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Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (Mind/Brain/Behaviour Initiative) (Hardcover)

by N Humphrey (Author)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (31 Mar 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0674021797
ISBN-13: 978-0674021792
Product Dimensions: 18 x 14.2 x 1.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 331,001 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#69 in Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Specific Topics > Conscious & Unconscious

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Review
If ever the phrase "in our end is our beginning" applied appositely, it does so here. The benign circle of Nicholas Humphrey's argument is that the explanation of why and how we have conscious experience, phenomenal consciousness, is also the explanation of why we find it so hard to understand why and how we can have it--to the point where some think such understanding unattainable. It is a very neat argument. Once we start reflecting on why we might find an understanding of phenomenal consciousness so elusive, we have taken a major step towards understanding it--what it is, what it does, and why it evolved. In "Seeing Red", much argument lies between Humphrey's description of our initial bafflement about sensations or "qualia"--i.e., the phenomenon of there being 'something it is like' to experience, say, red--and his rather brilliant explanation. The argument accessibly interweaves empirical research and philosophical analysis, to produce a most important little book. -- John Shand "Times Literary Supplement"

Nature, 1 June 2006
'A wonderful success.'

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's all a matter of perception, 13 Jul 2007

By	JA Foxton (Worcester, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This little book (just 134 pages of text) springs from some guest lectures which Nicholas Humphrey gave at Harvard in 2004. At the start of the first lecture he projected plain red light onto a screen and announced that he would spend the next three hours talking about what was going on in the minds of those viewing the screen. If you are at all interested in consciousness then this book is well worth reading.

On flicking through its pages, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is going to be a fun and easy read. The cartoons which appear give the impression that it isn't too intimidating. And to be fair, I could follow this book where I have struggled with Edelman's and Damasio's popular accounts of consciousness - but it was harder work than anticipated. In part, I suspect that this is because it is a book which is very rich in ideas.

Just a final word of caution and a personal confession. I have become rather evangelical about this book. It must be added that, so far, none of my victims share my enthusiasm. Please keep this in mind before spending your hard-earned cash but, if you do buy it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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2.0 out of 5 stars An experiment to understand consciousness: Seeing red does not go grand., 29 Aug 2008

By	Rama Rao "Rama" (Morgantown, WV USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author starts his book with a pessimistic quotation from psychologist Stuart Sutherland, "Nothing worth reading has been written about it" (consciousness.)
At the end of chapter 3 the author makes a rather optimistic conclusion that "So, I do believe we are closing in on what consciousness is and what it's for, I admit...... But we are on our way" (to understand consciousness.) After reading this book in its entirety, the reader is unable to share this author's optimism.

The author attempts to relate sensation to subjective qualia, and consciousness. What is creating the sensation and what makes this to be the subject of it? Could it be consciousness or selfhood? Francis Crick and Christof Koch believe the most difficult problem is the qualia; the redness of red, painfulness of pain, etc. The author believes that neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) may be the causal factor because the experience of sensation is a result of neuronal activity. The other factor could be the functional correlates of sensation (FCC).

Wherever there is a subjective experience, there has to be a subject. Because pain, mood, wish can not exist without a bearer, and the person has to be there first before the subjective experience. Sensation consists of; ownership that belongs to the subject, body location (particular part of the body), present-ness (being at present), qualitative modality (visual, facial, hearing, etc.) and phenomenal immediacy (happening to me instead of somebody else, happening at the moment than another moment). The author surmises that the evolution of sensation, feeling, and perception starting with primitive amoeba and ending up with human beings is as follows: It appears that during evolution the sensory activity gets privatized. The command signals for every sensory response get short circuited before they reach the body surface. So that instead of reaching all the way out to peripheral site of stimulation (as in amoeba), they now reach only to points more and more central on the incoming sensory pathways, until eventually the whole processes becomes closed off from the outside world in an internal loop within the brain (as in humans.)

The book is very brief and it is based on guest lectures delivered at Harvard in spring 2004. Some paragraphs have been repeated verbatim; for example, third paragraphs of pages 94 and 121 are almost the same. It would have been easier for the reader, if the last paragraph of each chapter or the last chapter of the book had summarized the author's point.

1. Consciousness: An Introduction
2. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
3. Conversations on Consciousness
4. Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Neural Theories
5. Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World
6. The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach

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