifting reactions. More than once, I had to double back and reread entire sections — sometimes because the argument was complex, sometimes because I thought I understood, only to realise I’d completely misread the nuance.

That double-reading habit was less a sign of failure and more an acknowledgement: when twenty brilliant people are talking about the most difficult problem in philosophy, you can’t just skim.

By the end, you don’t get a single neat answer. You get a spectrum of possibilities — and, perhaps more importantly, a vivid sense of why consciousness remains such an open and contested field. The lack of consensus is, in a strange way, comforting: if these people can’t agree, maybe the rest of us can relax into the mystery without shame.

Conversations on Consciousness is not an easy read, despite its Q&A structure. It’s a mosaic of the toughest thinking available on the subject, demanding mental flexibility and a tolerance for contradiction.

For me, it was less a straight-line learning experience and more like circling a mountain, seeing its face from many angles. No single view tells you the whole truth, but together they hint at just how vast the terrain is.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Repeat these reviews very loosely and I don't have much to say about any of the books that I read because I usually update this list after I have read the book and quite honestly I need some time to really think about it. Tell you a few things I kind of annoyed me one is that God damn zombie question I hate that question so much and I feel it's one of the more ridiculous philosophical questions concerning the nature of consciousness. I understand why it's being asked and I get it but I also feel that where we are today with the concept of consciousness and the debate about it it really serves no purpose. Also Jesus Christ does this author have a crush on Daniel dennett? He is one of the interviewees, but the author mentions him in almost every other interview and I don't really understand why I do not think he was all that profound, and again, this is just my personal opinion, but from what I understand there are far more prominent people in the field of Neuroscience and the debate of consciousness... I don't know. Overall it's a solid book and it's worth the read I feel it's kind of a general Outlook of where the issue contemporarily stands the science and the experiments that have been conducted in the last decade or so and it provides the reader with a good sense of general knowledge to hold oneself in a cocktail discussion the last two interviews were by far the most interesting, so be patient and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blackmore's approach in this book was simply to interview the big names in the study of consciousness, mostly approaching them at conferences on the subject. She asks a lot of the same questions of each (What is the problem? What is your approach? Do you believe in free will, zombies, and life after death? What got you started? Has your research changed you?) She often rephrases the interviewee's answer in her own words to make sure she understands it, which helps the reader understand it too. The book gives a view of the tremendous range of beliefs in the field. Some of them are promising; others will lead nowhere. Problem is, which are which? Concepts which may be new to newcomers to the field are mostly explained in a glossary, so this book might serve as an introduction to the subject (though I would recommend Blackmore's _Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction_ first), but there is enough here to give even experts in the field something to ponder.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good overview about neuroscience and philosophy of mind regarding consciousness. I tried spacing out the readings of each interview, because I felt that reading them back to back often made it tedious as there is a lot of repetition and re-explanations of concepts. It also makes it harder to differentiate each person's view, turning them all into a blob.
Sometimes I enjoyed Susan's insistence on clarifying the most thorny aspects of the interviewee's views, but it often led to uncharitable portrayals of most of their positions; it lead to a feeling that lots of the theories in the field are just plain silly.
Personally, it demotivated me into going further in studying philosophy of mind, as the whole field seems to have little to add in terms of explanatory power, being more relevant in raising questions. To go deeper into consciousness studies, neuroscience seems to be far more relevant, but at this point in life I'm not sure I could switch to such an intricate field.

[Yahya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitap Nörobilim alanında çalışan 21 bilim insanı ile yapılan görüşmelerden oluşuyor. Yazar bütün bu insanlara bilince dair bazı sorular sorarak bir yol izliyor. Bilinç sorunu, özgür irade, bilince dair kişilerin kuramları vb. sorulardan oluşuyor. Hepsinin bilinç sorunu ile ilgili kendine göre belli bir kuramı var. Kitabı okuyunca günümüzde bilinç sorununda aslında nerede olduğumuzu ve ne kadar çok bilinmeyen olduğunu fark ediyorsunuz. Kimsenin kesin bir yanıtı yok, her kuramada bir gedik var. Genel olarak yeni başlayanlar için güzel bir giriş olabilir. İlgilerini çeken kuramcıları daha detaylı okuyabilirler. Alanın içinde olanlar için de güzel bir toparlama. Ben bazı konuşmacıların kitaplarını okuduğum için tanıdık geldi. Tabi röportaj yapılmayan önemli kişiler de var bana göre. Oliver Sacks ve Damasio gibi.

