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A review by sbenzell
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore
3.0
I enjoyed this refresher on some basic 'philosophy of mind' material. Obviously not everything can be covered in such a short book, but I wish more time had been spent on embodiment, idealism, and pansychism -- the last in particular.
The book is spicy in that the author takes a view from the beginning she defines as "delusionism" the idea that consciousness (or at least what we normally think of as consciousness) is a delusion. Now, to me, calling consciousness itself an illusion or delusion is question begging (what is the agent who is misled?) but I am certainly sympathetic to the idea that the lay-conception of individual identity is seriously flawed (Parfait perhaps makes the best version of this argument). I don't find particularly persuasive evidence from meditation about this: why should I be surprised (or should it be an argument against traditional theories of mind) that if I --use my conscious will -- to egnage in meditative practice over and over again that I can have a different sort of conscious experience?
Overall I do like the fact that the author takes a stand, but I found the last chapter, which I hoped would provide a full explanation, highly unsatisfying. It concludes that 'of course' -- experiences -- exist, but says consciousness does not. Waaa? I wish the author had more time to explain how she squares this circle, because right now it just seems like she's shifting the hard problem one concept over (from 'consciousness' to 'experience').
The book is spicy in that the author takes a view from the beginning she defines as "delusionism" the idea that consciousness (or at least what we normally think of as consciousness) is a delusion. Now, to me, calling consciousness itself an illusion or delusion is question begging (what is the agent who is misled?) but I am certainly sympathetic to the idea that the lay-conception of individual identity is seriously flawed (Parfait perhaps makes the best version of this argument). I don't find particularly persuasive evidence from meditation about this: why should I be surprised (or should it be an argument against traditional theories of mind) that if I --use my conscious will -- to egnage in meditative practice over and over again that I can have a different sort of conscious experience?
Overall I do like the fact that the author takes a stand, but I found the last chapter, which I hoped would provide a full explanation, highly unsatisfying. It concludes that 'of course' -- experiences -- exist, but says consciousness does not. Waaa? I wish the author had more time to explain how she squares this circle, because right now it just seems like she's shifting the hard problem one concept over (from 'consciousness' to 'experience').