Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction by Véronique Mottier | Goodreads

Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction by Véronique Mottier | Goodreads




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Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction
(Very Short Introductions #187)
by
Véronique Mottier
3.6 · Rating details · 287 Ratings · 32 Reviews
Is our sexuality determined primarily by our genes? Or is it shaped by the social norms and expectations we happen to be born into. This Very Short Introduction provides an accessible, thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction to major debates around sexuality in the modern world, highlighting the social and political aspects of sexuality. It critically explores different ways of defining and thinking about sexuality and shows that many of our assumptions about what is "natural" in the sexual domain have, in reality, varied greatly in different historical or cultural contexts. The volume also examines ways in which governments have tried to regulate citizens' sexualities in the past-through policies and laws concerning public health, HIV/Aids, prostitution, and sex education-paying special attention to the particular zeal with which women's sexuality has been policed. The volume concludes by discussing political activism around sexuality more widely, focusing on the ways in which feminists, lesbians and gay men, as well as religious fundamentalists have transformed our ways of thinking about sexuality in the past few decades.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
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Paperback, 151 pages
Published June 1st 2008 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published April 24th 2008)
Original Title
Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
ISBN
0199298025 (ISBN13: 9780199298020)
Edition Language
English
Series
Very Short Introductions #187


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Jul 08, 2017Amir The Fat Bookworm rated it it was amazing
A fascinating book! A- for its coverage of different aspects of sexuality! It managed to do a good job, covering History as well as theory and sociology of sexuality. Though it lacked any chapter on the biology of sexuality, the book retaliated with fascinating details on science history of the matter.
I rather enjoyed this book. And what more, is, how astonishingly neutral the author managed to be while explaining the endless controversies across time!
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Nov 09, 2012Bettie☯ rated it really liked it
Shelves: published-2008, autumn-2012, essays, nonfiction


GASP All those categories - who knew!

~4.6 hours

Fab series this, just right for a quick refresh or a peek into a subject that one is curious about. All are unbiased, erudite and entirely objective essays.

3* Ancient Egypt
3* Paul
4* Witchcraft
3* The Book of Mormon
4* Druids
4* Forensic Psychology
3* Forensic Science
4* Sexuality
flag6 likes · Like · 4 comments · see review



Aug 13, 2016Thuydung rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: owned, introduction
Mình từng thấy (nhưng chưa đọc) các sách liên quan đến nữ quyền được dịch và in nhiều hơn trong những năm gần đây, tuy nhiên cuốn Dẫn luận về tính dục (dù có một phần lớn bàn về nữ quyền) lại hứa hẹn thảo luận đa dạng vấn đề hơn xoay quanh khái niệm “tính dục”, nên cũng có thể xem là một tài liệu khoa học hiếm hoi và cởi mở. Về độ hiếm và độ mở đó thì mình thích nó.

Với tiêu đề Sexuality, tưởng tượng ban đầu của mình là cuốn sách sẽ lấy trọng tâm đề tài LGBT (dù khi đọc thì té ngửa ra là còn bao nhiêu thứ khác được đề cập). Theo đó, mình bắt đầu đọc vì lẽ: cộng đồng LGBT không phải là bí hiểm quá hay sao? Ngay cả khi các phong trào LGBT nổi lên rần rần trên các phương tiện truyền thông, mình vẫn thấy nó xa lạ như chuyện nhà người ta. Nhất là thuật ngữ. Đi kèm theo các phong trào LGBT là hàng loạt thuật ngữ không biết áp dụng ra sao. Khi mình nghĩ là mình có thể hiểu hiểu gay, les, bi một chút, thì chúng ta lại chèn thêm khái niệm trans khiến cho đầu óc chậm lụt của mình rối tung lên. Lấy ví dụ manga Hourou Musuko, bạn trai A muốn-làm-con-gái mê bạn gái B muốn-làm-con-trai, thì tụi nó đang nghĩ cái gì trong đầu vậy, và mình phải nhìn nhận “nhân dạng” của tụi nó ra sao? Diễn biến trong đầu nhân vật thì mình không tìm được lời giải, nhưng cuốn sách cũng an ủi cho mình rằng hầu như khái niệm và phong trào nào cũng có thể lôi kéo các chuyên gia lao vào tranh cãi chí chóe như thường. Có thể nói, mục tiêu của cuốn sách là trình bày, gợi mở nhiều hướng nghĩ khác nhau, thay vì dừng lại ở một kết luận nào đó.

Trong tài liệu dẫn luận này, mỗi vấn đề nêu ra đều được tác giả đặt vào các góc độ nhất định như sinh học, tôn giáo, đạo đức, chính trị, xã hội và kèm theo các trích dẫn hoặc tóm ý từ các tác phẩm nghiên cứu liên quan. Tính khoa học và cô đọng dĩ nhiên góp phần làm tăng tính gây-nhức-đầu cho các độc giả lười suy nghĩ như mình! Và thiệt tình phải tới nửa cuốn là mình ráng đọc cho hết chớ cũng chẳng hứng thú bao nhiêu! Lại nói, vì là “a very short introduction” nên cuốn sách tranh thủ đề cập thật nhanh các vấn đề, trọng “rộng” hơn “sâu”, người đọc cũng không việc gì phải tiêu hóa hết, cứ thấy nội dung nào quan tâm thì dựa vào các tài liệu tham khảo của sách mà tìm hiểu thêm.

