Title: Being No One
First published: January 24, 2003
Description: "In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is.

Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description.

He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.".

"Metzinger introduces two theoretical entities - the "phenomenal self-model" and the "phenomenal model of the intentionality relation" - that may form the decisive conceptual link between first-person and third-person approaches to the conscious mind and between consciousness research in the humanities and in the sciences.

He also discusses the roots of intersubjectivity, artificial subjectivity (the issue of nonbiological phenomenal selves), and connections between philosophy of mind and ethics."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Self psychology, Consciousness, Cognitive neuroscience, Cognition, Neuropsychology, Self-perception, Self Concept, Conscience, Neurosciences cognitives, Psychologie du soi, Neuropsychologie, Perception de soi, SCIENCE, Cognitive Science, PSYCHOLOGY, Cognitive Psychology, Zelf, Subjectiviteit, Fenomenologie, Neurowetenschappen
LC classification: QP411 .M485 2004