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ConsciousnessCreeping up on the hard problem$
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Consciousness: Creeping up on the hard problem

Jeffrey Gray

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780198520917

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2010

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198520917.001.0001

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The illusory narrative of consciousness

The illusory narrative of consciousness

Chapter:
(p.7) Chapter 2 The illusory narrative of consciousness
Source:
Consciousness
Author(s):

Jeffrey Gray

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198520917.003.0002

The archetypal story of conscious experience is told like this: I perceived (consciously saw, heard, tasted, etc.) this out there, and so I then did (consciously formed the intention to do, and then did) that. This chapter unpicks this story in the following ways: (1) The conscious perceiving does not precede the doing; rather, it follows on after the doing, or at best goes on in parallel with it. (2) The ‘out there’ of conscious experience isn't really out there at all; it's inside the head. (3) The conscious ‘I’ is not the true subject of the story: it is the unconscious brain.

Keywords:   consciousness, perception, illusions, vision, unconscious brain

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