[Drew Ayling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite the interesting read. Somewhat dated at this point, but still relevant in terms of how little we’ve advanced on the subject of consciousness. As a robo-geek and out-right objector of the philosopher’s zombie, I find the banter between each of the philosophers and neuroscientists rather hilarious. They all really like to poke fun at Dan Dennett, when I think Chalmers should really take the brunt for being the total crackpot. Recommended to anyone curious about their own free will and their sense of self.

[Anthony Cleveland · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of diverse ideas regarding one of the great mysteries of neuroscience ... the nature of consciousness. It can be a challenging read at times and it is driven (i.e. biased) by the questions Dr. Blackmore asks each participant. To be honest, at times the ramblings reminded me of the verse ... "the wisdom of man is but foolishness to God". However, I would still highly recommend it to anyone interested in this important existential topic.

[Titta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kiinnostavaa lukea eri tieteentekijöiden näkökulmia tietoisuuteen. Kirja on haastetattelumuotoinen, mikä tekee sen helppolukuiseksi vaikka tietoisuuden tutkimus ei ennestään olisikaan tuttua. Monet muut tietoisuuskirjat ovat maallikolle aika korkealentoista teoriaa, mutta tässä haastateltavat eivät pääse jaarittelemaan omiaan, kun napakka haastattelija pyytää tarkennuksia ja pitää keskustelun oikeilla urilla.

[Soma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished this one a while back in the Netherlands actually but forgot to update.

A very interesting book exploring some aspects of the mind which at this state of time are as good as impossible to objectively explain such as free will and what happens to the mind after death.

Also nice that the writer interviews people with different ideologies towards research towards the field, getting a broader field of opinions!

[Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting insight into the differences of opinion of science's leading minds in an easy-to-read, conversational format. A broad primer into the subject - expect to leave with more questions than answers and many philosophical avenues to explore.

[K.A.L.M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a romp through conversations with some of the leading thinkers in the study of consciousness. Having their thoughts shared via dialogue rather than through an academic treatise makes their ideas very accessible. A truly enjoyable and informative read.

[arkan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, excellent interviews with many psychology experts with many viewpoints. Worth a read if you're interested in psychology/consciousness, or if you're just entering the field.

[Yakup Çınar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it is a good introduction book to dive into consciousness.

[Anne Williams]

Book was mentioned in “Herd” by Mark Earls

[Nupur · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book broke my brain a little bit. Lots of great ideas to ponder.

[Cyrill Wiget]

Interviews with leading consciousness researchers across disciplines.

[Jimlewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

wow 🤩

[Rama Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

The quest for consciousness

Author Susan Blackmore interviews about 20 scientists working in the physics and biology of consciousness, and focuses mainly on the neurobiological aspects of mind, subjective experience, free will and consciousness.

Consciousness is a set of physical processes that give rise to conscious experience. But in order to understand the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, we need to know the nature of physical reality. This leads us to quantum physics and the explanatory gap between quantum and classical realities. We are conscious of only classical reality which is governed by the classical laws of physics, but we cannot comprehend quantum reality that is governed by the laws of quantum physics. This suggests that there is a hidden reality of nature that our mind does not sense but only revealed to us through the quantum physical measurements. Therefore our consciousness must include both classical and quantum realities. Many neuroscientists believe that consciousness is as fundamental as spacetime and matter (energy). Quantum physical measurements also imply that the physical reality does not objectively exist, but they exist after an intervention by a conscious observer.

There is another thorny question still remains as to why any physical process, quantum or classical, should give rise to subjective experience. This book discusses in depth about subjective experience, free will and the nature of consciousness with the leaders of consciousness research. The book illustrates that these are really hard problems to solve, and the opinions of the experts are varied and diverse. Many neuroscientists assume that these mental powers somehow emerge from the electrical signaling of neurons, the circuitry of the brain. Cartesian theater (CT) is a term Dan Dennett uses to describe a common idea that somewhere in the brain or mind, everything comes together and consciousness happens. Neurobiologist Susan Greenfield proposes that consciousness is associated with brain and brain generates consciousness. Dave Chalmers says, that consciousness ceases when one is dead, therefore consciousness is strongly associated with brain. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff propose "orchestrated objective reduction" ('Orch OR') theory, according to which consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules (protein polymers inside brain neurons) which both govern neuronal and synaptic function. They connect brain processes to self-organizing processes on quantum scale to produce quantum structure of reality. Stephen LaBerge takes a Vedantic view of a universal consciousness akin to the quantum physical reality. Kevin O'Regan believes that consciousness can survive death, but in years to come we would be able to download our personality onto a computer and re-live in virtual worlds. Philosophers like David Rosenthal and Michael Graziano suggest that consciousness is illusory. They observe that we have certain beliefs about mental states, and they have distinctive functional properties which causes some forms of attention. Philosopher John Searle believes that consciousness is essentially a biological property that emerges in some systems but not in others for reasons as yet unknown. V. Ramachandran offers a neurobiological explanation as to why animals do not have the same level of consciousness as humans.

