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Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness: Our leading theories of how your brain really works
An overview of modern consciousness research and how our brain works.
A concise, elegant, and thought-provoking exploration of the mystery of consciousness and the functioning of the brain.
Despite decades of research, remarkable imagery, and insights from a range of scientific and medical disciplines, the human brain remains largely unexplored. Consciousness has eluded explanation.
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness offers a brilliant overview of the state of modern consciousness research in twenty brief, revealing chapters. Neuroscientist and author Patrick House describes complex concepts in accessible terms, weaving brain science, technology, gaming, analogy, and philosophy into a tapestry that illuminates how the brain works and what enables consciousness. This remarkable book fosters a sense of mystery and wonder about the strangeness of the relationship between our inner selves and our environment.
A concise, elegant, and thought-provoking exploration of the mystery of consciousness and the functioning of the brain.
Despite decades of research, remarkable imagery, and insights from a range of scientific and medical disciplines, the human brain remains largely unexplored. Consciousness has eluded explanation.
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness offers a brilliant overview of the state of modern consciousness research in twenty brief, revealing chapters. Neuroscientist and author Patrick House describes complex concepts in accessible terms, weaving brain science, technology, gaming, analogy, and philosophy into a tapestry that illuminates how the brain works and what enables consciousness. This remarkable book fosters a sense of mystery and wonder about the strangeness of the relationship between our inner selves and our environment.
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First published October 1, 2022
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About the author
Patrick House
1 book56 followersPATRICK HOUSE is a neuroscientist and writer. His scientific research focuses on the neuroscience of free will and how mind-control parasites alter their host’s behavior. He writes about science, technology and culture for The New Yorker.com and Slate. He has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
March 7, 2024
The brain…is a thrift-store bin of evolutionary hacks Russian-dolled into a watery, salty piñata we call a head.--------------------------------------
…consciousness is not something passed on or recycled--like single molecules of water, which are retained as they move about the earth as ice, water, or dew--from one living creature to the next…instead consciousness should be grown from “scratch” with only a few well-timed molecular parts from plans laid out. It is not drawn from a recycled tap of special kinds of cells or dredged from the vein of free will. No, the darn thing grows. From its own rules. All by itself. And we have no idea how or why.When I was still a programmer it was necessary to understand the many characteristics of, and rules about using, the objects that we would place on the screen in an application. Under what conditions did one appear? Physical dimensions, like width and height. Does it have a borderline around it? How wide is that line? Does it have a background color? How about a foreground color? Can it display images, text, both? Where does it get its information, keyboard entry, internal calculation? and on and on and on. Fairly simple and straightforward once one knows how it works. But consider the human brain, with billions of neurons, and a nearly infinite possible range of interactions among them. Somehow, within that biological organ, there is a thing we refer to as consciousness. We are who and what we are, and saying so, thinking so, makes us conscious, at the very least. But how did this gelatinous, gross substance, come to develop awareness of self? And just what is consciousness, anyway?
Patrick House - image from Attention Fwd ->
Patrick House, a Ph.D. neuroscientist, researcher and writer, offers a wide range of looks at what consciousness might be, mostly by looking at details of the brain. How do the characteristics of zombie food come to be, and how do they combine to create something far greater than a tasty meal for the hungry dead? He looks at many of the currently popular ideas that try to get a handle on the fog that is consciousness.
The book is a collection of possible mechanisms, histories, observations, data, and theories of consciousness told nineteen different ways, as translations of a few moments described in a one-page scientific paper in Nature, published in 1998, titled “Electric Current Stimulates Laughter.” The idea is an homage to a short book of poetry and criticism, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, which takes the poem “Deer Park” by Wang Wei and analyzes nineteen different translations of it in the centuries since it was originally written.He points out more than once that our brains did not emerge in an instant, all sparkling, from the build-a-brain factory. They evolved, from the very first living cell, so at each step of the evolutionary ladder, whatever traits favored survival and reproduction became dominant, pushing prior adaptations into the DNA equivalent of attic storage. Some of the accretion of the prior adaptations may vanish over time, but bags of the stuff are still lying about.
In tracing how our brains evolved, He points out qualities, like the brain’s need for cadence, and timekeeping, shows that language and action are comparable products of the brain and reports on how speech arose from systems that governed movement. He looks at the brain’s mission of preventing our bodies from losing 1.5 degrees of internal temperature, at how we map out the sensate terrain around us, and at the significance of size in brain complexity.
Imagery runs rampant. There is a chapter on the pinball machine as an appropriate metaphor for consciousness. It was a TILT for me. But ineffective chapters like that one are rare, and can be quickly forgotten when the next chapter offers another fascinating perspective, and bit of evolutionary vision. Another, more effective image, was scientists looking for “surface features” of the brain that might tell us where consciousness lies, like geologists surveying terrain to identify likely ore locations.
Throughout the book House refers to a patient, referred to as Anna, who, while having neurosurgery, had her brain poked in various locations by the surgeon, testing out the function of different parts of her gray matter, prompting some unexpected results. Grounding much of the discussion in the experience of an actual person helped make the material more digestible.
As I read, questions kept popping up like synapses flashing a signal to the next synapse. First of all is a definition of consciousness. What is it? How is it defined? Probably the most we can hope for is to infer its existence from externalities, in the same way that astrophysicists can infer the presence of a black hole by measuring the light coming from nearby objects, without ever being able to actually see the black hole, itself. Is there a measurable range of consciousness? Is entity #1 more or less conscious than entity #2. (Man, that is one seriously self-aware tree) How might we measure such a thing? This is actually addressed in one of the chapters. I would have been interested in more on consciousness in the world of Artificial Intelligence. If programmers put together a sufficient volume of code, with a vast array of memory and data, might there be a possibility of self-awareness? What would it take?
For an item on an electronic screen, one can find out the specific characteristics that comprise it. And with that knowledge, check against a list of possible items it might be. It might be a text-box, or a drop-down menu, or a check-box, a button that triggers an action when clicked. But with the brain, while we can compile a considerable list of characteristics, there is not really a list against we can check those things to arrive at a clear conclusion. Oh yeah, any entity, biological or electronic, that possesses at least some number of certain core characteristics, can be considered to be conscious. Nope, it does not work that way.
I found by the end of the book that I had learned a fair bit about how brains evolved, which is always a wonderful experience, but was as uncertain at the end as at the beginning about just what consciousness is. I expect that House shares that leaning, to at least some degree.
There is no one such thing as “consciousness,” and the attempt to study it as a singular phenomenon will go nowhere.But he does suggest that consciousness exists as a range of experiences rather than as a singular entity with firmly defined borders. It is a fascinating read, even if the core definition is lacking. One thing is for sure, it is brain candy of the first order whether you are self-aware or not.
And just for fun, for next week’s class, be prepared to discuss the difference between consciousness and the mind.
Review posted – October 29, 2022
Publication dates
----------Hardcover - September 22, 2022
----------Trade paperback - 3/5/24
I received an ARE of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks.
This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the House’s personal, and Twitter pages
Items of Interest
-----Wang Wei - Deer Park
March 16, 2024
“The brain is messy and venous and dense and soaking wet, all the time, and is about as heavy as a hardback copy of Infinite Jest. It is not designed, perfected, or neat. It is a thrift-store bin of evolutionary hacks Russian-dolled into a watery, salty piñata we call a head.”
How does this messy wet tissue blob full of electrical connections and countless not-quite-understood connections and pathways translate into something that’s an “I”, something that is aware of its “I”-ness and the world around it? How that happens is a mystery that remains yet unsolved and yet the most existential of anything that weird tissue blob can imagine.
In this book the framework is the laughter of a girl undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy, laughter provoked by electrical stimulation of a part of her brain, laughter that she in that moment justified by finding various reasons that were anything but an electrode in the brain during a surgery. It’s a surreal situation, and one to make such impression on the author of the book that he built an entire exploration of the framework behind consciousness around it.
