Tag: Thomas Metzinger

Conscious of Consciousness

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Let us begin with the heresy: consciousness is not a thing. It is not a light bulb switched on in the mind. It is not a theatre with a little homunculus watching the play unfold. It is not a ghost in the machine, nor even a particularly welcome tenant. Consciousness is a conjuring trick – one so convincing that even the conjurer forgets it is an act.

Video: Related Topic: IAI Joscha Bosch on Consiousness

If that unsettles you, good. Welcome to the simulacrum.

The Wetness of Mind

We often hear that consciousness is “emergent,” but the term is used so promiscuously that it risks becoming decorative. So let us be specific. Consciousness, if it is emergent, is emergent as wetness is from H2O: not in the hydrogen or the oxygen, but in their relationship when bonded just so. Joscha Bach and others argue that consciousness arises not from the bits, but from the dance – the recursive feedback loops and predictive models running atop the neural substrate.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

In this view, the self is not the pilot but the dashboard. It is the user interface the brain conjures to coordinate action, interpret input, and maintain internal coherence. Not because it’s real, but because it’s useful. You are a GUI with delusions of grandeur.

The Cast of Theorists

Let us now parade the usual suspects:

  • Joscha Bach: Consciousness is a virtual self-model, emergent from recursive, computational feedback. Not the product of neurons firing per se, but of their ability to simulate a stable identity across time.
  • Thomas Metzinger: There is no self. Only a Phenomenal Self-Model (PSM) which becomes phenomenally transparent when the system no longer recognises it as a model. Consciousness is the experience of this hallucinated self.
  • Daniel Dennett: Dismantles the notion of a “central experiencer” with his Multiple Drafts Model. Consciousness is a narrative, a distributed process where drafts of experience compete, are edited, and retroactively interpreted.
  • David Chalmers: Waves his flag at the Hard Problem of consciousness. You can explain behaviour, memory, attention—but not experience itself. He flirts with dualism and panpsychism while insisting there’s a gap science cannot yet close.
  • Giulio Tononi: Gives us Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and the elusive metric Φ (phi). Consciousness is the degree to which information is unified within a system. Your brain is conscious because its parts can’t be reduced without losing coherence.
  • Karl Friston: The prophet of Free Energy Minimisation. Consciousness is an emergent property of systems that seek to reduce prediction error. The brain is a Bayesian engine, and the self is its best guess about how to survive.

So What Is Consciousness?

A hallucination. A recursive illusion. A predictive dashboard. A statistical artefact. A phi score. A phenomenally transparent model. Take your pick.

None of these theories fully agree, but most converge on one elegant horror: you are not what you think you are. The sense of being a continuous, stable, indivisible “I” is a construction. A simulation. The dream from which there is no waking because waking is part of the dream.

This is not despair; it is clarity. Just as wetness does not cry when told it is not a substance, the self need not mourn its own illusion. It is a marvellous fiction, worth inhabiting.

Conclusion: Through the Mirror

To be conscious of consciousness is to stand in the hall of mirrors and realise none reflect the original—because there is no original. The mirror is the thing.

But if the theatre is empty, the play goes on. Scripts are written, models simulated, selves performed. And perhaps, in this strange recursion, we find not meaning, but the possibility of coherence.

So raise a glass to the illusion. May your predictive model stay optimised, your narrative stay plausible, and your hallucinated self remain just this side of transparent.

For further hallucinatory episodes, consult your local philosopher, neuroscientist, or AI researcher. Side effects may include derealisation, epistemic vertigo, and mild enlightenment.

Identity as Fiction: You Do Not Exist

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Identity is a fiction; it doesn’t exist. It’s a contrivance, a makeshift construct, a label slapped on to an entity with some blurry amalgam of shared experiences. But this isn’t just street wisdom; some of history’s sharpest minds have said as much.

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Think about Hume, who saw identity as nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, devoid of any central core. Or Nietzsche, who embraced the chaos and contradictions within us, rejecting any fixed notion of self.

Edmund Dantes chose to become the Count of Monte Cristo, but what choice do we have? We all have control over our performative identities, a concept that Judith Butler would argue isn’t limited to gender but applies to the very essence of who we are.

“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”

— Michel Foucault

But here’s the kicker, identities are a paradox. Just ask Michel Foucault, who’d say our sense of self is shaped not by who we are but by power, society, and external forces.

You think you know who you are? Well, Erik Erikson might say your identity’s still evolving, shifting through different stages of life. And what’s “normal” anyway? Try to define it, and you’ll end up chasing shadows, much like Derrida’s deconstruction of stable identities.

“No such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self.”

— Thomas Metzinger

“He seemed like a nice man,” how many times have we heard that line after someone’s accused of a crime? It’s a mystery, but Thomas Metzinger might tell you that the self is just an illusion, a by-product of the brain.

Nations, they’re the same mess. Like Heraclitus’s ever-changing river, a nation is never the same thing twice. So what the hell is a nation, anyway? What are you defending as a nationalist? It’s a riddle that echoes through history, resonating with the philosophical challenges to identity itself.

“I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”

— David Hume

If identity and nations are just made-up stories, what’s all the fuss about? Why do people get so worked up, even ready to die, for these fictions? Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s pride, or maybe it’s because, as Kierkegaard warned, rationality itself can seem mad in a world gone astray.

In a world where everything’s shifting and nothing’s set in stone, these fictions offer some solid ground. But next time you’re ready to go to the mat for your identity or your nation, take a minute and ask yourself: what the hell am I really fighting for? What am I clinging to?