Rethinking Consciousness

What Hacker News says

1. SyntoniclesFeb 2023
   A prominent figure in the space is David Chalmers, who made it his life's work to characterize and explore theories of consciousness. He's a philosopher in New York (originally Australia) He coined "The Hard Problem" and "The Meta Problem". You should get an overview in his books. They're a bit dated but it's not like there's been substantial progress.

   There's a recent book called "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind" which purports to be what you are looking for. She's an author who is married to Sam Harris, a neuroscience PhD and public thinker who focused a lot of consciousness. His ideas permeate her thinking and I found her treatment to be less open minded.

   There's a series mirrored on YouTube called "Closer to Truth", where Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviews famous physicists, mathematicians, etc. on this and other grand unsolved questions. You can find interviews with most of the analytical thinkers in the consciousness space if you wade through.

   The most "mathematically rigorous" theory is Integrated Information Theory by Giulio Tononi. The logical conclusions of his theory are outlandish or eye-opening, depending on your bias. I don't buy it myself but the there might be something in the approach.

   The most mathematically gifted individual with a theory is Roger Penrose. His scientific work is absolutely brilliant but his ideas about consciousness are quite frankly ridiculous and unmotivated.

   The best, most rigorous theory I know of comes from a Neuroscientist at Princeton named Michael Graziano. He put forth the "Attention Schema Theory". I strongly recommend his book "Rethinking Consciousness" which makes a case for it, and provides an overview of the other approaches and how they relate to his ideas.

   I've been very much swayed by Graziano's work, and we have the technology today to test his theory by integrating actively controlled attention mechanisms into machine learning models. If his ideas are correct, that could lead to models organically making similar claims to humans regarding phenomenological states. The theory is agnostic about whether the claims would be substantiated.

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2. mindcrimeOct 2026
   Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience by Michael S. A. Graziano (https://link.amazon/B0fbKBxEU)

   The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science by Erik Hoel (https://link.amazon/B05TPjEY6)

   Awesome. I had Rethinking Consciousness on my list as well, but haven't gotten to it yet. I'll check out The World Behind the World as well. That sounds right up my alley. :-)

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3. ckrailoSep 2026
   I've also been enjoying Dungeon Crawler Carl like many here. To scratch my neuroscience itch, I recently read:

   Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience by Michael S. A. Graziano (https://link.amazon/B0fbKBxEU)

   The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science by Erik Hoel (https://link.amazon/B05TPjEY6)

   Greatly enjoyed both. Made me think about the thinking-machines future and our ever-increasing understanding of the human brain.

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4. QuitterStripOct 2019
   I've read a few posts lately. I enjoyed the article on WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-your-uploaded-mind-still-b...

   Michael Graziano is currently promoting his new book "Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience" so there will probably be a few more articles from him.

   Available as an audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Rethinking-Consciousness-Audioboo...

   I've not had a chance to read it yet so I can't vouch for its quality.

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