The Spread Mind
Why Consciousness and the World Are One
Will be published approx. on 8. February 2018
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-944869-49-6 (ISBN)
Description
Once we came out of the jungle and found time to think of something besides food, sex, and shelter, we confronted the fundamental questions: what are we? Who are we? Is a person a body, a soul? How do we access the external world if we are nothing but brains encased in bodies?
As neuroscientists map the most detailed aspects of the human brain and its interplay with the rest of the body, they remain baffled by what is essentially human: our selves. In most of the existing scientific literature, information processing has taken the place of the soul. Yet thus far, no convincing account has been presented of exactly where and how consciousness is stored in our bodies.
In The Spread Mind, Riccardo Manzotti convincingly argues that our bodies do not contain subjective experience. Yet consciousness is real, and, like any other real phenomenon, is physical. Where is it, then? Manzotti's radical hypothesis is that consciousness is one and the same as the physical world surrounding us.
Drawing on Einstein's theories of relativity, evidence about dreams and hallucination, and the geometry of light in perception, and using vivid, real-world examples to illustrate his ideas, Manzotti argues that consciousness is not a ''movie in the head.'' Experience is not in our head: it is the actual world we move in.
As neuroscientists map the most detailed aspects of the human brain and its interplay with the rest of the body, they remain baffled by what is essentially human: our selves. In most of the existing scientific literature, information processing has taken the place of the soul. Yet thus far, no convincing account has been presented of exactly where and how consciousness is stored in our bodies.
In The Spread Mind, Riccardo Manzotti convincingly argues that our bodies do not contain subjective experience. Yet consciousness is real, and, like any other real phenomenon, is physical. Where is it, then? Manzotti's radical hypothesis is that consciousness is one and the same as the physical world surrounding us.
Drawing on Einstein's theories of relativity, evidence about dreams and hallucination, and the geometry of light in perception, and using vivid, real-world examples to illustrate his ideas, Manzotti argues that consciousness is not a ''movie in the head.'' Experience is not in our head: it is the actual world we move in.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for The Spread Mind"In The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World Are One he strenuously denies that there is anything in the head but neurons and electrochemistry; the experience that constitutes our lives lies outside, one with the object, which is as it is thanks to the presence of our bodies and indeed our neurons. What is extraordinary is how systematically and engagingly Manzotti is able to reconcile this externalist and physicalist approach with the findings of neuroscience, the theory of relativity and even quantum mechanics." -The Guardian
"The Spread Mind presents a game-changing idea, one that when recognized will take Riccardo Manzotti right to the top. . . . It is difficult, when considering work so conceptionally revolutionary as Riccardo Manzotti's, to know whether one is looking at the real thing or an abberration. After long reflection, I am convinced it is the real thing." -Tim Parks, author of In Extremis and Europa
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 146 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-944869-49-6 (9781944869496)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
RICCARDO MANZOTTI is a Professor of Philosophy at IULM University in Milan, Italy. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at MIT. He holds a PhD in robotics, is the author of 50 papers on the basis of consciousness, artificial intelligence, machine consciousness and perception. He is the webmaster of consciousness.it and thespreadmind.com. His published work addresses the nature of the self and the meshing of technology and consciousness. Over a period of many months, The New York Review of Books Daily has posted an extended series of conversations between Manzotti and the novelist Tim Parks, in which the two attempt to dissect the nature of consciousness.
