Consciousness

“You cannot use light to see what darkness is like.”

I remember trying to catch the fridge in darkness as a little kid. But of course, I couldn’t. Once it got wide enough for me to see inside, the light would pop on. So it goes with asking someone if they are conscious.

“The truth is that consciousness is an attribution we make. We call some of our thoughts, perceptions, and actions ‘conscious’ and others ‘unconscious’, but this distinction is based only on them being accessible when we ask about them. When we are not asking the question, there are no contents of consciousness and no experiences. Instead, the brain carries on doing multiple things in parallel - as in Dennett’s multiple drafts theory - and none is either in consciousness or out of it… There is no stream of experiences - only fleeting events that give rise to a false impression.”

A perfect follow-up to “Deteremined”, by Robert Sapolsky. Excited to dive into Michael Pollan’s latest book on consciousness: “A World Appears”.