And yet I just don’t quite know what happened when I read it. The science is good, the writing is good, the subject fascinating (and I have the necessary neurobiology background for it to make great sense — and yet my eyes kept bouncing off the page and that pesky blob of neural tissue and electrical connections that I call my brain (the brain that manages to survive books on particle physics almost unscathed although blessed with deep lack of understanding and even managed to find its way through the tangles of dense science fiction on consciousness without shorting out) kept zoning out into the odd trance where I would go back to the chapter unsure if I just had read it, with only some interesting passages reminding me that yet, I indeed have. I tried restarting it a few times, rereading a few chapters to make sure it wasn’t the lack of attention, taking days-long pauses, and yet it never came into any sort of even sharp-ish focus, even as I finished at least five other books alongside it.
And I still don’t know why. Maybe I have a rogue brain electrode making my brain fuzz out. Maybe it’s because I tend to lean more towards science in books like these and this went deeper into tangential and messily poetic philosophy than my not-too-cultured self is suited for (I audited a philosophy class on the mind in college and lost my patience after a couple of lectures and joined a biochem study group instead). My inner stream of consciousness must take a different neuronal pathway here.
But the chapter titles were absolutely great. “The Median Price of a Thrift-Store Bin of Evolutionary Hacks Russian-Dolled into a Watery, Salty Piñata We Call a Head”; “A Sex-Starved Cricket Sculpting in Time”; “Swinging Through Ancient Trees While Standing Still and Hearing Voices” — all these are worth a full star each.
Oh, and there was a chapter on pinball that I found absolutely fascinating. (Confession time: I’ve never played a game of pinball in my entire life, but now I’m full of trivia about it).
But just because I am not a perfect reader for this book doesn’t mean others won’t be. Just go and read my friend Justin’s wonderful review of it to see how a differently wired brain experiences the beauty that I can see here but just fail to fully appreciate.
2.5 stars. (Sorry, Justin, it’s not the book, it’s me).
——————
Also posted on my blog.
November 19, 2023
The difference between physics and biology, explains the author early in this book, is the difference between Galileo dropping a bowling ball off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and dropping a pigeon. This image is both familiar and startling, and illustrates a larger point. We realize, right here on p. 9, that we are in the hands of an actual writer. Who also happens to be a world-class neurologist working on deeply fascinating problems. This is a hard combination to beat.
There is no way to understand consciousness without understanding the brain, and there's no way to understand the brain without evolution. Evolution is, of course, an imperfect process that has resulted in, as one chapter heading has it, "A Thrift-Store Bin of Evolutionary Hacks Russian-Dolled into a Watery, Salty Piñata We Call a Head." Another chapter is called "The North African Rhino of Charismatic Megaquale." Did I mention this guy is a real writer?
So: Twenty slender chapters explaining, from different scientists' points of view, the mystery of consciousness. One opinion is that this is a quality that is bestowed only upon humans. Author Patrick House is having none of that. Bats, for example, can both fly and echolocate, and do both at the same time, which is an enormous challenge. (He goes on to note that being a bat is so taxing that their body temp rises to 41C / 105F during the course of the evening, causing a large number of their cells to explode every single night, and that during sleep their immune system is busy cleaning up all the DNA that's been spewed into their bloodstream as a result. It's stuff like this that makes me glad I learned how to read.) But this brings up a larger point:
1. LCJ learns last year from his hero Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon and author, that the brain and body are so closely tied together that "the idea of a disembodied brain is almost meaningless."
2. LCJ learns from his new hero Patrick House that the brain evolved solely to control motion, and that remains its primary task. After all, speaking is simply the control of tongue, neck and mouth muscles; looking is control of the eye's direction and focus; etc.
3. P. House ups the ante and states, on p. 41, that "the brain's only job is to reduce the metabolic expense of any and all of our present and future movements."
Goddamn that's a powerful statement. If the goal of science is indeed to explain why things are the way they are, you could hardly do better than this. The brain itself is the biggest metabolic hog in the body, and it needs to pay its bills. Consciousness is the never-ending process by which the brain rehearses scenarios to improve its odds of extending its life. This may be the single most interesting sentence I've ever read, but it takes a lot of background to understand it fully, and that's what this book is for.
(Other fun facts: The human brain weighs about as much as a hardcover edition of David Wallace's Infinite Jest. The reason dreaming is primarily a visual phenomenon is that, if the visual-processing centers of the brain were to shut down for several hours a night, other brain functions would start encroaching on vision's territory -- dreaming is a turf-guarding defensive maneuver. There has never been a documented case of schizophrenia among people blind from birth. We have a mental grid built of triangles that we use to orient ourselves in space. Hundreds more.)
This book was all the sweeter because I picked it up on my first-ever visit to the legendary Strand Bookstore in Manhattan, during my first-ever adult visit to NYC in the company of a dear friend, and I'd never heard of this book or author before. My favorite book of the year, and an automatic add to my Top Ten list.
There is no way to understand consciousness without understanding the brain, and there's no way to understand the brain without evolution. Evolution is, of course, an imperfect process that has resulted in, as one chapter heading has it, "A Thrift-Store Bin of Evolutionary Hacks Russian-Dolled into a Watery, Salty Piñata We Call a Head." Another chapter is called "The North African Rhino of Charismatic Megaquale." Did I mention this guy is a real writer?
So: Twenty slender chapters explaining, from different scientists' points of view, the mystery of consciousness. One opinion is that this is a quality that is bestowed only upon humans. Author Patrick House is having none of that. Bats, for example, can both fly and echolocate, and do both at the same time, which is an enormous challenge. (He goes on to note that being a bat is so taxing that their body temp rises to 41C / 105F during the course of the evening, causing a large number of their cells to explode every single night, and that during sleep their immune system is busy cleaning up all the DNA that's been spewed into their bloodstream as a result. It's stuff like this that makes me glad I learned how to read.) But this brings up a larger point:
1. LCJ learns last year from his hero Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon and author, that the brain and body are so closely tied together that "the idea of a disembodied brain is almost meaningless."
2. LCJ learns from his new hero Patrick House that the brain evolved solely to control motion, and that remains its primary task. After all, speaking is simply the control of tongue, neck and mouth muscles; looking is control of the eye's direction and focus; etc.
3. P. House ups the ante and states, on p. 41, that "the brain's only job is to reduce the metabolic expense of any and all of our present and future movements."
Goddamn that's a powerful statement. If the goal of science is indeed to explain why things are the way they are, you could hardly do better than this. The brain itself is the biggest metabolic hog in the body, and it needs to pay its bills. Consciousness is the never-ending process by which the brain rehearses scenarios to improve its odds of extending its life. This may be the single most interesting sentence I've ever read, but it takes a lot of background to understand it fully, and that's what this book is for.
(Other fun facts: The human brain weighs about as much as a hardcover edition of David Wallace's Infinite Jest. The reason dreaming is primarily a visual phenomenon is that, if the visual-processing centers of the brain were to shut down for several hours a night, other brain functions would start encroaching on vision's territory -- dreaming is a turf-guarding defensive maneuver. There has never been a documented case of schizophrenia among people blind from birth. We have a mental grid built of triangles that we use to orient ourselves in space. Hundreds more.)
This book was all the sweeter because I picked it up on my first-ever visit to the legendary Strand Bookstore in Manhattan, during my first-ever adult visit to NYC in the company of a dear friend, and I'd never heard of this book or author before. My favorite book of the year, and an automatic add to my Top Ten list.
