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| Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Blackmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95 (39.90 RON)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 88474
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0195179595
Dewey Decimal Number: 149
EAN: 9780195179590
ASIN: 0195179595
Publication Date: January 8, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
Blackmore's "Conversations on Consciousness" Offers Tons of Information Presented in a Unique Manner October 21, 2008
Introduction and Overall Thoughts:
Susan Blackmore is a writer who holds an enthusiastic obsession over what consciousness means and how current research is attempting to define conscious in terms of scientific principles. Her book, "Conversations on Consciousness" is a collection of 20 interviews, with 21 of the leading thinkers on consciousness. Blackmore interviewees represent a variety of backgrounds, and showcase the purpose of the book: researchers cannot come close to agreeing on much of anything involving defining consciousness. The book contains a wealth of knowledge, each presented in a least `textbook' manner as possible. However, the arbitrary alphabetical organization (based on the interviewees last name) of the book favors readers well aware of the theories and experiments in defining consciousness. This may be the only drawback the book holds, as the questions and responses are very detailed and conjure up images of watching the interview transpire.
Format of Book:
The introduction explains the book came about through a failed BBC project. The project fell through, but Blackmore decided the conversations were so vivid they would suffice as a book. She then lays down the framework for each interview, as the same general questions would be asked to each interviewee to give some continuity and of course for comparison. The questions:
-Why consciousness is treated so differently?
-What brought the interviewee to study consciousness?
-Questions about the interviewee's theory, and opinions to reactions of it.
-Does a philosophical zombie exist?
-Is there such thing as free will?
-What happens to us after death, in specific the conscious?
-How has studying consciousness affected your life?
Opinion of Book:
Content:
Blackmore offers an interesting collection of varied opinions on consciousness. Prior to reading this book, I had little to no understanding of what consciousness was or how we currently interpret it. What I came to understand was I held the now `primitive' belief established by Descartes, dualism, or the separation of mind and body. The book immediately throws you into the current affairs of consciousness research, which is both good and bad. The good aspect of this comes from seeing the wonderfully detailed and vivid opinions, which these scientists and philosophers hold. Unfortunately, neophytes to current affairs are thrown to a level beyond what the introduction mentions. In a sense, I felt the introduction needed an introduction, or some detailed preface section outlining the very basic concepts in the glossary.
For example, after reading the book I noticed two very important common threads in many of the interviews. First, nearly every interviewee had an opinion on David Chalmers `hard problem'. In the introduction, Blackmore mentions the hard problem, but not in enough detail or emphasis. Due to the alphabetical arrangement of the interviewees, Chalmers does not come up until the third interview. I know one may choose to read ahead in a nonlinear fashion, but I think it makes much more sense for Blackmore to explain how Chalmers' landmark speech at the Tuscon conference put a name on a problem which all researchers were troubled with, and revitalized consciousness research. Until the Chalmers' interview, I actually went to the Internet to read up on the phrase, which in my opinion is ludicrous. Secondly, the field of consciousness research is essentially divided into two groups: as Daniel Wegner puts it "the robo-geeks and the bad scientists". Because of his last name, this recurring theme is not explained until the final interview and an easily understood concept is left unmentioned for basically the entire book. After reading the final interview, it became much easier to categorize the views held by many of the interviewees and this frustrated me that the realization was forced to the very, very end.
Writing Style:
The writing style was essentially dictated by dialogue, which in my opinion helped move the complicated subject matter down easier paths. It also allowed many of the personalities of the interviewees to come out, especially in reactions to some of Blackmore's own opinions!
Organization:
My primary gripe with the book comes with the organization or lack thereof. I sincerely believe a format in which Blackmore separated the interviewees into the varying degrees of "robo-geeks and bad scientists" would have helped make the opinions more cohesive and readily understood.