Free will is another topic widely discussed in this book and it is the most disputed philosophical issue of all time. It is an idea that we can act or make choices unconstrained by external circumstances or an agency such as fate or divine will. It is often compared with determinism, which means that all events in the world are determined by prior events. The experts discussed in this book differ in their opinion. Pat and Paul Churchland, Francis Crick, and Chris Koch suggest that free will is an illusion, but Dan Dennett, Stuart Hameroff, Thomas Metzinger, and Kevin O'Regan believes that we have free will.

To summarize, it is evident from the discussion presented in this book that there is a lack of complete theory by neuroscientists regarding how neural activity translates into conscious experiences. Deepak Chopra argues that it is still a speculation no matter if you want to call consciousness a fundamental property of the universe consisting of matter (or energy) operating in spacetime; or consciousness is caused by brain activity and creates the properties and objects of the material world. Some critics argue that the hypothesis that the brain creates consciousness has more evidence than the hypothesis that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Such arguments falls short, since quantum reality is not considered a part of overall reality in this argument.

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this is an awesome informative and entertaining book on a favorite subject of reading for me. The author has a well-informed/researched interview with each of many experts on consciousness theory from a diverse set of theories! Each is given some specific questions based (we assume) on the author's background in consciousness theory.
Usually, I find a multi-author anthology (this isn't an anthology with editor) to have a difficult mix of voices and parallelism; this book has None of that problem. The interview of each researcher was constructed specifically for those interviewed.
Also, and above reading the thoughts of these theorists from their response to great questions... we're given an excellent appendix of glossary terms for consciousness theory.
The one thing I looked for but failed to find was a bibliography of the works of those interviewed and the author used to prep the interviews. But some books are referenced in the text and glossary And I'll also be reading much more of this author's works in this subject! (Bibliographic references by authors are embedded in their introductions)
I'm beginning to love well constructed anthologies which effectively detail the book subject while introducing a diverse selection of authors and their thinking!
I've reread the book in prep for our science book monthly call and to construct a mind map of the book to provide notes for that meeting. IMO well worth the 2nd read.

[Thomas Lindmark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book.

At first glance it seemed rather daunting, since it is a collection of interviews on consciousness with scientists and philosophers who have spend a lifetime dealing with the problem of consciousness. But the interviewer has a background in the same field and managed to cut thru some of more esoteric stuff. "But that do you really mean!".

The questions all follow the same general theme. What is consciousness, what it the problem with it, what got you interested, how have you studied it, do you believe in zombies, do you believe in free will, how has this affected your life? And I think this is great, because zombies are awesome, but also because it humanizes these folks who have studied a problem for so long. We could have gotten "the word of the great Scientist" but instead we get the thoughts of ordinary smart people who have just found their calling. It's interesting to read how these folks studied physics, psychology, math, electrical engineering started asking questions on a problem and then spent ~30 years trying their hardest to answer these questions.

It does get a more than a little esoteric in parts, but it is a great summary of the field of study and as every one of the interviewees explain their part of the story I found myself thinking really hard on things I had not considered a problem. Just the general idea that everything we experience, see, think is totally internal and subjective and separate from the real physical world. I will probably re-read this come summer when I have had time to settle the ideas a bit.

[Scott Lupo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read if you are interested in being introduced to the philosphy and science of consciousness. Susan Blackmore converses with 20 of the most well-known scientists and philosophers of our time. She generally asks the same questions to each of them but also uses their answers to go off script and get a deeper understanding of certain subject matter. It really gets to the heart of what makes us human (why did nature give us this ability?). Topics include the hard problem, free will, qualia, phenomenology, neural correlates of consciousness, memes, dualism, monism, fuctionalism, philosophers zombie, Cartesian theater, Global Workspace Theory, and a host of other concepts, theories, and studies. However, it does not get too complicated and there is a nice glossary in the back of the book that defines many of the concepts in the book. If you have ever wondered what consciousness is, how to define it, do other animals have it, is it even real, will it ever be possible to actually experience somebody else's consciousness, or will real artificial intelligence be possible then this is a good book for you to get started without worrying about too much technical jargon or feeling like you are reading a text book.