âA brilliantly inventive account of the evolution of consciousness, the best yetâ (Paul Broks, Prospect). âConsciousness matters. Arguably it matters more than anything. The purpose of this book is to build towards an explanation of just what the matter is.â Nicholas Humphrey begins this compelling exploration of the biggest of big questions with a challenge to the reader, and himself. Whatâs involved in âseeing redâ? What is it like for us to see someone else seeing something red? Seeing a red screen tells us a fact about something in the world. But it also creates a new factâa sensation in each of our minds, the feeling of redness. And thatâs the mystery. Conventional science so far hasnât told us what conscious sensations are made of, or how we get access to them, or why we have them at all. From an evolutionary perspective, whatâs the point of consciousness? Humphrey offers a daring and novel solution, arguing that sensations are not things that happen to us, they are things we doâoriginating in our primordial ancestorsâ expressions of liking or disgust. Tracing the evolutionary trajectory through to human beings, he shows how this has led to sensations playing the key role in the human sense of Self. The Self, as we now know it from within, seems to have fascinating other-worldly properties. It leads us to believe in mind-body duality and the existence of a soul. And such beliefsâeven if mistakenâcan be highly adaptive, because they increase the value we place on our own and othersâ lives. âConsciousness matters,â Humphrey concludes with striking paradox, âbecause it is its function to matter. It has been designed to create in human beings a Self whose life is worth pursuing.â Praise for Seeing Red âA wonderful amalgam of science, philosophy, and art. [Seeing Red] is based on deep knowledge of visual processing by the brain and poetic understanding of human experience. This is a remarkable achievement.â âRichard Gregory, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, University of Bristol, and editor of The Oxford Companion to the Mind âA brief, brilliant, and wonderfully lucid contribution to consciousness studies. By combining empirical scientific method, evolutionary theory, and a sensitive appreciation of the arts, Nicholas Humphrey argues plausibly that the âhard problemâ of consciousnessâthe difficulty of explaining the connection between the material brain and the phenomenon of individual selfhoodâmay itself be the answer to a bigger question: what makes us human?ââDavid Lodge, author of Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays âIllustrating his argument with the musings of poets and painters, Humphrey stylishly inspires curiosity about consciousness.â âGilbert Taylor, Booklist
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