October 1, 2022
Philosophy of the mind has always been one of my favourite realms of philosophy. I love thinking about how we think. About why we think. Consciousness, sentience, intelligence—how did these traits evolve? How do they even work? Patrick House explores Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness (literally what it says on the tin) and tries to address these questions. As he admits in the introduction, he doesn’t have all the answers—none of us do—but he has a lot of fun mulling over some of the theories that are out there. However, I didn’t have as much fun reading this book.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing the eARC!
I’m not going to attempt to summarize the nineteen ways. Some of them are a little out there, a little difficult for me to conceptualize let alone express. Basically, each chapter is a different way of explaining or examining consciousness. In all of these chapters, House relates these ideas back to a single study, published in Nature, in which electric current applied to a teenage girl’s brain during surgery stimulated laughter. He tries to apply elements of the chapter’s theory or lens for viewing consciousness to the study to see what we might learn.
Something I loved from the beginning of this book is House’s enthusiasm for and wonder about consciousness. He states that neuroscience is at a stage right now similar to how physics was, say, four hundred years ago. I thought that was a really interesting and apt analogy. Despite all our scientific progress in the last century or so, we really have so far to go in our understanding of the brain—and I’m not talking about that myth that we only use ten percent of it! If you stop and think about it, as House points out in his introduction, it’s wild that non-living matter (amino acids) can somehow come together to form life, and that in turn, we are somehow conscious and actually give birth to other organisms that develop their own, distinct consciousness.
So in this respect, House does a great job at communicating his appreciation for diverse views on consciousness. Each chapter reads in some ways like a revelation, and I think many readers will appreciate how he unpacks these various ideas and challenges us to think about consciousness differently.
Unfortunately, I think my expectations for the book weren’t aligned with what this book actually is. I was hoping for a book that was grounded a bit more in scientific theories, whereas House gives us a lot of philosophy. While the theories House has chosen to present here are all grounded in some type of scientific research, this book is less about explaining the whys and hows of that research and more about describing the consequent theory in a very poetic way. Like I said, I don’t mind philosophy—it just isn’t what I was expecting here.
I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, because I really do think there is an audience out there for it. This book just wasn’t right for me at this time.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing the eARC!
I’m not going to attempt to summarize the nineteen ways. Some of them are a little out there, a little difficult for me to conceptualize let alone express. Basically, each chapter is a different way of explaining or examining consciousness. In all of these chapters, House relates these ideas back to a single study, published in Nature, in which electric current applied to a teenage girl’s brain during surgery stimulated laughter. He tries to apply elements of the chapter’s theory or lens for viewing consciousness to the study to see what we might learn.
Something I loved from the beginning of this book is House’s enthusiasm for and wonder about consciousness. He states that neuroscience is at a stage right now similar to how physics was, say, four hundred years ago. I thought that was a really interesting and apt analogy. Despite all our scientific progress in the last century or so, we really have so far to go in our understanding of the brain—and I’m not talking about that myth that we only use ten percent of it! If you stop and think about it, as House points out in his introduction, it’s wild that non-living matter (amino acids) can somehow come together to form life, and that in turn, we are somehow conscious and actually give birth to other organisms that develop their own, distinct consciousness.
So in this respect, House does a great job at communicating his appreciation for diverse views on consciousness. Each chapter reads in some ways like a revelation, and I think many readers will appreciate how he unpacks these various ideas and challenges us to think about consciousness differently.
Unfortunately, I think my expectations for the book weren’t aligned with what this book actually is. I was hoping for a book that was grounded a bit more in scientific theories, whereas House gives us a lot of philosophy. While the theories House has chosen to present here are all grounded in some type of scientific research, this book is less about explaining the whys and hows of that research and more about describing the consequent theory in a very poetic way. Like I said, I don’t mind philosophy—it just isn’t what I was expecting here.
I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, because I really do think there is an audience out there for it. This book just wasn’t right for me at this time.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
July 20, 2022
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC to review!
This book caused me a slight existential crisis. But now I’m thinking about existential crises and if they’re just a brain simulation to prepare myself for something in the future. Or maybe it’s a brain simulation to understand the past. I don’t know - and this book is a lovely ode to the not knowing.
Divided into 19 essays, each one tackles a different way to understand why we have consciousness at all. Science still doesn’t know why it exists or how it even works or where it’s even stored. That, followed by the knowledge that science also doesn’t know why we dream, was enough to make me melt into a puddle of self-doubt. But in a good way. In a “it’s okay to admit what you don’t know because the truth is out there and it’s not coming in your lifetime but holy crap isn’t existence amazing” kind of way.
I couldn’t read this book in one sitting. For me, the chapters were concise but dense at times. The endnotes absolutely add to the reading of this book, so don’t skip those as you read the essays.
One thing that slightly bothered me is that most chapters brought up Anna - the person who laughed while her brain was being prodded with an electrical probe during surgery. It felt super repetitive if reading multiple chapters at once. After a few essays, I actually turned to the appendix and read the original paper about Anna just so I could have more context.
This was an amazing read but it didn’t leave me with this “wow” feeling (like I did after reading An Immense World by Ed Yong). But for anyone who loves science books (or just wants to dip their toes in the metaphorical water), this is one you can’t pass up!
This book caused me a slight existential crisis. But now I’m thinking about existential crises and if they’re just a brain simulation to prepare myself for something in the future. Or maybe it’s a brain simulation to understand the past. I don’t know - and this book is a lovely ode to the not knowing.
Divided into 19 essays, each one tackles a different way to understand why we have consciousness at all. Science still doesn’t know why it exists or how it even works or where it’s even stored. That, followed by the knowledge that science also doesn’t know why we dream, was enough to make me melt into a puddle of self-doubt. But in a good way. In a “it’s okay to admit what you don’t know because the truth is out there and it’s not coming in your lifetime but holy crap isn’t existence amazing” kind of way.
I couldn’t read this book in one sitting. For me, the chapters were concise but dense at times. The endnotes absolutely add to the reading of this book, so don’t skip those as you read the essays.
One thing that slightly bothered me is that most chapters brought up Anna - the person who laughed while her brain was being prodded with an electrical probe during surgery. It felt super repetitive if reading multiple chapters at once. After a few essays, I actually turned to the appendix and read the original paper about Anna just so I could have more context.
This was an amazing read but it didn’t leave me with this “wow” feeling (like I did after reading An Immense World by Ed Yong). But for anyone who loves science books (or just wants to dip their toes in the metaphorical water), this is one you can’t pass up!
November 16, 2022
This book isn't at all what I expected.
I love neuroscience, and I've read a lot about how the brain works in regards to thoughts and behaviors. I expected this book to be that sort of thing. It's not.
The author was inspired by a poem written 1200+ years ago that has since been translated nineteen different ways. And so, this book is nineteen different ways of "translating" a one-page scientific paper published in 1998 about a teenage girl's brain surgery. That's the entire focus, from a neuroscience perspective, at least.
These short pieces aren't science at all. They're philosophical, maybe. Explorative, yes. Definitely odd.
One chapter compares consciousness to pinball machines. We spend a whole lot of time learning about the machines, with a comparably tiny amount on consciousness.
And so it goes.
The writing feels pretentious and convoluted to the point of being meaningless. Reading it gave me a headache.
*Thank you (and apologies) to St. Martin's Press for the free copy.*
I love neuroscience, and I've read a lot about how the brain works in regards to thoughts and behaviors. I expected this book to be that sort of thing. It's not.
The author was inspired by a poem written 1200+ years ago that has since been translated nineteen different ways. And so, this book is nineteen different ways of "translating" a one-page scientific paper published in 1998 about a teenage girl's brain surgery. That's the entire focus, from a neuroscience perspective, at least.
These short pieces aren't science at all. They're philosophical, maybe. Explorative, yes. Definitely odd.
One chapter compares consciousness to pinball machines. We spend a whole lot of time learning about the machines, with a comparably tiny amount on consciousness.
And so it goes.
The writing feels pretentious and convoluted to the point of being meaningless. Reading it gave me a headache.
