The Brain and Mind discussion

Hey guys, i'm a new member to this group. I'm 17 (Dutch) and i'm really interested in Neuroscience, specifically the nature of consciousness and perception.
I recently bought the book, "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett, is this a good place to start? Or do you guys have any recommendations?

Hey!

I think that is a great place to start, and its a popular read.

If you are interested in neuroscience, perhaps you would want to read about this topic from the perspective of a neuroscientist. The first book I read on this topic was Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. The book is more focused on the Self (as the title suggests) instead of consciousness, which seem to be separate processes and neuroscientists such as Sam Harris would say they share a double disassociation.

I recently discovered work by Anil K Seth. Check out Sam Harris's podcast Waking Up Episode #113 - Consciousness and the Self. He is great at explaining things simply and clearly and is actively doing empirical research in this area.

Other works that you might want to check out:
David Chalmers and Integrated information Theory (IIT)

Thomas Nagel and philosophical zombies

Christof Koch

Thanks for the reply Justin!

I am a great fan and subscriber of Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” podcast. And have listened to that specific episode, (one of the reasons my interest in the field peaked).

Thank you for the reccomendations as well.

I disagree with Sam Harris's determinist position (see my review of his book Free Will here) and also with Daniel Dennett's compatibilist position (see my review of his book Freedom Evolves here). Compare my reviews of William R. (W. R.) Klemm's Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will (London: Elsevier, Academic Imprint, 2016) here and of Klemm's Atoms of Mind: The "Ghost in the Machine" Materializes (n.p.: Springer Science+Business Media, 2011) here. I think that Klemm's perspective on consciousness and free will is more rational and evidence based than the determinist and compatibilist views. I am still, however, continuing my reading on these issues.