Với mục tiêu giới thiệu như vậy, sách soi được vài tia sáng vào vốn hiểu biết tối tăm tù mù của mình. Chẳng hạn chương đầu kể chuyện tình dục đồng giới diễn ra vô tư ở Hy Lạp cổ đại, vì “điều quan trọng là ai xâm nhập ai”, chớ về mặt đạo đức thì chả có gì đáng nói. (Và một lưu ý là trong khâu tóm tắt lịch sử thì sách thiên về tình hình phương Tây; mãi các phần sau thì phương Đông mới lâu lâu ló vô điểm mặt được.) Vui nhất là các vụ cãi lộn giữa phe này với phe kia. Ngay cả trong nội bộ các nhà hoạt động xã hội cũng không thống nhất với nhau. Rồi thì có vụ mấy nhóm nữ quyền tách bộ phận người đồng tính nữ ra; hay mấy nhóm đồng tính tách bộ phận người ấu dâm ra, chung quy cũng để tiện đấu tranh trước xã hội nhiều kỳ thị và bất đồng quan điểm.

Cuốn sách có hình thức rất đẹp, nhất là khi đặt trong bộ sách Dẫn luận về con người. Nhưng ắt hẳn điều được quan tâm nhất ở đây là tính học thuật có được đảm bảo không. Sách do Oxford đầu tư nên cũng an tâm một chút đi, nhưng còn phần dịch thuật thì sao? Là một bạn đọc chân ướt chân ráo, dĩ nhiên mình không nhận xét nổi! Chỉ có điểm khó chịu nhất mà mình thấy lặp đi lặp lại là sách dùng từ “bệnh Aids” một cách rất có hệ thống từ đầu đến cuối, nhưng đúng ra nên viết hoa toàn bộ “AIDS”, nếu không sẽ sai nghĩa. Ngoài ra thì mình chỉ có ý kiến ở một số từ dịch được sách mở ngoặc ghi kèm từ gốc tiếng Anh:

(1) Transsexual dịch là “xuyên giới tính” thì được rồi, nhưng mình tự hỏi dịch transgender là “lạc giới tính” thì có hơi bị ngộ hay không.

(2) Câu khẩu hiệu “I hate straights” được mở ngoặc ghi là “tôi ghét những người bình thường”. Cái này khiến mình suy ra cụm “người bình thường” xuất hiện ở những chỗ khác chắc cũng dịch từ chữ “straights” mà ra. Dịch không sai, nhưng khi đặt vào văn bản khoa học thì nó đang áp đặt một quan điểm riêng, trong khi phần lớn sách đang trình bày rằng xu hướng tính dục nào cũng bình thường như nhau.

(3) Từ queer được dịch gọn là “người đồng tính”, và thế là chúng ta có được một câu khá tối nghĩa như: “[Đ]ằng sau đồng tính nam, đằng sau đồng tính nữ, đằng sau tính dục khác giới (có lẽ vậy?) chúng ta là người đồng tính (queer).”

…

Mình hơi siêng soi đột xuất, nhưng tại với sách khoa học dịch (lại nhằm lĩnh vực mới (và công ty lạ)) thì theo mình lúc nào cũng nên vừa đọc vừa nghi ngờ một chút. (less)
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Jul 05, 2011Chelsea Szendi rated it liked it
Shelves: gender, theory, sexuality
Clear, concise writing... which is what we all love about the "Very Short Introduction" series. It also pointed me in some useful directions, especially about eugenics and the left.

However.

Although I found the section on sexual practices in Ancient Greece (and it gets a little conflated with Rome) interesting, as a scholar of Japan, I have a eye-roll reflex to the instant link between a very specific ancient world and the very general concept of "antiquity." The link can (and ought to be) argued, but it should not be assumed. The section "Sex in the Ancient World" leads one to believe that the "Ancient World" was only Ancient Greece. Sigh. And then there is an image (ignored by the text) on page 71 of "Japanese sex toys, 1830," embedded in the section on Second Wave feminist sex wars. Even a brief mention of other antiquities (and the issue of modernity / Westernization / sexology in non-Western contexts) would have made this much much more comprehensive. (less)
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Nov 11, 2015Sujan rated it really liked it
Shelves: very-short-introductions
A fascinating read regarding the socio-political history of sexuality. The only limitation the book has is that it does not at all speak about the heterosexual man and his evolution as a sexual being. The book is more about women sexuality and its evolution through the history with a handful of mentionable discussions on sexual minorities.
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Jun 30, 2013Lucinda Davison rated it really liked it
The title says it all. It is a very short introduction of topics of sexuality. It is nevertheless a great starting point.
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May 23, 2011Bojan Tunguz rated it it was ok
The fascination, some would argue the obsession, with sex and gender has come to be (together with race and class) one of the cornerstones of modern humanistic scholarship. The view of sexuality that has come to dominate the modern academic discourse is largely based on the idea of sexuality as a particular cultural construct, much like a religious ritual or a political system. In that regard the study of sexuality is reduced to the study of ideas about sexuality, mostly through the prism of literary and philosophical writings throughout the history. Of course, this line of inquiry is highly restricted: it places premium on societies and cultures that left behind a lot of textual evidence, which probably skews the impression about what sexual norms were like throughout history. This book plays wholeheartedly into that narrative about sexuality. It subscribes wholeheartedly into the whole view of history of sexuality as mostly care-free, except for that long backward interlude of oppressive Christian attitudes. This becomes particularly glaring when in attempt to prove its points it sacrifices historical continuity and jumps back and forth through writings of Augustine, Calvin, Luther and Origen without necessarily pointing out that they were separated by more than a thousand years.