Highlights and Recommendations:
Of all the interviewees, my favorite was Stephen LeBerge whose primary research is lucid dreams, and how this can apply to the consciousness. While his research methods alone were interesting, I enjoyed his quote regarding Blackmore's questions of `lucid living' and `lucid dreaming':
"Suppose we take ourselves to be individual snowflakes with a particular crystalline form...one snowflake is falling into the ocean; what does it fear? `I'm about to be annihilated, I'll disappear...but perhaps what happens instead is an infinite expansion. You are not one drop in the water, but you are the water...the substance is unity"
I found it astonishing and fascinating the new age of scientist no longer rejects Eastern philosophical principles, but instead embraces such opinions.
I also found the interview of Roger Penrose fascinating, as he collaborated with the ideas of Stuart Hameroff to develop the theory explaining consciousness with quatum mechanical oscillations in microtubules of neurons.
Of course some of the interviews let the bizarre personalities shine through, as Kevin O'Regan openly claimed he, and everyone, is a robot due to the total lack of free will.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the philosophical and scientific nature of defining consciousness, with one caution: the material is not introductory level. I might suggest reading Blackmore's earlier effort, "Consciousness: A Very Brief Introduction" to get a proper background.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, a very interesting and thought provoking book that could have used better organization but pulls through because of the undeniable genius of the interviewees.
 Controversies in consciousness studies April 1, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
What is the problem of consciousness?
Are zombies (creatures that look and act like humans but who have no consciousness) theoretically possible?
Does consciousness survive death?
Is there such a thing as free will?
These are the types of questions Susan Blackmore poses to twenty-one experts, who come from neuroscience, philosophy and psychology, and who are all involved in the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies. Each interview also includes specific questions about the subject's work and theories. The cumulative effect of reading them is that you walk away with a good sense of the frequently conflicting perspectives within the field and an idea of which ones you might want to explore further. As other reviewers have pointed out, the sequence of the interviews is alphabetical - an arbitrary choice but not one your reading of the book has to be restricted by. My preference was to dip into different sections till I'd read the whole book. As I'd read one interview, the subject would make reference to other interviewees and their ideas and if something struck me as being particularly interesting, I'd read the interview with that person next, sort of the way you might surf the net. In some ways it was a very liberating experience and I almost felt like I was creating the book that suited my level of understanding.
Some of the material presented here is undoubtedly very challenging but I didn't feel overwhelmed even if I didn't "get" everything. The only other book I'd read on the subject was V.S. Ramachandran's "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness," which I found interesting but too brief. I also found that the conversation format in Blackmore's book made the topic more engaging and easier to penetrate. The fact that she is a scientist herself is actually a strength because she uses her intimate knowledge of the field to not only reflect back complex ideas in easy to understand language but also asks the right questions to lead the subjects to deepen their explanations of their work. She clearly has her biases but rather than detracting from the discussions I thought her disagreements with the interviewees brought more life to the material. I had to keep asking myself what I think and had an idea of what I need to learn more about to help make up my mind.
The back of the book has a helpful glossary to assist with learning some of the key terms that are used and also links to a couple of great websites that I'm sure I'll be spending time browsing through.
If you're willing to actively engage with it, this is a great book to start your explorations into a fascinating field.
 Hameroff suggests part of us does live on January 18, 2007
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
The main problem I had with CONVERSATIONS ON CONSCIOUSNESS was that the interviewer was also a scientist. I think a journalist would have forced these scientists to articulate their ideas more coherently. Susan Blackmore, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the West of England, seemed to ignore the reader at times and use scientific jargon. I wasn't aware of the glossary in the back of the book until I was half finished.
There are twenty interviews. I was familiar with Francis Crick, who along with James D. Watson, discovered the structure of DNA, but I was unfamiliar with the others. They discussed such issues as blind sight, binocular rivalry, free will, whether there's an afterlife, split brains, lucid dreaming, and qualia (subjective qualities of any sensory experience, such as the smell of coffee or the blueness of the sky). Color is a qualia and does not exist in the physical realm.
