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Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness

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Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness

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Overview

Adventures in cutting-edge ideas about consciousness, from bestselling non-fiction writer Tim Parks.

Hardly a day goes by without some discussion about whether computers can be conscious, whether our universe is some kind of simulation, whether mind is a unique quality of human beings or spread out across the universe like butter on bread. Most philosophers believe that our experience is locked inside our skulls, an unreliable representation of a quite different reality outside. Colour, smell and sound, they tell us, occur only in our heads. Yet when neuroscientists look inside our brains to see what's going on, they find only billions of neurons exchanging electrical impulses and releasing chemical substances.

Five years ago, in a chance conversation, Tim Parks came across a radical new theory of consciousness that undercut this interpretation. This set him off on a quest to discover more about this fascinating topic and also led him to observe his own experience with immense attention.

Out of My Head tells the gripping, highly personal, often surprisingly funny, story of Tim Parks' quest to discover more about this fascinating topic. It frames complex metaphysical considerations and technical laboratory experiments in terms we can all understand. Above all, it invites us to see space, time, colour and smell, sounds and sensations in an entirely new way. The world will feel more real after reading it.

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681373980
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Tim Parks has written seventeen novels, including Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and most recently, Painting Death. He is the author of several works of non-fiction, including Italian Neighbors and Italian Ways. Parks has also translated the works of Alberto Moravia, Giacomo Leopardi, and Niccolò Machiavelli, among others, and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He lives in Italy.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

10/07/2019
Parks, whose previous works include the Man Booker Prize short-listed Europa, here takes a creative look at consciousness by writing about the topic as he's going through day-to-day activities, such as eating, sleeping, and talking with colleagues. Interspersed in these events, which he's using to tell a story, is background on various schools of thought on consciousness and theories of what occurs in the brain when we have a conscious thought. This distinct narrative format makes for an accessible read but ultimately confuses readers who are trying to figure out the author's understanding of the subject. The sections on past and current philosophers' theories, and Parks's applying them to ordinary life are fascinating, but never culminate into a coherent theory.
VERDICT The presentation of this work may appeal to some readers seeking a new approach to the elusive trail of consciousness. Yet the majority of audiences will find this structure off-putting as its style further complicates an already complex topic.—Scott Duimstra, Capital Area Dist. Lib., Lansing, MI

Library Journal

…Parks, though not a scientist or professional philosopher, proves to be a companionable guide…[Out of My Head] fits into a genre that might be given the unwieldy label of Talking to Really Smart People About Really Big Questions…In such books, the author introduces complex ideas through a guided tour of interviews with, and profiles of, the lively and eccentric humans who espouse them…It's a wide-ranging, thought-provoking book…With rare exceptions, Parks keeps the science comprehensible(ish), and he brings his novelistic skills to setting scenes.

The New York Times - John Williams

[A] wide-ranging, thought-provoking book. . . . Parks . . . brings his novelistic skills to setting scenes.” —John Williams, The New York Times Book Review

“Parks recounts with generous and eager openness his conversations with leading philosophers and neuroscientists . . . A lucid exploration of thinking, perceiving, and being human.” —Publishers Weekly

"The microdetail Parks delivers as he observes his surroundings and the restless workings of his own mind echoes that in his Man Booker Prize-nominated novel, Europa. It also has an affinity with Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness experiments . . . and a small army of Western and Eastern philosophers. Parks is determined to trace every wrinkle of mind-digression, morphing perception and fluctuating theory that he can. . . . His observations of the human mind in action are enjoyably on the mark."—Michael Upchurch, The Boston Globe

"This Oliver Sacks–like book . . . succeeds admirably in bringing difficult ideas down a level. . . . Parks writes well enough to appeal to the layman and the mind boffin alike. Out of My Head is pleasurably nutty, self-regarding and at times quite hilarious." —Ian Thomson, Evening Standard

"Tim Parks considers midlife crisis, a Pixar cartoon and “spread mind” theory in his thoughtful quest to understand consciousness. . . . Consciousness is weighty philosophical and scientific ground, yet Parks plots a chatty, accessible path through impenetrable academic papers and conferences on his quest to understand more about being human." —Ben East, The Observer

"[Parks] is a terrific ambassador for curiosity, and greets each step in his intellectual journey with dogged insistence." —Joe Humphreys, The Irish Times

"By describing his efforts to understand the phenomenon of consciousness in the form of a candid and entertaining journal-cum-memoir, Tim Parks has made a difficult subject interesting and accessible. He is an amateur in this crowded field but he presents professional neuroscientists with some challenging questions." —David Lodge

"[A] fantastic journey into the human brain." —Will Self, New Statesman

"An exceptionally witty and compelling look at the nature of consciousness . . . In tackling consciousness, the full frontal assault, as often practised by philosophers and, in a different way, by neuroscientists, can only get us so far. Tim Parks’ new book is a refreshing attempt to creep up on the hard question obliquely; and to take the argument deeper into the very realm of our embodied experience than it usually goes. The result is lucid, witty and engaging: a deft philosophical juggling act providing, in an honourable tradition, more questions than answers . . . A confessed outsider to both academic philosophy and neuroscience, Parks demonstrates the truth that sometimes the outsider sees most of the game. And he has done his homework . . . Parks is not only excellent company, but a worthy debating partner. He is a delight to read." —Ian McGilchrist, The Tablet (UK)

"A lucid investigation into the nature of experience and its grounding in the brain. Many readers will delight in Parks’s vivid rendering of complex ideas. He has a masterful capacity to entertain theories of the nature of consciousness not as abstract objects of academic scrutiny but as living concerns. These concerns illuminate from within his personal reflections on meditation, love, age, and dreaming." —Nick Haslam, University of Melbourne

From the Publisher

2019-08-07
What accounts for our experience of reality?
British novelist and nonfiction writer Parks (In Extremis, 2017, etc.) turns his attention from Italy, the cherished landscape he has evoked in several previous books, to Heidelberg, Germany, where he journeys into the dazzling, mysterious landscape of the mind. The author went to Heidelberg to participate in an interdisciplinary project focused "on the business of being conscious," and he was guided by an overarching question: "do the models, the explanations, whatever that we have of consciousness, the version of events that our various authorities sign up to, make sense?" Parks recounts with generous and eager openness his conversations with leading philosophers and neuroscientists from whom he gleaned three positions about consciousness, defined "simply as the feeling that accompanies our being alive, aware of perceptive experience." The most prevalent view holds that consciousness is produced in the brain by physical and chemical processes; a minority view, known as "enactivist," holds that consciousness emerges from interaction with the world, requiring "both subject and object to happen"; and a smaller minority puts forth the Spread Mind view, "in which experience is made possible by the meeting of perceptive system and the world" and "located at the object perceived." Since the proponent of the Spread Mind view is the author's friend and confidant, he tries mightily to give credence to a perspective that he finds intuitively difficult to accept. Parks is fascinated by the work of neuroscientists but frustrated by the notion "that all our experience is internal to the brain and everything that we are is essentially a matter of what goes on in those three pounds of grey jelly." In brain studies, he adds, there is a "gap between facts and storyline," between "the nitty gritty" of scientific findings and speculation about "what these findings mean." In the end, the author advises readers to test scientific theories against their own lived experience. "When it comes to consciousness," he asserts, "we are all repositories of quantities of evidence far richer than any available in the neuroscientist's laboratory."
A lucid exploration of thinking, perceiving, and being human.

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