Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #468103 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Dora Brown, University of Surrey, in The Psychologist, November 2000
"Following the best traditions, the book has an explanatory beginning, an unmissable middle and a happy end. ... It is refreshing to find amongst the consciousness literature a book that is so accessible and focused. Velmans maintains a clarity rarely found in the deep abysses of philosophy, psychology and neurophysiology without departing from the point. Consequently, I would recommend this book equally both to the connoisseur of consciousness studies and to the mere aficionado. The connoisseur may find new ways of looking at, studying and debating consciousness and the aficionado may get seriously conscious food for thought."

Greg Nixon, Prescott College, Arizona, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, October 2000
"This is a fine book. In what has become a crowded field, it stands out as direct, deep, and daring. It should place Max Velmans amongst the stars in the field like Chalmers, Dennett, Searle and the Churchlands... It is direct in that the de rigueur history and review of the field is illuminating and concise. It is deep in that Velmans deconstructs the usual idea of an objective world as distinct from our experienced world. It is daring in that in his last chapter he comes out on the side of consciousness co-evolving with the universe rather than arising at some point within it. I would rate this book as a strong success, especially as his clear exposition and short chapters make reading more of a pleasure than a labour. All in all, a stimulating read which emphasises some fundamental truths that are too often overlooked in consciousness studies."

John Pickering, University of Warwick, in Network, December, 2000
"Understanding Consciousness .. finds a good balance between careful scholarly work a more accessible treatment, indeed advocacy of a particular position. It is difficult enough to stretch both teacher and student while remaining clear and focused throughout. It systematically treats the philosophical issues that must be addressed when considering consciousness. Better yet, it advocates a particular point of view without becoming blinkered or tendentious. All in all it is an ideal text for student and scholar alike and is bound to become a landmark in this rapidly expanding field."

Customer Reviews

I think therefore I think I am, I think...
A thorough and cautious appraisal of the current state of play in consciousness studies by someone who seems to have a deep grasp of several of the overlapping disciplines that consider consciousness. The book is readable by a non-specialist but might not be very approachable without at least a passing acquaintance with some basics of philosophy, psychology, and physics. Velmans comes down firmly on one of the sides in the debates over which is the most fruitful approach to this, the Holy Grail of scientific inquiry. His partisanship is plausibly explained ( I couldn't hope to argue the matter) and he gives the alternative viewpoints a fair outing.
This book does not dwell much on the various approaches to locating consciousness in mechanisms which can be explained by physical science (such as the many recent popular science books exploring quantum explanations); it is more a rigorous philosophical attempt to clarify what questions we are asking when we consider consciousness - this description could make that sound very dry reading, but I found the writing style very charming and the forensic lucidity of his approach very entertaining as well as enlightening. One to re-read many times and ponder to appreciate the subtlety and accuracy of the thought.
I have to note that the Amazon reviewer gave what seemed to me an excellent and accurate description of the book I read, but that the other customer reviewer (1 as I write this) gave a description of Velmans' conclusions that I did not recognize.

One of the better books on the subject
Anyone taking on the challenge of 'understanding' consciousness, be they an author or a reader, faces the not inconsiderable problem that nobody knows what it actually 'is'. As a result, one can read and write volumes on the topic and dismiss - with varying degress of ease and success - positions taken by past philosophers, psychologists, theologians and so on. But to put something new and provable in place of past explanations...well, it seems to me an impossible task given our current knowledge of how the brain functions. Which isn't really all that surprising, because the brain is the most complex thing in the known universe and consciousness seems to be its most elusive aspect! That said, this book is excellent, and the author has included a great deal of material - almost too much, in fact. So what conclusion does he reach? It seems to be that expressed by Jung, in which the physical universe achieves a kind of 'meaning' through an image of it being created in the mind of a conscious, thinking being i.e. Man. On this basis, the universe itself 'becomes conscious' and we are currently at the early stages of such a process. I think the author could have gone further, to elaborate on this theme; it seems to stop slightly short, without discussing the possible implications. One of these is whether the evolution of consciousness is an unavoidable aspect of evolution, inseparable from the development of the brain, or whether it is an entirely accidental thing, that might occur on Earth but maybe nowhere else. I don't think the book explains consciousness - nobody can do that at present - but anyone interested in the subject will find it a very worthwhile read.