A Conversation about Consciousness with Anil Seth
Join me in a discussion of Anil Seth's new book
Salon on Consciousness
This week I’m reading Anil Seth’s brand new book, Being You — A New Science of Consciousness. The book takes on the ambitious problem of consciousness — what consciousness is, how it came about, and whether we can ever explain it satisfactorily. It is both brilliantly written and eminently readable.
Anil is professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and co-director of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. I also met him at a talk he gave a few years ago, and he is a great guy.
Now that the book is out, I am excited to be hosting a Q&A with Anil through the Interintellect, two weeks from today. This will take place on Zoom on Wednesday 27 October 2021, at 8pm London time. Please join us! Tickets and more information are available here.
I have bought both the hardback and the audiobook, which Anil himself narrates. The book provides an excellent overview of the history of consciousness studies over the past few decades, in an engaging and accessible way, even if you know nothing of the science. At the same time, it offers great insight (as well as a great reading list!) into possible futures for the discipline to those familiar with the subject. To do both so well is no mean feat.
We would love to have you attend whether or not you’ve had the chance to read the book, and the discussion requires no background in neuroscience — just an interest in experience and consciousness. Click here for tickets.
The book is available now in the UK and next week, 19 October in the US/Canada.
You can read more about Anil and the book here:
An excellent Guardian review of the book: Being You by Professor Anil Seth review — the exhilarating new science of consciousness
Aeon video: Anil Seth on why our senses are fine-tuned for utility, not for ‘reality’
Aeon article: The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a Distraction from the Real One
Anil’s TED Talk: Your Brain Hallucinates your conscious Reality
My thinking
Though I’ve been silent in recent months on the blog and the podcast, I’m gearing up for a few pieces of public writing in November.
I’m working on the questions of when and how philosophy and science diverged, how the progress of science relates to progress in the arts, and how selfhood relates to consciousness (a question to which Anil devotes more than a quarter of his book).
I’ve also been working on an anti-teleological strand in philosophy — especially Lucretius, Spinoza, Darwin, and Kuhn. This relates to some thoughts I have on the impact that pragmatist philosophy and logical positivism had on the progress of scientific discoveries and funding in the 20th century. Stay tuned.
I hope this finds you well. As always, I’d love to hear from you, so please reply to this email or contact me on twitter!
Bryan