Books like Consciousness Explained

01

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Breaking the Spell is Daniel Dennett's case that religion is a natural phenomenon — one that can and should be studied using the methods of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Shares philosophy of mind and naturalism with Consciousness Explained.

02

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · Science

How the Mind Works is Steven Pinker's synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, built around a central thesis: the mind is a computational system — a neural computer — shaped by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems that faced our ancestors on the Pleistocene savanna.

Shares consciousness and cognition with Consciousness Explained.

03

The Emperor's New Mind

Roger Penrose · Science

The Emperor's New Mind is Roger Penrose's argument that human consciousness cannot be reproduced by any computational device — that the mind is not, in the relevant sense, a computer — and that understanding consciousness will require fundamental advances in physics, particularly in reconciling quantum mechanics with general relativity.

Both dig into consciousness.

04

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Selfish Gene reframes evolution from the organism's point of view to the gene's.

A kindred philosophy read.

06

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Daniel Dennett · Philosophy

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking is Daniel Dennett's handbook for thinking well — a collection of seventy-odd conceptual tools assembled across a long career in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and evolutionary theory.

Shares consciousness and philosophy of mind with Consciousness Explained.

07

The Mind's I

Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett · Philosophy

The Mind's I is a collaborative anthology edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, two of the most influential thinkers on consciousness and mind of the late twentieth century.

Shares consciousness and philosophy of mind with Consciousness Explained.

08

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Shares consciousness and neuroscience with Consciousness Explained.

09

How to Change Your Mind

Michael Pollan · Science

Michael Pollan came to psychedelics late in life, as a skeptic.

Shares consciousness and neuroscience with Consciousness Explained.

10

How to Create a Mind

Ray Kurzweil · Science

Ray Kurzweil's central claim in How to Create a Mind is that the neocortex — the part of the brain responsible for higher thought — operates on a single repeating algorithm called the pattern recognition theory of mind.

Shares consciousness and neuroscience with Consciousness Explained.

11

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Shares consciousness and neuroscience with Consciousness Explained.

12

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Peter Godfrey-Smith · Science

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of science and a scuba diver who began spending time with octopuses off the coast of Sydney, and Other Minds is the result of that dual perspective.

Shares consciousness and philosophy of mind with Consciousness Explained.