Most of the philosophical outlook of this book can be traced to Michel Faoucolt and his "History of Sexuality." Having one particular ideological outlook feature so prominently hardly makes this into a book with a broad outlook or utility.

The book repeats and reemphasizes the supposed distinction between "sex" and "gender." This is really a distinction without difference. Nowadays it only has much currency in academic circles, and predominantly in humanities.

The biological basis of sexuality receives the worst treatment, its main points barely being mentioned in a single sentence. On the other hand the criticism of the biological model receives many subsequent paragraphs. This is patently absurd: sex is the biological process par excellence, and to neglect the biological basis of sex is like neglecting the physical basis of gravity. Yes, you can still talk a lot about how people have conceptualized it over the millennia, but this would not do justice to the subject.

Most of the book is focused on the politics of sexuality from the middle of the nineteenth century until the present. Some of the most arcane and idiosyncratic political theories are described and discussed, oftentimes in terms of academic jargon straight out of a graduate seminar in humanities. The book is as exciting to read as watching an old lady clip her toenails. I can't imagine that a book on the most fun topic imaginable can be as dry and boring. If you are into the whole postmodern-deconstruction-critiques-analysis stuff, this might be the book for you. Otherwise, save a few books and instead of buying this book and go out with a group of friends to a bar and trade stories. You'll certainly learn more about sex that way.

One good thing about this book is the quality of writing. Material for the most part is presented in a clear and readable way, at the high level that one has come to expect from similar books in the "very short introduction" series. (less)
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May 19, 2011Anna rated it liked it
Shelves: she-bop
I never inflicted gender-studies on myself, so this was a nice cheat sheet.

Wasn't expecting to be so surprised by the eugenics data - the Swedes were well into it. Excuse me? 63,000 eugenics-based sterilisations between 1934 and 1976 in Sweden? Right then. The Swiss program 'Kinder der Landstrasse' which sought to eradicate Yenish culture through child removal was chilling too - sex and social engineering makes for ugly history.

This little book set me thinking all sorts of inappropriate things about population control. For example, how populous would the planet be without the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918? Taboo thoughts. I'll stop typing and go and listen to Randy Newman's "That's Why I Love Mankind" and slap myself round a bit. I seem to be afflicted with some Gnostic phelgm. (less)
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May 12, 2018Soroosh Akef rated it really liked it
Shelves: academic
While the title "Sexuality: A Very Short History" would have been more appropriate, this book does a decent job of covering the various perspectives on sexuality through history and the various movements that have played a role in bringing us to where we are today.

The author begins with ancient Greece (as usual) and the sexual norms prevalent in the ancient Greek society. In the later chapters, we are introduced to Feminists' attitudes toward sexuality (including some very radical views). The author doesn't shy away from discussing controversial ideologies that may shock the 2018 reader.

As one might expect from an academic introductory book, the author manages to paint a fair and balanced picture of the various schools of thought without explicitly taking any sides.