Content
1. The Spread Mind
1.1 What, where and when is experience?
1.2 Experience is the object
1.3 I am world
1.4 A better object?
1.5 Nothing appears, everything takes place
1.6 Appearance is reality
1.7 Shangri-La
2. The Spread Object
2.1 The fridge-light model of the object
2.2 Traditional and actual spread objects
2.3 Senses as multiple objects
2.4 Phenomenal is physical
2.5 The last Ptolemaic stand
2.6 Percipere est esse
3. The causal geometry of experience
3.1 Stretching over space and time
3.2 Glass, mirrors and beyond
3.3 A storage-less model of memory
3.4 Dreams and hallucinations as spatiotemporal kaleidoscopes
3.5 The causal argument revisited
3.6 Return to Shangri-La
4. Illusions
4.1 Proxy and alleged properties
4.2 Illusions as misbeliefs
4.3 A zoo of illusions
4.4 Benham's Top
4.5 A comparison with other accounts
5. Hallucinations and dreams
5.1 Ordinary and extraordinary hallucinations
5.2 Gerrymandered objects and direct brain stimulation
5.3 Double preemption
5.4 A continuum - from objects to hallucinations
5.5 The common kind assumption
6. A zoo of objects and experiences
6.1 The myth of endogenous mental experience
6.2 Phosphenes and blindness
6.3 Visual images and congenitally blinds
6.4 Geometric hallucinations
6.5 Impossible, forbidden and Martian colors
6.6 Additions and subtractions
6.7 Afterimages
6.8 The myth of supersaturated red
6.9 Filling in
6.10 Innate phantom limbs
7. Joint causation and wholes
7.1 Actual existence
7.2 Objects and wholes
7.3 Joint causation
7.4 No time, no wholes
7.5 The cause of the cause is the effect
8. The spread now
8.1 The present is not punctual
8.2 The spread now
8.3 Now is relative and multiple
8.4 Present is near past and past is far present
8.5 Pastness has no color
8.6 The time-gap argument
8.7 Time is an ocean, the present is its shore
9. In nature, identity is the only relation
9.1 A is A
9.2 Thou shalt have no other relations before me
9.3 Kinds of representations
9.4 Brains as world makers
10. Look at the universe and you'll see yourself
References
1.1 What, where and when is experience?
1.2 Experience is the object
1.3 I am world
1.4 A better object?
1.5 Nothing appears, everything takes place
1.6 Appearance is reality
1.7 Shangri-La
2. The Spread Object
2.1 The fridge-light model of the object
2.2 Traditional and actual spread objects
2.3 Senses as multiple objects
2.4 Phenomenal is physical
2.5 The last Ptolemaic stand
2.6 Percipere est esse
3. The causal geometry of experience
3.1 Stretching over space and time
3.2 Glass, mirrors and beyond
3.3 A storage-less model of memory
3.4 Dreams and hallucinations as spatiotemporal kaleidoscopes
3.5 The causal argument revisited
3.6 Return to Shangri-La
4. Illusions
4.1 Proxy and alleged properties
4.2 Illusions as misbeliefs
4.3 A zoo of illusions
4.4 Benham's Top
4.5 A comparison with other accounts
5. Hallucinations and dreams
5.1 Ordinary and extraordinary hallucinations
5.2 Gerrymandered objects and direct brain stimulation
5.3 Double preemption
5.4 A continuum - from objects to hallucinations
5.5 The common kind assumption
6. A zoo of objects and experiences
6.1 The myth of endogenous mental experience
6.2 Phosphenes and blindness
6.3 Visual images and congenitally blinds
6.4 Geometric hallucinations
6.5 Impossible, forbidden and Martian colors
6.6 Additions and subtractions
6.7 Afterimages
6.8 The myth of supersaturated red
6.9 Filling in
6.10 Innate phantom limbs
7. Joint causation and wholes
7.1 Actual existence
7.2 Objects and wholes
7.3 Joint causation
7.4 No time, no wholes
7.5 The cause of the cause is the effect
8. The spread now
8.1 The present is not punctual
8.2 The spread now
8.3 Now is relative and multiple
8.4 Present is near past and past is far present
8.5 Pastness has no color
8.6 The time-gap argument
8.7 Time is an ocean, the present is its shore
9. In nature, identity is the only relation
9.1 A is A
9.2 Thou shalt have no other relations before me
9.3 Kinds of representations
9.4 Brains as world makers
10. Look at the universe and you'll see yourself
References