*Thank you (and apologies) to St. Martin's Press for the free copy.*
Read
December 19, 2022I'm sorry, DNF
This is like trying to explain quantum mechanics using interpretive dance.
This is like trying to explain quantum mechanics using interpretive dance.
July 26, 2022
Not many science books are intensely funny. This is one! Patrick's many analogies helped me—someone with basic science background but only a teeny-weeny bit of brain/neuro awareness—to better grasp what we call "consciousness." But mostly, I laughed a lot. My salta piñata thanks him.
July 29, 2022
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness by Patrick House is a new book about what consciousness is.
In this book, House writes 19 essays about consciousness. He discusses how it works and how little we know. Most of these essays have analogies, such as comparing consciousness to a pinball machine.
I found this book interesting. There is a lot of information, and House clearly did a lot of research. There is also a lot of information not connected to consciousness, for example, in the pinball chapter he goes over the entire history of the pinball machine.
Unfortunately, this also got annoying after a while. I think these tangents were long winded at times, and it felt like a significant amount of these essays were about developing the analogy, rather than focusing on the actual subject matter. Also, most of the essays mention a girl called Anna, who laughed during a procedure because a part of her brain got shocked. I understand that this was a breakthrough, an important development, but I wish it was mentioned less and other experiments mentioned more. Lastly, many of the chapters were harder to read. House says that he tried to make this book as understandable as possible, and sometimes he succeeded. But there were many parts that went over my head.
I would recommend this book to people who learn best through analogies, and who have a little knowledge of neuroscience already.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for this ARC on NetGalley.
In this book, House writes 19 essays about consciousness. He discusses how it works and how little we know. Most of these essays have analogies, such as comparing consciousness to a pinball machine.
I found this book interesting. There is a lot of information, and House clearly did a lot of research. There is also a lot of information not connected to consciousness, for example, in the pinball chapter he goes over the entire history of the pinball machine.
Unfortunately, this also got annoying after a while. I think these tangents were long winded at times, and it felt like a significant amount of these essays were about developing the analogy, rather than focusing on the actual subject matter. Also, most of the essays mention a girl called Anna, who laughed during a procedure because a part of her brain got shocked. I understand that this was a breakthrough, an important development, but I wish it was mentioned less and other experiments mentioned more. Lastly, many of the chapters were harder to read. House says that he tried to make this book as understandable as possible, and sometimes he succeeded. But there were many parts that went over my head.
I would recommend this book to people who learn best through analogies, and who have a little knowledge of neuroscience already.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for this ARC on NetGalley.
July 31, 2022
The Median Price of a Thrift-Store Bin of Evolutionary Hacks Russian-Dolled into a Watery, Salty Piñata We Call A Head
If that chapter title alone doesn’t intrigue you, you probably shouldn’t bother with this book. And if you’re looking for a detailed scientific exploration of how the brain works, read Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst instead. But if you’re looking for unusual, thought-provoking, almost poetical musings about what consciousness is, then this is definitely the book for you.
House takes a unique approach to his topic, inspired by a book of translations of a Chinese poem. (Many very different translations, each capturing a different part of the essence of the original.)
He takes one single phenomenon - the ability to make someone laugh by stimulating specific parts of their brain - and then looks at what’s going on in nineteen different ways, presenting different theories of consciousness. The result is not a coherent, homogenous explanation of consciousness. On the contrary, it’s messy, sometimes contradictory, and occasionally confusing. But that’s what makes this book so illuminating. The truth is, we don’t really know how the brain works, how we think, or what consciousness is. We have a lot of ideas which are partially right (to the best of our knowledge, but they will almost certainly be proved wrong at some point), but we don’t actually have any definitive answers.
House makes us think about these different perspectives on consciousness. What’s the difference between human thought and AI? What can human brains teach us about AI, and what can AI teach us about human brains? What’s biological in origin, what’s electrical, and what’s social? What do we mean by self? Or reality, come to that? These are all valid discussions, sometimes covering the same ground, but often offering unique insights into who we are as individuals and as a species.
It's a fairly quick, easy read. It's not too heavy on the science, and it's written with humor. I'd recommend reading a chapter a day, then putting it aside to consider how to assimilate that with everything that's gone before.
I received a free copy from the publisher in return for an honest review.
If that chapter title alone doesn’t intrigue you, you probably shouldn’t bother with this book. And if you’re looking for a detailed scientific exploration of how the brain works, read Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst instead. But if you’re looking for unusual, thought-provoking, almost poetical musings about what consciousness is, then this is definitely the book for you.
House takes a unique approach to his topic, inspired by a book of translations of a Chinese poem. (Many very different translations, each capturing a different part of the essence of the original.)
He takes one single phenomenon - the ability to make someone laugh by stimulating specific parts of their brain - and then looks at what’s going on in nineteen different ways, presenting different theories of consciousness. The result is not a coherent, homogenous explanation of consciousness. On the contrary, it’s messy, sometimes contradictory, and occasionally confusing. But that’s what makes this book so illuminating. The truth is, we don’t really know how the brain works, how we think, or what consciousness is. We have a lot of ideas which are partially right (to the best of our knowledge, but they will almost certainly be proved wrong at some point), but we don’t actually have any definitive answers.
House makes us think about these different perspectives on consciousness. What’s the difference between human thought and AI? What can human brains teach us about AI, and what can AI teach us about human brains? What’s biological in origin, what’s electrical, and what’s social? What do we mean by self? Or reality, come to that? These are all valid discussions, sometimes covering the same ground, but often offering unique insights into who we are as individuals and as a species.
It's a fairly quick, easy read. It's not too heavy on the science, and it's written with humor. I'd recommend reading a chapter a day, then putting it aside to consider how to assimilate that with everything that's gone before.
I received a free copy from the publisher in return for an honest review.
July 26, 2022
I have never understood philosophers who wish to ask, why is there something rather than nothing because surely, the better question is why does it "feel" like anything to be something? Science does not have an answer and has not made any progress on this question. Scientists however, have quite a bit to say on the topic. The book has to keep nineteen balls in the air and it does admirably. The book will be accessible to one who already knows a lot or who wishes to know a lot about the subject. Patrick House has does a wonderful job of making the question of being interesting interesting itself.
April 5, 2023
What an incredibly disappointing read and totally squandered opportunity. Rather than leverage his experience and expertise as a neuroscientist to summarize, compare and contrast 19 different views of consciousness, House attempts (unsuccessfully) to try different narrative techniques to, I don't know, push the boundaries of his writing skills? This is the main issue.... House isn't a very good writer. So rather than experiment with literary devices, why not just stick with what you know?
Immensely frustrating, poorly written, confusing, and repetitive. Adding "I meant for it to be like that" in the introduction seems like an afterthought and frankly, a shoddy excuse for poor writing that it feels the publisher required to include rather than take the correct action, which would be to *not* publish it.
1.5/5. Not as bad as my other 1-star ratings but not as good as my 2-star ratings.
Immensely frustrating, poorly written, confusing, and repetitive. Adding "I meant for it to be like that" in the introduction seems like an afterthought and frankly, a shoddy excuse for poor writing that it feels the publisher required to include rather than take the correct action, which would be to *not* publish it.
1.5/5. Not as bad as my other 1-star ratings but not as good as my 2-star ratings.
August 26, 2022
A fascinating, multi-layered look at the “hard” problem of consciousness, which this reader found totally and absolutely mesmerizing. (My own consciousness working hard to keep up, expanding with the extraordinarily-sweeping insights of this author).
Taking an unusual approach, the author, a neuroscientist, considers one true-to-life scenario - the stimulation of a patients brain during surgery with an electric wand, and the sudden invocation of not only laughter, but the accompanying feeling of joy and mirth.