All in all, this book not only taught me about how individuals and activists have perceived sexuality, but brought into focus the uglier side of the 20th-century West for me. (less)
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Feb 15, 2017Joseph Sverker rated it it was amazing
Shelves: gender-and-queer-stuff, critical-culture-political-social-t, phd-related, very-short-introductions
Absolutely brilliant introduction to sexuality. This term has so many usages that in contemporary theories that it has been difficult to know at all what it might mean, but Matter does a great job in explaining and illustrating this meaning and how sexuality has developed to be one of the central terms by which we (Western) identify ourselves. She relies much on Foucault at times, but also makes interesting hints at critiques of the current views on sexuality. Mottier does not shy away from the more uncomfortable sides of the sexual revolution and rights movements either. Well worth reading and I am sure that I will have much use of it. (less)
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May 03, 2015NancyHelen rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
What a fascinating look at sexuality throughout history! I was particularly interested in the section about Eugenics, especially the fact that the people who first came up with it were completely unaware of just how inhumane the idea was. Although the author did make the comment that although they believed they were practicing science, in fact it was mostly based on prejudice. The feminist perspective was also interesting - something I had touched on in my Art History MA. Overall, this is a really succinct and interesting read with plenty of suggestions for further reading. (less)
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Jul 28, 2011Phillip rated it really liked it
Shelves: theory-philosophy-and-non-fiction
Like all of the Very Short Introductions, this is a quick and dirty summary, but as summaries go I thought it was very comprehensive. The focus is primarily how gender and sexuality have been created and regulated, in the ancient world and then in the modern. Parts of the sumary show a clear feminist bias (neither surprising nor inappropriate for the subject matter), while the book is very Foucauldian overall, meaning that the author is primarily interested in how the discourse surrounding sexuality and gender has been a tool for creating, changing, and/or resisting power structures.(less)
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Dec 29, 2010David rated it liked it
Interesting information from Greco Roman times, the Catholic church's influence, and the 1700's through today regarding the biological, political and sociological shaping of sexuality. I got a lot of new perspectives and great information from this book, as a history book does. However I found the book hard to read. Part of its problem is that it is only 160 pages, and hence all the reader gets is a 30,000 foot view of the subject.
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Jul 18, 2016Amy rated it really liked it
Shelves: books-i-own
Fantastic guide through the ever developing realm of sexuality with plenty of suggestions for further reading, which I plan to pursue. Unbiased straight forward evaluations of events and their effects that please the scientist within me. Great pace and style kept my interest throughout the whole book. I have already recommended to a couple friends/family and definitely extend that recommendation to anyone even remotely interested in the intricacies of sex and gender.
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Sep 18, 2012C30net rated it liked it
یکی از بدیهای فیلترینگ و سرعت کم اینه که آدم باس بیاد فله ای اینجا و بره
اون یکی کتاب فلسفه واربرتون هنوز نیمه کاره مونده
این یکی هم کتاب صوتیش بود هم پی دی اف: سکسی طور هم بود که دیگه هیچ
کتاب خوب و راحتیه، به نظرم انتظار خواننده رو کاملن برطرف میکنه
اما دلیل اینکه نمره ی 3 دادیم از 5 به خاطر اینکه کسی از آینده خبر نداره
شاید کتاب خیلی خوبی خوندیم یه روز آینده اگه زنده بودیم
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May 14, 2014Stephen Cranney rated it it was ok
Shelves: sociology-class
Short and accessible. However, like a lot of histories of sex it's exclusively about the attitudes of the fraction of the population (disproportionately white, educated, etc.) that actually stays up on all the different -isms. Also repeats a lot of the standard myths about 18th, 19th, and early 20th century sexual attitudes. Gives very standard, unilateral direction-of-history fare.
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May 23, 2011M Pereira rated it it was amazing
Shelves: sexuality, psychoanalysis, sexual-politics, identity-politics, very-short-introduction, queer-politics, lgbt
This is a great book. Due to brevity it cannot go into too much detail, but it is a map of the history of gender politics from the ancients to the 1990s. There is a fascinating observation about how impossible coalitions can be on some issues where gender and sexuality meet. Such as how gay (men) groups do not get involved with abortion rights.
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Mar 17, 2016Tiffany rated it liked it
Accessible, full of historical context about the idea of sexuality, covers a broad perspective of multiple concepts of sexuality and where sexuality is socially headed. This book has piqued my interest in the subject matter and prompts me to dice further into many of the various topics discussed- for example, the connection between social - democratic European societies and eugenics.
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Oct 12, 2014Blake rated it liked it
Shelves: science-philosophy
The loose, fluxive chronologies, the early gold nostalgia and late awakened grey, and the light swirl of Greek contrasting with the Modern opaque, all converge nicely in this little introduction to couple some written insights with its typed facts.
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Oct 25, 2015C. Michael rated it really liked it
Did you every want to know where feminist criticism went when it veered off the rails. Well, here it is. No matter what any one dreams, sex is binary with a miscible surface where each diptych touches.
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Jul 06, 2014Luke rated it really liked it
This edition provides a really informative introduction to discourses on sexuality and gender. It also makes particular reference to feminist responses to the male-centric, heavily binary reality of western attitudes to sex.
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Sep 26, 2015Sash Chiesa rated it really liked it
Concise as its supposed to be, Mottier's book is a great starting point for an amateur like me. I got some fascinating info and different standpoints from where I can view sexuality.
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Jun 14, 2017Rebecca added it
Shelves: psychology-and-counselling
A must read for Denim Queens and non Denim Queens alike.
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Apr 13, 2015Jaquelyn LaCroix rated it really liked it
Very informative, good, easy read. Hard to put down. Explores sexuality in numerous views throughout different time frames.
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Mar 29, 2011Peter rated it really liked it
Shelves: a-very-short-introduction, audiobook
Nice historic overview of sexuality in the various aspects of human culture, religion and politics.
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Apr 30, 2015Elijah rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Great Read

This book was a great intro to human sexuality. Furthermore, the book provides you with a list of additional resources.
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Oct 22, 2017Linda rated it really liked it
Even if book is about sexuality, hoping for sexy content would be a mistake. There was nothing sexy about history of eugenetics. If anything this book reminded me that people are products of their time and ideas of right change rather rapidly nowadays.
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Apr 04, 2018dogman rated it it was amazing
a must read with tons of useful data. the only trouble is that Chapter 4 is somewhat poorly structured and named - the rest is perfect. pomosexuality is a great concept
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Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore | Goodreads

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore | Goodreads




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Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction
(Very Short Introductions #121)
by
Susan Blackmore
3.83 · Rating details · 1,383 Ratings · 161 Reviews
"The last great mystery for science," consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introductionchallenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments and clearly describes the major theories, with illustrations and lively cartoons to help explain the experiments. Topics include vision and attention, theories of self, experiments on action and awareness, altered states of consciousness, and the effects of brain damage and drugs. This lively, engaging, and authoritative book provides a clear overview of the subject that combines the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience--and serves as a much-needed launch pad for further exploration of this complicated and unsolved issue.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam. (less)

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Paperback, 146 pages
Published 2005 by Oxford University Press (first published 2003)
Original Title
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
ISBN
0192805851 (ISBN13: 9780192805850)
Series
Very Short Introductions #121



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May 16, 2015Nandakishore Varma rated it really liked it
The Self is illusion – so says the Buddha; and Susan Blackmore agrees, albeit with more scientific evidence as backup.

***

The Hard Problem

We are sure that there is a world outside, filled with inanimate and live things. However, we can experience this world only through our senses: the colours, the smells and the feels. They are all we have, to form our idea about our environment. However, they are dependent upon the experiences of our brain, therefore by nature subjective - and when we come to abstract concepts like pleasure and pain, they have no existence other than in the mind.

"Mind" - the fateful word! What is it? Even if we are not read up on philosophy, we assume that it exists independently of our physical body. That is, most of us subscribe to some sort of dualism. All the world's religions, other than Buddhism, posit an indestructible "soul" (although there is a difference between the Hindu Atman and the Levantine soul, a point which I shall touch upon later).

