A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

This highly readable and absorbing consciousness book is unusual in being written not by a specialist in the field but by a freelance writer and sometime college-level teacher, Michael Pollan. The many professionals he leans on to tell us of his "journey" range from biologists to philosophers and fiction writers. Of these, some names (Christof Koch, David Chalmers, Karl Damasio, the 1800s' William James, the 1700s' David Hume, Anil Seth, Thomas Metzinger, . . .) were already well known to me, while others (Michael Levin, Karl Friston, Mark Solms, Russell Hurlburt, Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva, Lucy Ellman, Alison Gopnik, Carlos Montemayor, . . .) were not but evidently should have been. In the preface, after introducing Koch, Chalmers, show more Integrated Information Theory (IIT), and Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Pollan sets out his 4-aspects view of consciousness studies -- Sentience, Feeling, Thought, and Self. These words serve as the titles of the book's 4 chapters proper. The Sentience chapter is where, drawing upon work by biologist Levin and by physicist Friston, he advances his own opinion that plants have at least a basic level of consciousness. The Feeling chapter is largely the domain of neurologist Damasio and his one-time student Solms. The former might well opine that "I feel, therefore I am" is what Descartes *should* have said; the latter is trying to build an AI/robot on this basis -- both Pollan and I doubt he'll succeed. The phenomenology of qualia, streams of consciousness, and works of fiction are topics for the Thought chapter. In the Self chapter, Levin's idea that alterations in self and modifications to memory go hand in hand struck me as very insightful. I also liked philosopher Montemayor's contention that the familiarity quale is both very important and very resistant to machine simulation. Lastly, we learn that Koch is no longer a materialist/physicalist; he slyly says Pollan has made progress by admittedly knowing *less* about consciousness than at the start of the journey! show less

I find this book hard to describe and review. On one hand, by the author's own admission, at the end he found himself almost back where he started. I felt more confused than when I started. But on the other hand, I have a new appreciation for the difficulties associated with trying to study consciousness. Maybe sometimes we all need some confusion to make us think harder.

A thought provoking book about consciousness