As our patient, Anna, laughs, the author provides nineteen different views, that in some cases encompass aspects of the “what ” has happened (the “easy” problem in the brain, which has to do with neurons and their sparked electrical charges in brain-specific areas), but also touch on the “why” - which is an infinitely more interesting problem.
What is it, this generated feeling, sense of self, and awareness that we call consciousness, and where does it come from? Does it have a physical substrate in the brain (and if so, where is it located?). If it is not physically rooted, is it but a simulation, or an imagined story told by the brain to aid in the efficient use of its resources? A side effect of a volume of intelligent brain activity or simply the movement of thoughts, generated as the brain predicts and plans enormous configurations of possibilities.
Exhuastively and brilliantly detailed, the author provides a sweeping look at life, beginning with development from single cells to bordered multi-celled organisms, relying on proton-pumps and the magic of bio-chemistry to power individual cells. This development paves the way for all biological development, from cell respiration, to ATP production, to the eventual development of the action potential (electric charge) that allows a single neuron to direct an external muscle cell, or a group of firing neurons to activate an entire preprogrammed sequence of coordinated movements or thoughts in the brain.
In various scenarios, the author explains (metaphorically and beautifully capturing complex scientific phenomena) this orchestration by the brain, which ties together all living creatures, as we are all built of the same stuff - yet only some of which could be called conscious.
A question that, at the end of the day, may actually not be answerable - for can we really determine what consciousness is through the efforts of consciousness itself? (Mathematicians would say not).
(Perhaps most fascinating of all is the foray into microtubules and the mysteries of quantum mechanics - which no-one really understands, and so may form the best foundation of all to eventually “solve” this profoundly-indeterminate puzzle.)
I loved this book - found the questions it raised mind-altering, and the explanations provided wonderful and illuminating food for thought.
A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book.
All thoughts presented are my own.
Taking an unusual approach, the author, a neuroscientist, considers one true-to-life scenario - the stimulation of a patients brain during surgery with an electric wand, and the sudden invocation of not only laughter, but the accompanying feeling of joy and mirth.
As our patient, Anna, laughs, the author provides nineteen different views, that in some cases encompass aspects of the “what ” has happened (the “easy” problem in the brain, which has to do with neurons and their sparked electrical charges in brain-specific areas), but also touch on the “why” - which is an infinitely more interesting problem.
What is it, this generated feeling, sense of self, and awareness that we call consciousness, and where does it come from? Does it have a physical substrate in the brain (and if so, where is it located?). If it is not physically rooted, is it but a simulation, or an imagined story told by the brain to aid in the efficient use of its resources? A side effect of a volume of intelligent brain activity or simply the movement of thoughts, generated as the brain predicts and plans enormous configurations of possibilities.
Exhuastively and brilliantly detailed, the author provides a sweeping look at life, beginning with development from single cells to bordered multi-celled organisms, relying on proton-pumps and the magic of bio-chemistry to power individual cells. This development paves the way for all biological development, from cell respiration, to ATP production, to the eventual development of the action potential (electric charge) that allows a single neuron to direct an external muscle cell, or a group of firing neurons to activate an entire preprogrammed sequence of coordinated movements or thoughts in the brain.
In various scenarios, the author explains (metaphorically and beautifully capturing complex scientific phenomena) this orchestration by the brain, which ties together all living creatures, as we are all built of the same stuff - yet only some of which could be called conscious.
A question that, at the end of the day, may actually not be answerable - for can we really determine what consciousness is through the efforts of consciousness itself? (Mathematicians would say not).
(Perhaps most fascinating of all is the foray into microtubules and the mysteries of quantum mechanics - which no-one really understands, and so may form the best foundation of all to eventually “solve” this profoundly-indeterminate puzzle.)
I loved this book - found the questions it raised mind-altering, and the explanations provided wonderful and illuminating food for thought.
A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book.
All thoughts presented are my own.
February 7, 2024
*** 3.5 stars ***
“Is there a possible explanation for how we get feelings from small electric storms in our heads?" Not yet, maybe one day, but possibly never. In the meantime, reading this book is likely to give you, if not an electrical storm, just some very exhausted neurons. Not only 19 ways of looking at consciousness, but 19 metaphorical leaps a chapter, it seems. Still, I found it a worthwhile addition to my latest reading phase, a non-expert deep-dive into the philosophy of mind and consciousness.
As a start, I like to find out what an author’s response is to the so called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. This is the idea that consciousness is a kind of neuroscientific spanner in the works. The hard problem is hard because nothing in physics, chemistry or biology prepares us for it. For some, the hard problem of consciousness demands a total rethink of how science is conducted (Nagel, Goff). Others think the whole ‘hard problem’ is a massive overreaction, making a mountain out of our own ignorance and that consciousness, like any other scientific puzzle, is ultimately solvable (Churchland).
House acknowledges that we do have a problem: "There is a difference between theories of how a brain works and theories of consciousness. The unsolved problem of consciousness can be categorised into many easy problems and one hard one. The easy problems deal with how the brain works. The hard problem, and there is only one, is the need to explain why it feels like anything at all to be conscious”. And why is this so hard? Because "nothing about any theory of how the brain works tells us definitively how the feeling of subjectivity unfolds from its workings". What if one day we have a complete description of how the brain, as a physical organism, works? Would this explain the feeling consciousness? House remains agnostic. Either it definitely will, or it definitely won’t. For now, however, it remains “the scientific study of a blind spot".
Despite the neurointertwinglement (a real word that I’ve just made up) of ideas and concepts in this book, some key themes emerge. Underpinning everything is this: consciousness – and the brain which supports it – is a product of earth’s three-an-a-half-billion year evolutionary history. This being so, “how can we possibly ever expect the word ‘consciousness’ to contain within it the collapsed variation of billions of years of evolutionary differences?”. Almost everything else will flow from this.
The author’s favourite idea is the connection between consciousness and movement. “A body” writes House, “is restless to get moving; in fact, the entire purpose of the brain is to make efficient movement from experience, and everything else, including consciousness, is downstream of these efforts”. The brain’s only output is muscular, and even thought is a kind of movement without moving, a simulated motor act, like revving a car in neutral: “Any act of thinking is just pretending to act out. Consciousness requires cells that want to move and that know roughly what will happen when they do…” Given the almost limitless number of ways a primate can move, and has to move, in the physical environment, a huge part of the brain’s activity involves predicting, simplifying and coordinating movement, and carefully rationing out the brains limited energy reserves. "This must be the ultimate purpose of consciousness: to control a body".
Many related questions arise from this. For example, “where does a consciousness end and the rest of the world begin? Where is the line between inside and outside?” Or consider this. How far can consciousness extend within a body given that there “is no known physical limit to how much space a single consciousness can inhabit”. If you grew an extra 2 arms, or 20 legs, or 200 toes, your consciousness would extend to fill and control that extra physical real estate. There is nothing to say that a mouse brain could not hold sway over an elephant body.
Another common idea is the role of the brain in heavily editing reality for the sake of surviving it. Thanks to consciousness, we live in a continuous simulation, a virtual reality, enabling us to focus on what matters. And having become expert in just a few aspects of reality, we have even developed life-saving predictive powers in these essentials. There is nothing magical about intuition which is a form of back room consciousness. “Intuition has a maligned reputation as one of the lesser kinds of reasoning but is, in fact, second only to consciousness itself as the mammalian brain’s greatest feat”. This ability to internally “copy” real-life scenarios (via memory and imagination) is what contributes to our sense of self.