The best-known dualist theory about the mind is the one proposed by Rene Descartes, the famous Seventeenth Century French philosopher. According to Descartes, the mind is non-physical and resides in the pineal gland in the centre of the brain. However, the problem of the interaction of the non-physical mind with the physical brain is not so easily solved, therefore most scientists and philosophers prefer a monistic explanation – either the mind being fundamental, or the body. Modern science takes the materialistic view that the mind arises from mental processes.

But this does not solve the problem of how a physical brain, made purely of material substances, can give rise to conscious experiences which scientists call the ‘qualia’, the indescribable experiences. This is traditionally called the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, a term coined by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers 1n 1994.

***

What does being conscious mean? For example, is my computer which takes inputs from me, interacts with me, and provides output in some way conscious? Most of us would instinctively say no: we are conditioned to think only biologically “live” entities as conscious. But then, is a tree conscious? It is born, lives and dies: reaches towards light, and uses its roots to feed itself. Again, most of us would say no – it has no brain. But then, is a bat, which has a brain, conscious in the same way that I am conscious?

“What is it like to be a bat?” – This question was made famous by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel 1n 1974. He said that if there is something it is like to be the bat, that is, if the bat is self-aware of being itself, then it is conscious: otherwise it is not. Nagel was using this argument to challenge materialism: since consciousness is subjective, we can never know objectively what it is. What we are talking about here is phenomenal consciousness, which is where self-awareness comes from – which is to be differentiated from access consciousness, which we use for thinking, acting and speaking.

So here is the million-dollar question: is consciousness an add-on to the physical brain, something which arises out of neural activity yet independent of it (the ‘ghost in the machine’)? Or is it intrinsic to complex brain processes and inseparable from them, and the idea of an independent consciousness an illusion?

Blackmore subscribes to the latter viewpoint, following the path of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. This book is devoted to proving that the self is an illusion, based on the findings of scientific research.

***

The Theatre of the Mind and the Stream of Consciousness

Susan Blackmore says we more or less view our mind as a theatre, where the self sits, seeing the show through the eyes, experiencing smells through the nose, and hearing sound through the ears – our daily 4D movie show. Also, we add the time element to it, experiencing it as flowing like a stream (hence the term ‘stream of consciousness’). According to Dennett, this is all bunkum. There is no centre point in the mind where everything comes together – it is all processed in parallel.

The amount of scientific research the author manages to bring to the table to prove her point are impressive. First, the human brain is analysed in detail, how various parts are related to various activities of the consciousness – also how damage significantly changes human perception in weird ways. Having linked mental processes firmly to physical activity, Blackmore attacks the concept of ‘stream of consciousness’ by establishing that the events the brain processes do not enter consciousness at all unless verbally probed - that is, we become aware of doing something only when we introspect. So there is no ‘stream’ as such, rather multiple processes which are gathered into a coherent stream later on.

The Grand Illusion

Still there must be something like a consciousness to do all this activity. Blackmore does not disagree – we do feel a ‘conscious self’, but in scientific terms, it is an illusion. She presents an extensive list of interesting experiments to prove that perception is largely subliminal. Even if we are not “aware” of what we perceive, the brain functions just the same. The self, instead of an entity, is a ‘bundle of sensations’, to borrow the words of David Hume. This is also very near to the concept of the ‘Anatman’ – the ‘not-self’ – posited by the Buddha (a man much ahead of his time, it seems!).

However, Blackmore goes further in denying the self – she refuses to equate it with any brain process. Quoting Dennett, she says that the self is a total illusion created by the way we use our language:


Finally, a completely different approach is provided by Dennett. Having rejected the Cartesian theatre, he also rejects its audience of one who watches the show. The self, he claims, is something that needs to be explained, but it does not exist in the way that a physical object (or even a brain process) exists. Like a centre of gravity in physics, it is a useful abstraction. Indeed, he calls it a ‘centre of narrative gravity’. Our language spins the story of a self and so we come to believe that there is, in addition to our single body, a single inner self who has consciousness, holds opinions, and makes decisions. Really, there is no inner self but only multiple parallel processes that give rise to a benign user illusion – a useful fiction.

It seems we have some tough choices in thinking about our own precious self. We can hang on to the way it feels and assume that a persisting self or soul or spirit exists, even though it cannot be found and leads to deep philosophical troubles. We can equate it with some kind of brain process and shelve the problem of why this brain process should have conscious experiences at all, or we can reject any persisting entity that corresponds to our feeling of being a self.

I think that intellectually we have to take this last path. The trouble is that it is very hard to accept in one’s own personal life. It means taking a radically different view of every experience. It means accepting that there is no one who is having these experiences. It means accepting that every time I seem to exist, this is just a temporary fiction and not the same ‘me’ who seemed to exist a moment before, or last week, or last year. This is tough, but I think it gets easier with practice.

In the same way, Susan Blackmore also negates free will. Quoting an interesting experiment by Wegner, she argues that the same unconscious impulses give rise to the action and the thought behind the action: only thing is that the thought occurs a fraction of a second before the action, so we conclude that we have willed it!

(This is a truly radical approach. I must confess, even though it is argued flawlessly, it is a bit hard for me to accept. But I must admit that I have lived with this consciousness for such a long time that it is very difficult to let the chap go!)


***

This is a good book, which talks on a difficult subject in a readable manner. The author’s erudition and credentials also cannot be faulted. Hence the four stars.

However, a couple of caveats:

Firstly, this is not an introduction to the subject – it is an introduction to particular theory of consciousness. History of scientific and philosophical research on the subject is largely ignored, and competing theories are presented only so that they can be refuted. I am definitely interested in the subject, and shall be reading more – and not just Dennett’s theory.

