Précis: Being No One

Metzinger, Thomas (2005) Précis: Being No One. Psyche, 11 (5).

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Official URL: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/

Abstract

This is a short sketch of some central ideas developed in my recent book Being No One (BNO hereafter). A more systematic summary, which focuses on short answers to a set of specific, individual questions is already contained in the book, namely as BNO section 8.2. Here, I deliberately and completely exclude all work related to semantically differentiating and empirically constraining the philosophical concept of a "quale" (mostly Chapter 2, 3 & 8), all proposals regarding conceptual foundations for the overall theory (2 & 5), all of the neurophenomenological case-studies used to test and refine it (4 & 7), and all remarks of a more general or methodological character (1 & 8). In particular, the present Précis does not follow the structure of the book. Instead, it simply sums up what the theory has to say about its three major epistemic targets, namely about consciousness (Section 2), the phenomenal self (Section 3), and the emergence of a firstperson perspective (Section 4).

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