The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

A "groundbreaking" (Booklist) investigation of the mind and consciousness that asks whether the self even exists

In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher and cognitive scientist Thomas Metzinger argues that neuroscience’s picture of the “self” as an emergent phenomenon of our biology―and the attendant fact that the self can be manipulated and even experimentally controlled―raises novel and serious ethical questions. If, as Metzinger contends, our conception of the self is a sort of tunnel-vision-like experience of the world, with little left in and much left out, can there be better or worse states of consciousness? And if so, what should we do to try to achieve them?

In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as the science of evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a step toward a morally sensitive philosophy of the mind.
 

Thomas Metzinger was director of the Theoretical Philosophy Group at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. From 2018 to 2020 Metzinger worked as a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. In 2021 he was awarded the Pufendorf Medal, and in 2022 he was elected to the German National Academy of Science. He has written and edited several books, among them Bewusstseinskultur, The Elephant and the Blind, Being No One, Conscious Experience, and Neural Correlates of Consciousness. He lives in Germany.