Secondly, materialism and monism is taken as a given. True, the Levantine concept of an indestructible soul occupying the destructible body cannot be treated scientifically (though it’s a valid religious concept)– but the Hindu concept of Atman and Brahman is slightly different.

The Mandukya Upanishad talks extensively of consciousness. It posits four ‘Purushas’ (we may think of them as various types of consciousness). The first one, which is outward-looking and connected to the waking state, experiences the ‘real’ world. The second one, which is inward-looking and connected to the dreaming state, experiences the phenomenal world. The third one, which is connected with dreamless sleep, experiences the real and phenomenal worlds at the same time. And the fourth one, the most profound, goes beyond all these experiences and transcends the phenomenal existence. I guess it is here that the Atman identifies with the Brahman.

The concept of the Brahman in Hinduism can be most closely approximated as ‘un-distilled sentience’: a sort of cosmic consciousness of which each and every atom of reality is but a part. The individual Atman is but an imperfect reflection of the Brahman: the realisation that it is part of the big whole is said to be the whole purpose of enlightenment.

At the present level of scientific knowledge, materialism seems to be the only valid worldview. But in the light of quantum phenomena, is the concept of reality as sentience wholly off the mark? I don’t think so.

Susan Blackmore could have dwelt a bit more on the philosophical aspects of the question also, I feel. But maybe it’s unfair to expect it from a book which is basically scientific in nature.
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Jan 07, 2013Ted rated it it was amazing
Shelves: life-sciences, psychology, beach-serious-nonfiction, have, women-s-works
Found this a fascinating book insofar as some of the ideas suggested in it were things I had never thought of. See for example the sections Theories of consciousness (p. 43), The nature of illusion (p. 50), The timing of conscious acts (p. 86), Memes (p. 127) and The future of consciousness (p. 128) She mentions Daniel Dennett frequently, citing in particular his Consciousness Explained (1991) and seems to agree which many of his ideas.

By the way, see this review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

... for a much more ambitious and useful overview of what Blackmore's book contains!




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Jul 19, 2013Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 21th-century, philosophy, science, psychology
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #121), Susan J. Blackmore
How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion?
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: دهم ماه مارس سال 2009 میلادی
عنوان: آگاهی؛ نویسنده: سوزان جی. بلکمور؛ مترجم: رضا رضایی؛ تهران، فرهنگ معاصر، 1387؛ در 196 ص؛ شابک: 9789648637595؛ چاپ دیگر: 1388؛ چاپ چهارم 1393؛ موضوع: خودآگاهی قرن 21 م
ا. شربیانی
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Mar 31, 2013Andrew Langridge rated it it was ok
Shelves: non-fiction
This is a very clear, well-written exposition on a difficult subject, but it is by no means a neutral review of the field as one might expect from a 'very short introduction'. Instead, Susan Blackmore promotes her own thesis, sympathetic to the work of Daniel Dennett, in which a single inner self with subjective experience, holding opinions and acting on decisions is a useful fiction or benign illusion created by the brain. Our ordinary intuition that there is a center to conscious experience is a useful abstraction, but not something grounded in scientific fact. This very partial view probably helps to make the book a pleasurable read, but also makes it a conspicuous target for anti-materialists like me.
It is commonly agreed that the idea of subjectivity lies at the heart of the problem of consciousness. What it is ‘like’ for a person to have experiences, make plans or perform actions does not seem fathomable with standard rational techniques. My personal experience of the redness of an object might be completely different to your experience of the same object, and though we use the same terminology to describe redness, we can never really be sure that we have the same thing in mind. It deeply offends a certain class of objectively-minded people that something like this could be so fundamental to our being and yet scientifically unexplainable, and they adopt two major strategies for coping. The first soft-naturalistic strategy is to isolate this peculiar phenomenal experience from the physical world and neural processes. It is allowed to ‘emerge’ from the evolved physical brain but has no causal effects and is only describable in ordinary language or special codes such as ‘memes’. The second approach is to marginalize and diffuse the phenomenal experience, treat it as illusory, and hope that scientific advance will eventually do away with it. This latter hard-naturalistic approach is the one that Blackmore and Dennett promote. They say that most of what we do is unconscious, and when we finally succeed in understanding how all our individual mental capacities such as intelligence, perception, thinking or language function, we will understand consciousness.
Blackmore has many arguments to support her case. She describes a neurological condition called agnosia, in which the patient has normal visual ability but appears to lack the experience of seeing. He is able to reach out, pick up and post a letter, but cannot describe the shape of the letter or say what it is. One way of interpreting this is to say that the patient is able to see unconsciously; that agnosia is a disassociation between vision and consciousness. Blackmore says no; dualistic hogwash! There is no conscious ‘central processing unit’ able to 'observe' the visual stream and then act on it. Experiments on brain organization show that there are many different visual streams with distinct functions, and that agnosia is better described as a disassociation between action and perception. Although she argues forcefully in this way against representational dualism, Blackmore fails to recognize that her own interpretation fares little better as an explanation of visual perception. Perception has a qualitative richness, such as the aspect of the letter, that a stream of electrical energy lacks. Moreover, vision is always vision of something, just like pain is always pain somewhere, so how is our 'rapport' with an external letter incorporated in this stream? How is the patient `related appropriately' to the letter if his awareness of it is just a brain response? Awareness of external objects is different from awareness of physical mechanisms. The outside world of objects would be wholly mythical were it not for our primitive understanding of it.
Blackmore presents a large quantity of scientific evidence from unusual neurological conditions, split-brains, drug-induced hallucinations and altered mental conditions that she says disabuses us of the notion of a conscious self. Yet, the fact that brain damage makes a difference to what is experienced/perceived, does not account for the experience/perception itself. Moreover, there is ample circumstantial evidence from normal human experience that our intuitive ideas about consciousness are indispensable. We assume that it is proper and useful for us to reflect on our own guilt and motivations and to try to understand other people through patient attention to their beliefs and life histories. Blackmore recommends that we set little store by these touchy-feely aspects of consciousness since they are all part of the illusion. Presumably she also dismisses the idea that this activity of reflecting on ourselves or each other has any inherent value. If science is going to reduce all such mental activities to brain functions there will eventually be no questions about value left to ask. The bleakness of that prospect is startling. (less)
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May 20, 2015Hrishabh Chaudhary rated it really liked it
The Book and Me

