It is a variation of Comte-Sponville’s The Book of Atheist Spirituality, 2009. It is good to see that more and more people share this perspective, but, at the same time, it is sad to see how thinkers remain trapped in the cage of analytical mentality, that prevents them from thinking in non-metaphysical ways. The core question is touched on at the beginning of the third chapter only, entitled “Neurons and I”, when the author says “…we may never be able to cross the first-person/third-person divide. The experience of consciousness, at least at its higher levels, is the first-person subjective par excellence. The analysis of three pounds of neurons sitting on the lab table, the probing of that brain with instruments, the measuring of its electrical quiverings, the writing of equations to describe it, even the mere talking about it as a thing are all third-person activities. We can’t be inside the box and outside the box at the same time. Of course, in some sense we are always inside the box of our own minds, since we cannot experience the world except through our individual brains.”. That’s all, nothing else about this question that is the essential one.
1 Review on “The transcendent brain. Spirituality in the age of science”
It is a variation of Comte-Sponville’s The Book of Atheist Spirituality, 2009. It is good to see that more and more people share this perspective, but, at the same time, it is sad to see how thinkers remain trapped in the cage of analytical mentality, that prevents them from thinking in non-metaphysical ways. The core question is touched on at the beginning of the third chapter only, entitled “Neurons and I”, when the author says “…we may never be able to cross the first-person/third-person divide. The experience of consciousness, at least at its higher levels, is the first-person subjective par excellence. The analysis of three pounds of neurons sitting on the lab table, the probing of that brain with instruments, the measuring of its electrical quiverings, the writing of equations to describe it, even the mere talking about it as a thing are all third-person activities. We can’t be inside the box and outside the box at the same time. Of course, in some sense we are always inside the box of our own minds, since we cannot experience the world except through our individual brains.”. That’s all, nothing else about this question that is the essential one.