Once we came out of the jungle and found time to think of something
besides food, sex, and shelter, we confronted the fundamental questions:
what are we? Who are we? Is a person a body, a soul? How do we access
the external world if we are nothing but brains encased in bodies?
As neuroscientists map the most detailed aspects of the human brain and
its interplay with the rest of the body, they remain baffled by what is
essentially human: our selves. In most of the existing scientific
literature, information processing has taken the place of the soul. Yet
thus far, no convincing account has been presented of exactly where and
how consciousness is stored in our bodies.
In The Spread Mind, Riccardo Manzotti convincingly argues that our
bodies do not contain subjective experience. Yet consciousness is real,
and, like any other real phenomenon, is physical. Where is it, then?
Manzotti's radical hypothesis is that consciousness is one and the same
as the physical world surrounding us.
Drawing on Einstein's theories of relativity, evidence about dreams and
hallucination, and the geometry of light in perception, and using vivid,
real-world examples to illustrate his ideas, Manzotti argues that
consciousness is not a ''movie in the head.'' Experience is not in our
head: it is the actual world we move in.