The book deals with a very hard problem, which Blackmore puts forward in the very first line of the very first chapter: What is consciousness? A question you might have ruminated in past, in some way, at some point in time, but then you let it go in favor of attending to worldly obligations. My version goes like this:

Seventh grade, Biology class

Me and my friend were giving a re-read to our favorite chapter ;-) when these words fell upon my ears.
Teacher : a cell is the smallest unit of life… millions… single cell organisms… blah, blah…
Me: You mean we are filled with living beings! Do they know they are inside me?
Teacher : No. They don’t have consciousness.
Me: How can you be sure?
Teacher: Let’s drop this, it is getting absurd.


It was getting interesting. I never got an answer, as I said, it is a hard problem. It becomes even harder when you ask - Do we have consciousness? Susan Blackmore believes we don’t and declares it openly in the book, which may put off some readers, but there plenty of theories in here to keep you from falling to one side of the debate. Being a fan of Sam Harris and thus a non-believer in free-will I was much inclined to reject the idea of consciousness, but as pages increased on the left, I was gradually pushed to the center and by the end I didn’t know what to believe.

Recommendation

Recommended for people who are:
1. Cognizant of the debate, but haven’t read much; this might be a good start.
2. Convinced of existence/non-existence of consciousness after hearing one side.
3. Looking for fascinating experiments, stories, and psychological conditions( google “Hemispatial Neglect”)

If they had read it

Spider-man and Sandman


SP: Why did you kill my uncle?

SD: I had to, I didn’t have any choice.

SP: You always have a choice.

SD: But I just read that consciousness is an illusion and so is free-will. A guy named Benjamin Libet proved this by some experiment.

SP: Oh that’s only half of it, Libet’s experiment proves that we don’t have free-will but do have “free-won’t”, ha! Now take this punch and tell me if you feel conscious. (less)
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Feb 16, 2018Ross H rated it liked it
Three stars for giving me a lot to think about, but, as many other reviews have noted, this book falls pretty far from an "Introduction" to the idea of consciousness, and is instead a brief presentation of the evidence for a very particular theory which takes hard materialism as a given and treats consciousness as an illusion. My distaste for how much the author's specific position was taken for granted instead of presented as one view among many was reinforced at the very end when she tacked on Dawkins' memetic theory to attack the idea of religion, which had very little to do with the concept of consciousness and served a solely ideological purpose.

I read this book to gain some better language to approach the "hard problem" of consciousness, a subject that interests me deeply but which I find confusing to articulate in words, and while it did sharpen my thinking about the matter it also left me feeling that there may not actually be a clear way to explain consciousness. Blackmore's language attempting to refute the concept of consciousness (an interesting thing to do in an "Introduction" to it) still implies that there is "someone" to be fooled by the illusion of consciousness; she talks about how it is difficult but necessary to get outside the idea of an "I" but seems to be unable to do so herself. I am left thinking that "intuitive" is too weak a word for the concept of a self-as-observer--if anything, I would call it self-evident.

Reading this book was a good experience, but it leaves me only more frustrated by the concept of consciousness than I was when I started, and not in a helpful way. It also leaves me irritated with the author, who seems to have misunderstood the purpose of the Very Short Introduction series.(less)
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Nov 29, 2017Yousif Al Zeera rated it liked it · review of another edition
The book is a decent book to stimulate your curiosity into the “consciousness” subject. It questions more than it answers. The author does well in introducing the different ideas and school of thoughts in this subject. Many concepts are intriguing. If you want definite answers, then this book will not serve your purpose.
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Nov 20, 2015Clif rated it really liked it
Yes, I am stuck on these wonderful "very short introduction" (VSI) books from Oxford University. This one is the perfect follow-up to the one on free will that I recently reviewed.

While the free will book is about logic; how do we think about our consciousness and how can we eliminate false ideas about it through reasoning, this book is all about science and the physical brain. The actual parts of the brain are only mentioned a few times but many studies of brain function and the theories of a few modern philosophers form the foundation of the work.

It's clear the author is a fan of Daniel Dennett. Since I am too, it didn't surprise me that I found myself agreeing with much of what Susan Blackmore presents.

Being purely physical, the case for our possessing something apart from the physical that directs our activity doesn't hold up and no research has ever shown otherwise. That said, the next thing to put aside is the idea that consciousness is localized in a certain part of the brain. Instead, the leading idea is that consciousness is a byproduct of the overall operation of the brain.

Evidence shows that our consciousness is not a continuous thing across time. Instead, it appears to be a very momentary, transient thing that attends to a very limited part of what we sense at any given moment. Our sense that we are aware of the full environment around us at once is illusion our brain constructs.