Most of the chapters reference the case study of 16 year old Anna. In the mid-1990’s Anna underwent surgery to alleviate the effects of epilepsy. As the brain has no pain receptors she was able to stay awake for the surgery (her head was stabilised and her scalp anaesthetised). During the procedures the surgeons kept asking Anna questions and while doing so, poked her brain 85 times with little electric prods. Wouldn't this get annoying? Well, no. In fact, during one such poke Anna laughed. And when asked to explain why, Anna responded “the horse is funny” (a picture she was viewing) and “you guys are just so funny…standing around”. The puzzle is that it was not just Anna’s laugh muscles responding mindlessly to an artificial impulse. She also reported the conscious sensation of mirth, and even provided a rationale for it. The implications of this connection between the muscular and the mental is explored in almost every chapter. “Movement and thought are braided together throughout all life on Earth” writes House. “When a brain thinks, it is acting on itself. Her brain was not used to actions without plans".
Some chapters recount personal experiences. Chapter 13 (the easiest to read) is a dialogue between himself, Christoff Koch (author of the last book I reviewed) and Jonathon Leung, a neuroscientist who had recently undergone surgery for a brain tumor that he would later die of. In the following chapter the author describes undergoing a panic attack in the presence of 3000 Tibetan monks, confessing to anti-spiritual and anti-Buddhist leanings (he may be a bit less brainy in the next life), and wondering why the mind wanders.
Anyway, here are three final reflections I've plucked from the agitated whirlpool of ideas making up this book.
First, if thought and movement are connected then it’s no wonder that meditation and mindfulness is just a little challenging. Mindfulness is all about stillness and dwelling in the present. But it’s of the very essence of consciousness to be oscillating madly between past and future. “We spend almost half of our waking thoughts reliving memories or planning for the future”. This is not just a by-product of modern life, but of billions of years of learning to move around our environment. We are monkey-mind simply by virtue of being conscious.
Second, there can be no single definition or theory of consciousness. This is because like a teenager’s bedroom, our evolutionary history is unfathomably messy. “There is” writes House “no one such thing as ‘consciousness’ and the attempt to study it as a singular phenomenon will go nowhere".
Finally, I’m left with a strange feeling of helplessness at how utterly dependent our mental and emotional life is on our physical spongeware. There is something almost humiliating about this, as I suppose anyone who has experienced cognitive decline already knows. And as we will all experience one day. So if the human spirit seems special, if it suggests a higher, deeper or yet to be revealed purpose, then the mind's radical dependency on matter keeps us thoroughly down to earth.
“Is there a possible explanation for how we get feelings from small electric storms in our heads?" Not yet, maybe one day, but possibly never. In the meantime, reading this book is likely to give you, if not an electrical storm, just some very exhausted neurons. Not only 19 ways of looking at consciousness, but 19 metaphorical leaps a chapter, it seems. Still, I found it a worthwhile addition to my latest reading phase, a non-expert deep-dive into the philosophy of mind and consciousness.
As a start, I like to find out what an author’s response is to the so called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. This is the idea that consciousness is a kind of neuroscientific spanner in the works. The hard problem is hard because nothing in physics, chemistry or biology prepares us for it. For some, the hard problem of consciousness demands a total rethink of how science is conducted (Nagel, Goff). Others think the whole ‘hard problem’ is a massive overreaction, making a mountain out of our own ignorance and that consciousness, like any other scientific puzzle, is ultimately solvable (Churchland).
House acknowledges that we do have a problem: "There is a difference between theories of how a brain works and theories of consciousness. The unsolved problem of consciousness can be categorised into many easy problems and one hard one. The easy problems deal with how the brain works. The hard problem, and there is only one, is the need to explain why it feels like anything at all to be conscious”. And why is this so hard? Because "nothing about any theory of how the brain works tells us definitively how the feeling of subjectivity unfolds from its workings". What if one day we have a complete description of how the brain, as a physical organism, works? Would this explain the feeling consciousness? House remains agnostic. Either it definitely will, or it definitely won’t. For now, however, it remains “the scientific study of a blind spot".
Despite the neurointertwinglement (a real word that I’ve just made up) of ideas and concepts in this book, some key themes emerge. Underpinning everything is this: consciousness – and the brain which supports it – is a product of earth’s three-an-a-half-billion year evolutionary history. This being so, “how can we possibly ever expect the word ‘consciousness’ to contain within it the collapsed variation of billions of years of evolutionary differences?”. Almost everything else will flow from this.
The author’s favourite idea is the connection between consciousness and movement. “A body” writes House, “is restless to get moving; in fact, the entire purpose of the brain is to make efficient movement from experience, and everything else, including consciousness, is downstream of these efforts”. The brain’s only output is muscular, and even thought is a kind of movement without moving, a simulated motor act, like revving a car in neutral: “Any act of thinking is just pretending to act out. Consciousness requires cells that want to move and that know roughly what will happen when they do…” Given the almost limitless number of ways a primate can move, and has to move, in the physical environment, a huge part of the brain’s activity involves predicting, simplifying and coordinating movement, and carefully rationing out the brains limited energy reserves. "This must be the ultimate purpose of consciousness: to control a body".
Many related questions arise from this. For example, “where does a consciousness end and the rest of the world begin? Where is the line between inside and outside?” Or consider this. How far can consciousness extend within a body given that there “is no known physical limit to how much space a single consciousness can inhabit”. If you grew an extra 2 arms, or 20 legs, or 200 toes, your consciousness would extend to fill and control that extra physical real estate. There is nothing to say that a mouse brain could not hold sway over an elephant body.
Another common idea is the role of the brain in heavily editing reality for the sake of surviving it. Thanks to consciousness, we live in a continuous simulation, a virtual reality, enabling us to focus on what matters. And having become expert in just a few aspects of reality, we have even developed life-saving predictive powers in these essentials. There is nothing magical about intuition which is a form of back room consciousness. “Intuition has a maligned reputation as one of the lesser kinds of reasoning but is, in fact, second only to consciousness itself as the mammalian brain’s greatest feat”. This ability to internally “copy” real-life scenarios (via memory and imagination) is what contributes to our sense of self.
Most of the chapters reference the case study of 16 year old Anna. In the mid-1990’s Anna underwent surgery to alleviate the effects of epilepsy. As the brain has no pain receptors she was able to stay awake for the surgery (her head was stabilised and her scalp anaesthetised). During the procedures the surgeons kept asking Anna questions and while doing so, poked her brain 85 times with little electric prods. Wouldn't this get annoying? Well, no. In fact, during one such poke Anna laughed. And when asked to explain why, Anna responded “the horse is funny” (a picture she was viewing) and “you guys are just so funny…standing around”. The puzzle is that it was not just Anna’s laugh muscles responding mindlessly to an artificial impulse. She also reported the conscious sensation of mirth, and even provided a rationale for it. The implications of this connection between the muscular and the mental is explored in almost every chapter. “Movement and thought are braided together throughout all life on Earth” writes House. “When a brain thinks, it is acting on itself. Her brain was not used to actions without plans".
Some chapters recount personal experiences. Chapter 13 (the easiest to read) is a dialogue between himself, Christoff Koch (author of the last book I reviewed) and Jonathon Leung, a neuroscientist who had recently undergone surgery for a brain tumor that he would later die of. In the following chapter the author describes undergoing a panic attack in the presence of 3000 Tibetan monks, confessing to anti-spiritual and anti-Buddhist leanings (he may be a bit less brainy in the next life), and wondering why the mind wanders.
Anyway, here are three final reflections I've plucked from the agitated whirlpool of ideas making up this book.
First, if thought and movement are connected then it’s no wonder that meditation and mindfulness is just a little challenging. Mindfulness is all about stillness and dwelling in the present. But it’s of the very essence of consciousness to be oscillating madly between past and future. “We spend almost half of our waking thoughts reliving memories or planning for the future”. This is not just a by-product of modern life, but of billions of years of learning to move around our environment. We are monkey-mind simply by virtue of being conscious.
Second, there can be no single definition or theory of consciousness. This is because like a teenager’s bedroom, our evolutionary history is unfathomably messy. “There is” writes House “no one such thing as ‘consciousness’ and the attempt to study it as a singular phenomenon will go nowhere".
