Consciousness Explained

The book comprises fourteen chapters arranged into three major parts. The opening chapter uses hallucination and the “brain in a vat” thought experiment to introduce the problem of how the brain constructs apparently coherent experience. Part I examines the principal conceptual and methodological problems involved in explaining consciousness, critiques dualism, surveys the contents of phenomenal experience, and introduces heterophenomenology as a scientific method for studying subjective reports. Part II develops an empirical theory of mind through the Multiple Drafts Model, analyses the brain’s representation of time, traces the biological and cultural evolution of consciousness, investigates the formative role of language, and outlines the architecture of the human mind as a distributed “Joycean machine.” Part III addresses the major philosophical problems of consciousness, including mental imagery, perceptual reporting, blindsight, visual completion, qualia, the construction and plurality of selves, conscious robots, animal experience, and the question of whether a functional explanation genuinely explains consciousness or merely explains it away.