Filled with intriguing experimental results, this book offers surprises for any reader. It appears the brain is far out in front of our perceptions as many physical activities, such as playing a game of ping-pong, proceed at speeds far beyond that of our consciousness. The brain plays ping-pong and the "me" that we experience is more like a spectator that later claims to have been in charge. And we've all had the experience of driving a car thinking of something else and suddenly coming back to awareness of the driving. Our brain was driving just fine while our mind was elsewhere.

As is the intent of the entire VSI book series, the content of Blackmore's work would be a wonderful source of ideas for a classroom and a full bibliography points the way to further exploration. I highly recommend that you make yourself a classroom of one and take on this little gem! (less)
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Aug 14, 2018Steve Kimmins rated it it was amazing
Shelves: popular-science
I obtained and read this book several years ago after going to a public lecture by Susan Blackmore, in my city. She was a lecturer at a nearby university at that time. The lecture and book made a big impact on me, as I’d never really thought about the subject of consciousness, whether it’s possible to study it scientifically and come to any conclusions as to its nature.
I remember her talk raised lots of evidence for what it probably isn’t linked to - Dualism. That the conscious mind is separate from our grey matter computing device, the brain. I’d sadly had a close relative who’d had a bad stroke and the brain damage from a stroke can change a person’s nature and personality. How they perceive the world. So I wasn’t under any illusion about that really, but this book firmed up on it for me and showed where studies had taken our knowledge. Unfortunately brain damage and how it affects survivors of the trauma is one important guide to how our grey matter functions. Sad but true, and a number of cases are discussed in the book.
As in her talk I don’t remember her coming to a dogmatic conclusion, as there’s still work to be done. Perhaps the evidence she marshals is intended to reinforce her viewpoint, but it seemed persuasive to me. Indeed a fairly recent experiment indicating that the subconscious brain can initiate what we might think is a conscious decision or action fractionally before the conscious brain is aware of it was a bit disturbing.
I took from the book the possibility that our conscious brain is a ‘scratchpad’ the brain uses when it needs to learn or review tasks more carefully, given that so much of what we do from body function control through to instinctive reactions is part of our subconscious, and normally hidden from our awareness. How the brain decides what to review is unclear but I personally take the possibility that it is an aspect we may be able train to a degree.
Though maybe I’m fooling myself there too! But I’ve always found Doubt a useful tool in work and life, and if that means I take a while to decide on an action at least I feel I’ve reviewed it thoroughly.
There seems a clear link to our language abilities too. Indeed, I’d heard elsewhere consciousness defined as the brain talking to itself. Holding that conversation is what we consider as our conscious brain operation, I presume, though I’m sure there’s more than that conversation at play.
I found this an educational book. Not a thorough review probably as it is a ‘short introduction’. I had enough evidence tossed at me to realise what a tricky area it is, but nonetheless open to a thorough investigation scientifically.
I’d certainly recommend this to anyone interested in questioning or examining how they think. You may or may not agree with her materialistic approach but she raises questions taken from the literature, and not just her opinions, that you’d have to ponder if you have a dualistic view of our brain.(less)
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Apr 03, 2011Leon M rated it really liked it
Shelves: psychology, philosophy
In "Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction", Susan Blackmore gives the reader just that - a very short introduction to a highly complicated interdisciplinary topic. Considering the sheer impossibility of doing that in a fully satisfying way, Blackmore did quite a good job at it.

The book starts of with the basic dichotomy between dualists and monists (mainly materialists these days) and explains why none of these sides have a convincing argument to offer for why their side is true and the other ...more
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May 19, 2011Mikael Lind rated it liked it
Shelves: cognitive-science
This book starts off very promisingly. It asks all the interesting questions and presents loads of interesting research and studies on the topics. However, the final chapter is so utterly disappointing that I can't give this book more than three stars. Blackmore presents her own "solution" to the problem of consciousness, but in such an unsatisfying way that all the questions she herself presented in the beginning remain unanswered. If our talk of consciousness and subconsciousness are nothing but delusions, how come we can direct our attention towards one thing rather than another? She doesn't even try to answer questions about intentionality, but instead presents her personal preference of meditation as some kind of remedy to all the delusions arising from questions about our consciousness. And even there she commits a fatal error. She writes that with Zen meditation one can "give rise to a state in which phenomena arise and fall away but without any sense of time or place, and with no one experiencing them." And this is presented as a solution to dualism! Wow. She fails however to explain who this "someone" experiencing the phenomena could fall away if there was no conscious observer in the first place. If Zen meditation can help one seeing beyond the fallacy of a conscious self, what is then this conscious self to all those people who don't practice Zen? In short, Blackmore's "solution" is no solution at all but makes us ask all the same questions all over again. A pity for an otherwise interesting book to have such an unsuccessful attempt to a solution in the final chapter. (less)
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Oct 23, 2015David rated it it was ok
I debated between giving this book two or three stars. On the plus side, it is well written, an easy read, and it has a clear and concise description of a lot of what has been done and the state of the art in understanding consciousness. In the end, I went with two stars because I felt this book is fundamentally dishonest, a fatal flaw in an introduction. My problem with this book is that rather than being a review, what the title promises, it considers other theories of consciousness only to dismiss them in favor of the author's theory; this book advocates rather than introduces. I am not sorry I read this book, I have done some reading on this topic already but nonetheless picked up some new information as to where the field is, but then again I read this book on the heels of one of the other authors books, "The Meme Machine" and for that reason and because this was not the first book I had read on this subject, I was able to detect its bias and discount it. In balance, I would only recommend this book to someone who is knowledgable in the subject area and who is interested in completeness and is able to read critically.
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