Finally, I’m left with a strange feeling of helplessness at how utterly dependent our mental and emotional life is on our physical spongeware. There is something almost humiliating about this, as I suppose anyone who has experienced cognitive decline already knows. And as we will all experience one day. So if the human spirit seems special, if it suggests a higher, deeper or yet to be revealed purpose, then the mind's radical dependency on matter keeps us thoroughly down to earth.
January 19, 2023
This is certainly an original approach to the subject, although that's not necessarily a good thing. House's allusive, elliptical style makes for engaging reading at times. He knows how to spin a story, and his novel formulations of certain problems can be striking. Some of the chapters are brilliant metaphorical explorations of what consciousness means, and all of them are short enough that even the duds scud by briskly.
House shuns the lingo of neuroscience, which both makes the work feel accessible, but also obscures meaning. I was usually able to pick out the theory he was referencing (IIT, panpsychism, Orch OR, etc.) due to prior reading in the field, but I'd be pretty annoyed if this were my first foray into popular neuroscience/consciousness studies. You would come away knowing next to nothing about the state of the science. That's not really his focus, which seems to be enkindling a sense of curiosity about the workings of the mind. But really that purpose could be better served with at least some common guideposts to the field.
My other major complaint is the repetition found in this slender volume. Sure, a case study of inducing laughter in an epileptic teenager (A.K., or "Anna" here) through electrode stimulation of the left superior frontal gyrus is the nucleating element for House's ruminations, so it makes sense that it pops up over and over. But each time it does, it's without any acknowledgment that we've discussed it before. It's like talking to an amnesiac, or reading a book stitched together from a bunch of articles without any editing.... Further, that's not the only culprit. You'll grow especially tired of a bit about dropping a bowling ball and a pigeon from the Tower of Pisa.
It's hard to determine the success of House's project. You can certainly learn more from other volumes by people like Damasio, Koch, Sapolsky, Gazzaniga, et al. I suppose this is more of a literary endeavor, but plenty of the writing is clunky stuff (which House himself even lampshades at one point, and rightly so-- that chapter on huts as metaphors for cells... eesh). I suppose the most charitable metric on which to gauge the book is sensawunda: House is pretty good at making the familiar feel strange, which is the beginning of all philosophy and science. I don't regret reading this one, even though it left me scratching my head a bit. Pick it up only after you've dipped a toe into the waters of popular neuroscience elsewhere.
House shuns the lingo of neuroscience, which both makes the work feel accessible, but also obscures meaning. I was usually able to pick out the theory he was referencing (IIT, panpsychism, Orch OR, etc.) due to prior reading in the field, but I'd be pretty annoyed if this were my first foray into popular neuroscience/consciousness studies. You would come away knowing next to nothing about the state of the science. That's not really his focus, which seems to be enkindling a sense of curiosity about the workings of the mind. But really that purpose could be better served with at least some common guideposts to the field.
My other major complaint is the repetition found in this slender volume. Sure, a case study of inducing laughter in an epileptic teenager (A.K., or "Anna" here) through electrode stimulation of the left superior frontal gyrus is the nucleating element for House's ruminations, so it makes sense that it pops up over and over. But each time it does, it's without any acknowledgment that we've discussed it before. It's like talking to an amnesiac, or reading a book stitched together from a bunch of articles without any editing.... Further, that's not the only culprit. You'll grow especially tired of a bit about dropping a bowling ball and a pigeon from the Tower of Pisa.
It's hard to determine the success of House's project. You can certainly learn more from other volumes by people like Damasio, Koch, Sapolsky, Gazzaniga, et al. I suppose this is more of a literary endeavor, but plenty of the writing is clunky stuff (which House himself even lampshades at one point, and rightly so-- that chapter on huts as metaphors for cells... eesh). I suppose the most charitable metric on which to gauge the book is sensawunda: House is pretty good at making the familiar feel strange, which is the beginning of all philosophy and science. I don't regret reading this one, even though it left me scratching my head a bit. Pick it up only after you've dipped a toe into the waters of popular neuroscience elsewhere.
July 30, 2022
I won this book from St. Martin's Press and enjoyed reading it. The chapters are short but very dense. I read the book twice to try and comprehend the information and the second time I took notes as if I was a student. This book could be used as a textbook in a consciousness course. A key take away for me from the book is that the brain and consciousness may or may not be the same thing. Patrick House is a great story teller and teacher and each chapter is a pleasant surprise. He adds anecdotes from his own life which adds to the richness of the book.
December 14, 2022
The book focuses on exploring consciousness from the scientific, medical, and philosophical lens. I normally don't read non fiction books but, I thought this would be an interesting read. The book started off okay but, then it got a bit confusing and I felt my eyes glaze over. I felt that the book was a bit dense and not concise as mentioned. The book tries too hard to come off as eloquent and poetic. Instead, some of the titles of the chapters seem like a bunch of nonsensical words put together. Ultimately, I gave up half way through the book and decided to read something else.
August 3, 2023
Picked this book up at the library because I liked that it was relatively thin, colorful and about consciousness.
There were times where I felt like I really understood the points being made, but most of the time I was just confused. It's marketed as an intro/jumping off point to theories of consciousness, but I feel like thats highly misleading. It feels more like House's personal collected journal entries on consciousness. You can tell this guy has thought a lot about consciousness and is very well read. It was cool! But definitely would need to be a LOT more organized and abridged if it really was what it promised to be. 19 perspectives was just... too many.
Interesting information, but I doubt I retained much of it due to the organization and scattered nature of the book. There was a lot of neat neuroscience stuff (makes sense due to authors' background) that connected consciousness to the brain. Modeling microtubules was interesting as was the passage about a fellow doctor who had lost 25% of his brain mass in a surgery but had maintained his personality/way of thinking.
I enjoyed the passage about the theory that consciousness evolved with the unique biological structure of humans/our way of acting on the environment.
There was also an interesting chapter on how it is theorized that the first cells evolved from lipid bubbles. (+ how this, in a large way, spawned the reality of a "self" being separated from the environment.) How life (biotic matter) originated from abiotic matter is such an interesting topic to me and I wish I had a more nuanced understanding of it.
My first introduction to the idea of phi being a variable used to measure consciousness was in this book. Looking up more about it leads to papers on the Integrated Informational Theory of Consciousness (IIT) and the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC.) All of this and how it 'connects to cartesian philosophy' are kind of just name dropped in the book. Wish there was more on all of that because I don't really understand what they are and feel like they would have been helpful for understanding the more theoretical chapters of the book.
Wouldn't read again and wouldn't recommend unless you have a good memory + feel well acquainted with existing ideas surrounding consciousness.
neat word:
quale (noun) a property or quality as perceived or experienced by a person.
ex. phenomenology is the study and documentation of qualia, the unique way in which individuals perceive reality. "the problem with pain is that it is what philosophers call a quale: entirely subjective."
There were times where I felt like I really understood the points being made, but most of the time I was just confused. It's marketed as an intro/jumping off point to theories of consciousness, but I feel like thats highly misleading. It feels more like House's personal collected journal entries on consciousness. You can tell this guy has thought a lot about consciousness and is very well read. It was cool! But definitely would need to be a LOT more organized and abridged if it really was what it promised to be. 19 perspectives was just... too many.
Interesting information, but I doubt I retained much of it due to the organization and scattered nature of the book. There was a lot of neat neuroscience stuff (makes sense due to authors' background) that connected consciousness to the brain. Modeling microtubules was interesting as was the passage about a fellow doctor who had lost 25% of his brain mass in a surgery but had maintained his personality/way of thinking.
I enjoyed the passage about the theory that consciousness evolved with the unique biological structure of humans/our way of acting on the environment.