Many of these scientists, Blackmore included, have experience with eastern religion and meditation. Blackmore, herself, believes the self is an illusion. She is able to repress the self while meditating. One of the other scientists, Francisco Varela, used people who have trained for 20 or 25 years in the Buddhist tradition of meditation as research subjects since you can ask them to perform tasks normally impossible for regular people, such as to keep a steady attention over a 30 minute span. Most college students have an attention span of only two and a half minutes.
Another interviewee I found especially interesting was Stuart Hameroff, a working anaesthesiologist. He believes proto-consciousness is fundamental to the universe, a force such as electro-magnetism. He theorizes that the self is found on the quantum level: "In our unconscious minds we have superimpositions of multiple possible choices or perceptions which reduce or collapse to one particular choice or perception, say 40 times a second. Each reduction chooses a set of qualia." Hameroff is studying the computational capabilities of protein structures called microtubules, which make up the internal scaffolding within nerve cells. He believes microtubules might be quantum computers. One uplifting result, if Hameroff is right, is that quantum information doesn't completely dissipate when we die; it exists holographically, indefinitely.
Blackmore, herself, is author of a book entitled, THE MEME MACHINE. I had never heard the term before, but it means "skills, stories, songs, theories, or artefacts, that are copied from person to person. According to the theory of memetics, memes are replicators and culture evolves by the process of variation and selection among memes." In other words, we don't have a whole lot of free will and creativity is pretty much an illusion.
Not suitable as an introduction to consciousness researchers or their hypotheses May 16, 2006
38 out of 44 found this review helpful
This book is a collection of "conversations" with scientists working on the problem of consciousness, and I was hoping that it would provide a readable and interesting introduction to these scientists and their various hypotheses. However, I found this book unsuitable for this purpose. The author does not try to organize the material--the "conversations" are presented in alphabetical order of the interviewees' last names because the author could not conceive of a meaningful order. There is virtually no editing of the material--the author wanted to "let the people speak for themselves" and "make the editing very light". There is only a minimal introduction to the book, and only biographical introductions to the scientists. While there may be some merit in the approach of "light editing," overall I had to wonder what value was added by the author. Additionally, in the book introduction the author generally refers to her interviewees by their first name. Perhaps she is trying to show that she is on a first-name basis with all these scientists, but since scientists are more typically known by their last names, this was distracting at best and made it even more difficult to follow the minimal introduction (who is "Dave"? ... presumably Chalmers). Overall, this book seems intended for somebody who is already familiar with the study of consciousness, not for a reader relatively new to the subject. I had previously read the author's book "Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction," and I didn't feel that prepared me for "Conversations on Consciousness." So what value does this book provide? If you are already familiar with the subject of consciousness, you may find the interviews with your favorite researchers to be of interest.
Very impressive book January 7, 2006
50 out of 55 found this review helpful
That was a brilliant idea of Sue Blackmore, and the results are quite impressive. This book does what it was designed to do - it involves anyone (I believe) who reads it in the "hard problem of consciousness", that is in reflection on explanations of the fact of subjective experience arising from neural structures (there are a few other themes debated here like the problem of free will, but they are marginal - with an exeption of zombie-problem, which, however, is closely connected with "hard problem"). We see different approaches to the "hard problem" and a clash of philosophers, like Dennett, with scientists, like Crick or Koch. It became clear, however, that scientists are in need of philosophers these days. By the way, most elaborate responses in these conversations came from philosophers - Chalmers, Dennett, Velmans etc. So far - OK. Why only 4 stars then? Because the book is imbalanced, and Sue knows that. First of all, among her 20 "best minds" there are no Chomskian philosophers - Chomsky would probably refuse to respond - Fodor, McGinn, Pinker. Then where are Identity theorists - Armstrong or Smart? Why Edelman is not included in the list? Where is Kim? And so on. Of course, it is not easy to achieve balance in such projects. But still it is possible - I myself did something like that, collecting more than 100 opinions of Kant scholars in 2004 - so called "International Kant Interview". So Sue Blackmore did not do her best - but she did much. Her book helps to feel the progress in consciousness studies.
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