Thomas Metzinger

Thomas Metzinger is a German philosopher. He currently holds the position of director of the theoretical philosophy group at the department of philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.He has been active since the early 1990s in the promotion of consciousness studies as an academic endeavor.In 2003 he published the monograph Being No One. In this book he argues that no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. He argues that the phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model."Metzinger is praised for his grasp of the fundamental issues of neurobiology, consciousness and the relationship of mind and body. However, his views about the self are the subject of considerable controversy and ongoing debates.Excerpted from Wikipedia.

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Despandrihas quoted2 years ago
Yes, it is true that conscious self-models first brought the experience of pleasure and joy into the physical universe—a universe where no such phenomena existed before. But it is also becoming evident that psychological evolution never optimized us for lasting happiness; on the contrary, it placed us on the hedonic treadmill. We are driven to seek pleasure and joy, to avoid pain and depression. The hedonic treadmill is the motor that nature invented to keep the organism running. We can recognize this structure in ourselves, but we will never be able to escape it. We are this structure.
Despandrihas quoted2 years ago
The conscious experience of being a subject arises when a single organism learns to enslave itself.
Despandrihas quoted2 years ago
If you are smart, you may even begin to control their behavior by controlling their conscious states. If you successfully deceive them—if, say, you manage to install a false belief in their minds—then you have activated a virtual organ in another brain.
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