Author Description

In this exploration of human consciousness, philosopher and scientist Thomas Metzinger provides evidence that the "self" does not really exist. Highlighting a series of ground-breaking experiments in neuroscience, virtual reality, and robotics, and his own pioneering research into the phenomenon of the "out-of-body" experience, Metzinger reveals how our brain constructs our reality - our deepest sense of self is completely dependent on our brain functioning. In The Ego Tunnel, Metzinger examines recent evidence that people born without arms or legs can experience a sensation that they do in fact have limbs - and how we can actually feel a human touch in a rubber hand placed on a desk in front of us. Similarly, he reveals how the state of our experiential self changes when we become lucid while we're dreaming, and how our sense of self can even be transposed into a three-dimensional computer-generated image of our body in cyberspace simply by using virtual reality goggles, creating a conflict between the seeing self and the feeling self. He goes on to discuss the latest research on free will, machine consciousness, and the evolution of empathy. Highlighting these examples and more, Metzinger asserts that if our "self" is created by our brain mechanisms and it's possible to alter our subjective reality, then this creates not only a deeper understanding of consciousness, but a need for a new approach to ethics. Our sense of self, our spatial understanding, and the feeling of embodiment can be manipulated and even controlled. Using new kinds of medication, we can even enhance cognition and fine-tune emotional layers of self-consciousness. But what, in an ethical sense, are valuable forms of self-experience in the first place - what is a good state of consciousness? Metzinger ultimately argues that we must be willing to engage with serious and pressing ethical questions as well as cultural consequences that will result from a new image of the "self" and the emerg