There was also an interesting chapter on how it is theorized that the first cells evolved from lipid bubbles. (+ how this, in a large way, spawned the reality of a "self" being separated from the environment.) How life (biotic matter) originated from abiotic matter is such an interesting topic to me and I wish I had a more nuanced understanding of it.
My first introduction to the idea of phi being a variable used to measure consciousness was in this book. Looking up more about it leads to papers on the Integrated Informational Theory of Consciousness (IIT) and the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC.) All of this and how it 'connects to cartesian philosophy' are kind of just name dropped in the book. Wish there was more on all of that because I don't really understand what they are and feel like they would have been helpful for understanding the more theoretical chapters of the book.
Wouldn't read again and wouldn't recommend unless you have a good memory + feel well acquainted with existing ideas surrounding consciousness.
neat word:
quale (noun) a property or quality as perceived or experienced by a person.
ex. phenomenology is the study and documentation of qualia, the unique way in which individuals perceive reality. "the problem with pain is that it is what philosophers call a quale: entirely subjective."
May 2, 2024
Interesting read....the book tackles the complex topic of consciousness through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses. The book is structured into nineteen distinct perspectives, which makes for a unique approach, offering readers a broad spectrum of theories and insights. However, this structure can also feel disjointed at times, as the transition between chapters lacks a seamless flow, which might leave some readers struggling to find a coherent narrative or overarching conclusion.
While Patrick House provides an engaging read with some chapters that are thoughtfully detailed and scientifically robust, others appear less developed, possibly due to the breadth of topics covered. This inconsistency in depth can be a bit frustrating for those who are looking for a more comprehensive understanding of each viewpoint.
The book shines in its ability to provoke thought and encourage the reader to consider multiple facets of consciousness, a testament to House's broad knowledge. Nevertheless, the lack of depth in some sections and the somewhat fragmented presentation might not satisfy readers seeking a more thorough exploration of the subject. This makes "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness" a mixed bag—stimulating yet occasionally unsatisfying.
While Patrick House provides an engaging read with some chapters that are thoughtfully detailed and scientifically robust, others appear less developed, possibly due to the breadth of topics covered. This inconsistency in depth can be a bit frustrating for those who are looking for a more comprehensive understanding of each viewpoint.
The book shines in its ability to provoke thought and encourage the reader to consider multiple facets of consciousness, a testament to House's broad knowledge. Nevertheless, the lack of depth in some sections and the somewhat fragmented presentation might not satisfy readers seeking a more thorough exploration of the subject. This makes "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness" a mixed bag—stimulating yet occasionally unsatisfying.
December 2, 2023
jeg havde det ganske fint med den her indtil jeg begyndte at google, til tider virkelig opslugt men af andre ting end dem jeg som udgangspunkt var interesseret i. et review sagde at det bare var forskellige filosofiske bud på bevidstheden which i was stoked on, but that was not it at all: det hele drejede sig om hvad vi observerer og ved gennem neurologi. not a bad thing, men ensformigt i sidste ende. there are only so many ways to tell me we dont know enough, så hvis videnskab kun kan give bud kan man jo ligeså godt spørge filosofien, literally the mind on the mind, but nobody did.
also, slog nogle af de vilde konklusioner op (“skizofreni findes ikke i folk der er født blinde”, “under svært epileptiske patienter har man brændt synapserne mellem hjernehalvdele og det forårsager en slags tve-bevidsthed”) which was just wildly reductionist pop science og ikke en konklusion man kan drage med den sikkerhed han gør? hvilken forsker med respekt for sit felt kaster den slags på bordet uden forbehold???
also, slog nogle af de vilde konklusioner op (“skizofreni findes ikke i folk der er født blinde”, “under svært epileptiske patienter har man brændt synapserne mellem hjernehalvdele og det forårsager en slags tve-bevidsthed”) which was just wildly reductionist pop science og ikke en konklusion man kan drage med den sikkerhed han gør? hvilken forsker med respekt for sit felt kaster den slags på bordet uden forbehold???
June 2, 2023
This book had an interesting style as every chapter was based on the same initial story of a girl during brain surgery. It provided 19 different philosophical explanations for why she felt joy when her brain was stimulated with an electrode and why she invented a reason for where this joy came from. I thought that the author did a great job for the most part, but I think that some chapters could have been simplified. It made me think a lot about how to define consciousness and whether or not we even want to. I liked the idea of consciousness being a necessary product of evolution through natural selection. Something that came about because it ended up being beneficial for survival and reproduction.
July 27, 2025
It is an illusion of substance. Nineteen explanations on the evolution of consciousness from a neuroscience perspective. I saw a review where a reader mentioned feeling dissociated while reading, as if she had read a page but hadn't really absorbed it, blaming herself for not being the right reader. But it’s not you. The short book lacks depth and content, although the author's poetic language has obscured this; it’s a false impression of depth—an illusion that might work if you haven't read many books on the topic.
October 8, 2023
This was fascinating. I wouldn't say I understand consciousness now any better than I did before I read this book, but in many ways this book is more about poetry and philosophy than it is about science. It was interesting and thought provoking, but now I want more of the science, without having to learn a lot of neuroscience or reading the scientific papers.
January 22, 2024
It is in written form, yet still comes across like the wild thoughts someone has before they smooth them into something more digestible for others to comprehend. It really felt less like he was worried about conveying ideas to a reader and more like he wanted to sound smart. I retained almost nothing from this book, which is impressive because he repeats so many of the main ideas. This just wasn't for me.
April 21, 2023
Quite informative and very interesting at times. Using the approach of having multiple ways of explaining consciousness was interesting, though at times a few pieces were repetitive as House reused them in subsequent chapters. It wasn't dense, but not exactly zippy either.
August 27, 2024
Very easy read. As someone with a bit of knowledge in the area didn’t learn much but lots of interesting thought experiences. Never understood why our brains/consciousness have never got the same level of attention as space when they’re just as trippy and about is.
April 20, 2024
Love the ideas & inspiration, House would be really interesting to talk to at a party or something. Unfortunately some of the writing in this (particularly whenever a metaphor or tangent comes up) is basically unreadable
December 27, 2022
This book is wild. It’s kind of all over the place, but that’s kind of the point. Love the concept and the content. You do have to read it carefully to pick up the nuance and spend a little time contemplating what you’ve read. I don’t doubt my educational background helped me make it all click, and the writing style is very poetic in a way that can be challenging to parse sometimes. But I kept stopping to look stuff up and get more details and excitedly tell my husband about how MICROTUBULES ARE THE SECRET OF CONSCIOUSNESS (maybe), so if that’s not an endorsement I don’t know what is. Brains, man!! Wild!!!
January 3, 2023
Patrick House gives me an infinite number of ways to think about consciousness as opposed to the 19 that he states.
It is only right that a book that deals with the conscious mind should be so poetic!
It is only right that a book that deals with the conscious mind should be so poetic!
September 14, 2024
An accessible and playful tour of ideas
As the title and page count suggests, this book is a relatively high level tour through a number of ideas about consciousness. The flow is more playful and accessible than I initially expected, and the chapter titles alone are mini memory anchors.
If anything, I found that the prose was focused on flowery/purple language and wordplay at the expense of clearly articulating its ideas. That was pretty rare though - I enjoyed this pretty thoroughly from cover to cover.
And since many of the ideas are deliberately only introduced rather than exhaustively covered, there are extensive footnotes and references for further digging.
As the title and page count suggests, this book is a relatively high level tour through a number of ideas about consciousness. The flow is more playful and accessible than I initially expected, and the chapter titles alone are mini memory anchors.
If anything, I found that the prose was focused on flowery/purple language and wordplay at the expense of clearly articulating its ideas. That was pretty rare though - I enjoyed this pretty thoroughly from cover to cover.
And since many of the ideas are deliberately only introduced rather than exhaustively covered, there are extensive footnotes and references for further digging.
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