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Summary of Christof Koch's The Feeling of Life Itself
Year
2022
Language
ENGLISH
Publication Information
IRB
Summary
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 Consciousness is experience. It is the feeling of life itself. It is the only bit of eternity to which I am entitled. Without experience, I would be a zombie, a nothing to myself. #2 The world is a product of my experiences and inferences about those experiences. I take these inferences completely for granted, and I am so accustomed to them that I don't even consider them to be inferences. #3 The majority of researchers agree that consciousness is experience, but some philosophers, such as the Churchlands, believe that consciousness is an illusion that must be overcome. They believe that if people would only realize that they are confused about the true nature of their experiences, suffering would disappear altogether. #4 The nineteenth-century physicist Ernst Mach was an ardent student of phenomenology, the study of the way the world appears to us. My experience exists for itself, without the need for anything external, such as an observer. Any theory of consciousness will have to reflect this intrinsic reality.