The Ego Tunnel

The Ego Tunnel

We all use the word “I” to refer to ourselves, but what exactly is the nature of the self? In The Ego Tunnel, Thomas Metzinger has some serious news: There are no such things as “selves” at all! Instead, what we perceive as the conscious self is merely the content of a sophisticated model of reality generated by our brain. In these pages, he shares a host of insights in support of this provocative idea. Throughout the book, Metzinger employs one central metaphor for conscious experience: the “Ego Tunnel.” Consciousness, he explains, is like a tunnel; what we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a small fraction of what actually exists. “The ongoing process of conscious experience,” he writes, “is not so much an image of reality as a tunnel through reality.” Whenever our brains successfully pursue the strategy of creating a unified and dynamic inner portrait of reality, we become conscious. In a sense, conscious experience is a form of virtual reality, a real-time world-model that can be viewed as a permanent simulation. The author develops his model in considerably greater detail than we can summarize here. He goes on to ask why this “conscious self” evolved in the first place, and then takes us into various laboratories to witness findings that shed light on the nature of the self. For example, we encounter the so-called rubber-hand illusion, in which a subject transfers sensations from his own (real) hand to a rubber surrogate—proving that many brain functions (in this case, vision and touch) combine to create our picture of our selves. We take a look at the controversial phenomenon of out-of-body experiences; it turns out that the floating sensation reported by some of those who have had such experiences can be induced by stimulating a brain area called the angular gyrus. From free will to lucid dreaming, from our sense of other selves to the potential creation of artificial selves in machines, the book ranges widely and engagingly. The Ego Tunnel proffers a fascinating new idea regarding who we really are.

Hardcover: 288 pages

Publisher: Basic Books ( April 01, 2009 )

Item #: 13-7206

ISBN: 9780465045679

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.0 inches

Product Weight: 18.0 ounces