Buzzflash
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Mixx it!
Reddit
Adrian Bellesguard
Alva Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California and author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness (Hill and Wang, $25). --Christine Smallwood
What is consciousness?
I use the word "consciousness" in a narrow sense and in a broader sense. In the narrow sense I mean the experience of seeing something, or hearing something, or having a feeling. In the broader sense I just mean the whole colorful life of the mind: our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, the desires that shape the contours of our lives. I don't think of consciousness as something that happens in us or to us but as something that we achieve or something that we do through our action and interaction with the world around us.
Subscribe Now!
The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.
There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.
- Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
- If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
- Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.
RSS