The Elephant and the Blind by Thomas Metzinger

 

An engaging and insightful journey into human consciousness.

What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world's first comprehensive account of states of pure consciousness. Drawing on a large psychometric study of meditators in 57 countries, Metzinger focuses on “pure awareness” in meditation—the simplest form of experience there is—to illuminate the most fundamental aspects of how consciousness, the brain, and illusions of self all interact.

Startingwith an exploration of existential ease and ending on Bewusstseinskultur, a culture of consciousness, Metzinger explores the increasingly non-egoic experiences of silence, wakefulness, and clarity, of bodiless body-experience, ego-dissolution, and nondual awareness. From there, he assembles a big picture—the elephant in the parable, from which the book’s title comes—of what it would take to arrive at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience and create a genuine culture of consciousness. Freeing pure awareness from new-age gurus and old religions, The Elephant and the Blind combines personal reports of pure consciousness with incisive analysis to address the whole consciousness community, from neuroscientists to artists, and its accessibility echoes the author’s career-long commitment to widening access to philosophy itself.

Thomas inger
Metzinger in 2022
Born	12 March 1958 (age 66) Frankfurt, West Germany
Education	Goethe University Frankfurt
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
Institutions	University of Giessen University of Osnabruck University of Mainz
Main interests	Philosophy of mind Cognitive science Neurophilosophy Applied ethics
Notable ideas	Phenomenal Self model (PSM)

Thomas Metzinger (born 12 March 1958) is a German philosopher and Professor Emeritus of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. As of 2011, he is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, a co-founder of the German Effective Altruism Foundation, president of the Barbara Wengeler Foundation, and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation and the MIND Foundation . From 2008 to 2009, he served as a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study; from 2014 to 2019, he was a Fellow at the Gutenberg Research College; from 2019 to 2022, he was awarded a Senior-Forschungsprofessur by the Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. From 2018 to 2020, Metzinger worked as a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. In 2022 he was elected into the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Metzinger is a founding member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, where he was a member of the board from 1995 to 2008, and the president from 2009 to 2011.^[1] From 2005 to 2007 he was president of the German Cognitive Science Society. In 2019 he founded the MPE project

Bibliography[edit]

Monographs

• (1985) Neuere Beiträge zur Diskussion des Leib-Seele-Problems. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-8204-8927-4
• (1993) Subjekt und Selbstmodell. Die Perspektivität phänomenalen Bewußtseins vor dem Hintergrund einer naturalistischen Theorie mentaler Repräsentation. mentis, Paderborn, ISBN 3-89785-081-8
• (2003) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts., ISBN 0-262-13417-9 (Hardcover)/ISBN 0262633086 (Paperback)
• (2009) The Ego Tunnel - The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self Basic Books, New York, ISBN 0-465-04567-7
• (2009) Der Ego-Tunnel - Eine neue Philosophie des Selbst: Von der Hirnforschung zur Bewusstseinsethik Berlin Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-8270-0630-9
• (2010) Der Ego Tunnel. Eine neue Philosophie des Selbst: Von der Hirnforschung zur Bewusstseinsethik. Berlin: Berlin Verlag. eBook ISBN 978-3-8270-7037-1
• (2011) Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Kindle edition; ASIN: B004ELBJ56
• (2023) Bewusstseinskultur - Spiritualität, intellektuelle Redlichkeit und die planetare Krise. Berlin, Berlin Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8270-1488-7
• (2023) Der Elefant und die Blinden. Berlin Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-8270-1487-0
• (2024) The Elephant and the Blind. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press ISBN 978-0-2625-4710-9

Editorship

• (1995) Bewußtsein – Beiträge aus der Gegenwartsphilosophie., Paderborn, mentis, Paderborn, ISBN 3-89785-012-5
• (1995) Conscious Experience. Imprint Academic, Thorverton und mentis, Paderborn, ISBN 0-907845-10-X (Hardcover)
• (2000) Neural Correlates of Consciousness – Empirical and Conceptual Questions. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts., ISBN 0-262-13370-9 (Hardcover)
• (2006) Grundkurs Philosophie des Geistes – Band 1: Phänomenales Bewusstsein mentis, Paderborn, ISBN 3-89785-551-8
• (2007) Grundkurs Philosophie des Geistes – Band 2: Das Leib-Seele-Problem mentis, Paderborn, ISBN 3-89785-552-6
• (2010) Grundkurs Philosophie des Geistes – Band 3: Intentionalität und mentale Repräsentation mentis Paderborn, ISBN 978-3-89785-553-3. All three volumes can be purchased for 78 Euros, ISBN 978-3-89785-554-0.
• (2015, with Jennifer M. Windt). Open MIND-collection, Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. ISBN 978-3-95857-102-0.
• (2017, with Wanja Wiese). Philosophy and Predictive Processing-collection, Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. ISBN 978-3-95857-138-9.
• (2020, with Raphaël Millière). Radical Disruptions of Self-Consciousness, Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. ISSN 2699-0369.

External links[edit]

• English Homepage
• Conversation with Karl Friston 2023
• Open Access book 2024: The Elephant and the Blind

References[edit]

1. ^ "About Us". theASSC.org. Retrieved 17 June 2022.