Anil Seth explores Consciousness (BS 188)

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In his thought-provoking new book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, neuroscientist Anil Seth provides both an accessible discussion of the neuroscience of consciousness and a compelling overview of his approach to what he calls “the real problem” of consciousness. His approach focuses on trying to understand the experience of consciousness by looking at levels, content, and self. He has been inspired by the work of many other scientists including the contemporary focus on prediction. Starting from the well-established, though surprising fact, that all of perception is the brain’s best guess about both the body and the world, he argues that SELF is also a perception created by the brain. He calls his approach “the beast machine” theory of consciousness because it emphasizes that consciousness is ultimately rooted in our living bodies.

Here is how Seth describes his work “I want to understand what it is like to be me better. What does it mean to be a self in the world?

The way I've been going about this is by trying to draw parallels between the way the brain constructs experiences of the world and the way the brain constructs experiences of the self. So, rather than the self as being this inner observer of an external world. Now, the self is a perceptual construction too.”

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