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morituritesalutamus's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
A fairly good argument for skepticism of our faculties to determine our own consciousness stream of experience, and the consequences of such a view.
jgauthier's review
4.0
Think hard about your ability to peer into your own experience. Can we actually answer questions about our experience reliably? For example: Do I perceive the world in two or three dimensions? What do I see when my eyes are closed?
Schwitzgebel, witty and original as ever, provokes these questions in Perpelexities of Consciousness. This book doesn't provide answers — that's not Schwitzgebel's style. But it shows us that much of what we take for granted about access to our own phenomenology could be wrong.
(This was a bedtime book — I didn't read it as a philosopher. Planning to read again someday with a more serious eye. In any case, this was really fun!)
Schwitzgebel, witty and original as ever, provokes these questions in Perpelexities of Consciousness. This book doesn't provide answers — that's not Schwitzgebel's style. But it shows us that much of what we take for granted about access to our own phenomenology could be wrong.
(This was a bedtime book — I didn't read it as a philosopher. Planning to read again someday with a more serious eye. In any case, this was really fun!)
lizshayne's review
3.0
This book should be subtitled "Thinking yourself into a box in 8 easy chapters".
It's not that I didn't enjoy it; this book tends rather towards the repetitive and while one chapter about how difficult it is to accurately and reliably describe our own introspective experience (what does the world look like to us? Do we dream in color? Do we notice what we perceive when we're not paying attention to it?) is fascinating, eight begin to feel like the author is running around asking :How do we brain? Nobody knows..."
Which is, perhaps, another way of saying that I want more direction in my science books. I want more speculation, rather than just somewhat blasé suggestions at the end, about how we can get past this problem.
I also want a bit more "get over it and move on" - yes, we're lousy phenomenologists. But Schwitzgebel seems almost devastated by that state of affairs and I suppose I find myself wondering why. The history of psychology has been a long story of people showing us how we don't know what we think we know. Is this SO very different?
The most intriguing part, by far, was the way that he ends by turning around and arguing for a study of the world as such rather than our experience for it. That was well done. Still, the bits in between had a tendency to put me to sleep.
It's not that I didn't enjoy it; this book tends rather towards the repetitive and while one chapter about how difficult it is to accurately and reliably describe our own introspective experience (what does the world look like to us? Do we dream in color? Do we notice what we perceive when we're not paying attention to it?) is fascinating, eight begin to feel like the author is running around asking :How do we brain? Nobody knows..."
Which is, perhaps, another way of saying that I want more direction in my science books. I want more speculation, rather than just somewhat blasé suggestions at the end, about how we can get past this problem.
I also want a bit more "get over it and move on" - yes, we're lousy phenomenologists. But Schwitzgebel seems almost devastated by that state of affairs and I suppose I find myself wondering why. The history of psychology has been a long story of people showing us how we don't know what we think we know. Is this SO very different?
The most intriguing part, by far, was the way that he ends by turning around and arguing for a study of the world as such rather than our experience for it. That was well done. Still, the bits in between had a tendency to put me to sleep.
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