Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

Susan Blackmore has written quite an interesting little book about the phenomenon we call "Consciousness".  As the title states, it is a very short introduction, and it contains a particular bent, but it is quite a good read and provides a very good perspective to keep in mind in the day  to day. 

In essence, the author walks the reader through much of the current thinking on the phenomenon on consciousness, psychological experimentation to back up particular viewpoints and the like.  It's an engaging humorous read and one that will provide you with much food for thought in years to come.  For instance, in one passage the author asks you to consider the implications of a series of experiments about fifty years old where the subjects' corpus callosum has been severed to prevent serious epileptic or other seizure activity.  Notwithstanding the fact that most subjects appeared to be "normal" to the average person the subject may encounter, in fact it may well be that there are two separate consciousnesses competing for dominance in these individuals.

As I said, an interesting read.

tags: consciousness  science  reading  book  interesting  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit