Another very readable and interesting book in the VSI series. Blackmore's somewhat disconcerting thesis is that consciousness is no more than a delusion resulting from various processes going on in the brain, and that most of the time, we're not actually "conscious" at all, even though we assume that there is a "me" experiencing the world all the time we're awake.

There was quite a lot of info on experiments which have been done to cast doubt on the conventional understanding of what consciousness is; some of it I'd come across before, but it was all pretty well explained. Among the things I highlighted as I was reading:

• The zombie analogy: Imagine someone who looks exactly like you, acts like you, thinks like you, and speaks like you, but who is not conscious at all [p10]. If a zombie acts exactly like a conscious person, what does "consciousness" add?
• Human brains are about three times larger than you would expect by comparing them to out closest relatives, the other great apes [p17]. IDKT.
• "cutaneous rabbit" [p39]
• Levin and Simon's experiment on change blindness: subject was approached by someone who asked him directions: while giving them, a confederate walked between them, carrying a door, and swapped places with the person asking directions. Only half of the subjects noticed they were talking to someone else [p61]
• Good write up of Libet's experiments on timing of conscious acts [p86]
• Experiment by Walter who wired up people's brains, then got them to control a slide projector. He could see the "readiness potential" happening in the brain before they pressed the button. Then he took the output from their brain, amplified it, and used that signal to change the slide. The patients were quite perturbed. They said that just as they were about to press the button, the slide changed all by itself [p93]. Suggests this may have implications for schizophrenia (see also stuff on Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction)
• Experiments suggest events in dreams take place in real time [p101]
• To test whether animals have a "sense of self", Gallup let them interact with a mirror, then when they're asleep painted red blobs on their faces. Chimpanzees, when they awoke and saw the mirror, touched their own faces suggesting they recognized that the reflection was of them. Gorillas, monkeys and other animals don't. [p121]
• To test whether animals have a "theory of mind", Povinelli had experimenters offer food to chimps when they (experimenters) had buckets over their heads. Chimps begged just as much as when experimenters had no buckets. Conclusion: chimps don't realise that it's pointless to beg when the experimenter can't see them. [p122]

Completed : 26-Apr-2006