Thomas Metzinger
Autor(a) de The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
About the Author
Thomas Metzinger directs the Theoretical Philosophy Group and the Neuroethics Research Unit at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. He is currently President of the Association for the Scientific Study of mostrar mais Consciousness. He has written and edited ten books including Being No One, Conscious Experience, and Neural Correlates of Consciousness. He lives near Frankfurt, Germany. mostrar menos
Image credit: Jolyon Troscianko
Obras por Thomas Metzinger
Associated Works
What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable (1914) — Contribuidor — 630 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome legal
- Metzinger, Thomas
- Data de nascimento
- 1958-03-12
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- Germany
- Local de nascimento
- Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Educação
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main
- Ocupações
- Writer, Philosopher, Professor of Philosophy
Membros
Críticas
Prémios
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 13
- Also by
- 1
- Membros
- 758
- Popularidade
- #33,556
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Críticas
- 10
- ISBN
- 36
- Línguas
- 5
The Ego Tunnel is a good example. It’s about the nature of consciousness—“tunnel” being its central metaphor, based on the “reality tunnel” concept of virtual-reality research—and Metzinger first gives us his model of consciousness, contrasting the cut-down picture of the world each of us has inside our head with the actual world outside it. He discusses some of the features of this “tunnel”; he takes a closer look at what some of the brain’s more peculiar quirks, such as “out-of-body” experiences and lucid dreaming, might be telling us; then at empathy and social cognition; and, finally, he considers some of the ethical dilemmas posed by both the creation of artificial consciousness and the alteration and/or enhancement of our own
Fair enough, and some of the book’s ideas are interesting too. But unfortunately, its author being a philosopher, one of its most impressive features is the sheer silliness of some of the half-strangulated language used. Other parts are so woolly it’s like flying through dense fog. Why do philosophers do this? Are they sadists who enjoy dangling juicy ideas forever just out of reach? Or is it an ever-present anxiety that what they’re saying is actually utter nonsense?
Just to emphasise: I’m not giving this a one-star rating for its content (other reviewers have given it a three, four or five, and I might have done myself if it were written in plain English); my rating is for its unreadability. It’s time professional philosophers hired professional authors to write their books.… (mais)