Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity

Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity by Metzinger, Thomas. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780262134170.

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobodyever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in consciousexperience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the contentof a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher,draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysisof what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge betweenthe humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits andmetaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, andhallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness.Metzingers central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivityemerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whetherconscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergenceof a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and howour Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained arethemselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our consciousminds.