In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for
phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life
is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color,
and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything
physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states?
Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the
seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and
phenomenal experience. This engaging book-part scientific overview,
part memoir, part futurist speculation-describes Koch's search for
an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only
the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the
subterranean motivation for his quest-his instinctual (if
"romantic") belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own
groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and
the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a "fringy"
subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation.
Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of
colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene,
Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were
new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve
cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that
allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action.
Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into
the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on
a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention
and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer
Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des
Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal
God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his
life's work-to uncover the roots of consciousness.
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