Consciousness Reconnected

What is Consciousness? The idea that it is just a property of a collection of chemicals seems to leave so much out. In Consciousness Reconnected: Missing Links Between Self, Neuroscience, Psychology and the Arts Derek Steinberg explores how taking input from differing areas of knowledge might contribute to the answer.

Thinking of consciousness in terms of a little man watching a movie leads nowhere. Steinberg suggests that a much better idea is to take the whole production process for the movie - scenery, cameramen and so on - as a model of the complexity of consciousness. He looks at ideas such as attachment theory, seeing how we can understand consciousness in terms of the society we are immersed in. He also discusses how our intuitions and beliefs might have evolved. Steinberg's breadth of knowledge is impressive, but as I read the book I began to feel that he was too much affected by postmodernist ways of thought, and that this breadth of knowledge doesn't necessarily impart useful information to the reader. I found that his ideas didn't really come together into a well thought out viewpoint. So whilst you might come across some novel ideas in this book , I don't think that it contributes very much to resolving the 'hard question' of consciousness.