Books like The Mind's I

01

Consciousness Explained

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett's attempt to replace what he calls the Cartesian Theater — the intuitive picture of consciousness as a single unified stream of experience observed by a self — with a model he calls Multiple Drafts.

Shares consciousness and philosophy of mind with The Mind's I.

02

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.

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with The Mind's I.

03

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 The Mind's I.

04

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre · Philosophy

Being and Nothingness is Sartre's major philosophical treatise and the founding text of French existentialism.

Both dig into consciousness.

05

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter · Science

Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, published in 1979, asks how meaning can arise from formal rules — how a biological machine can think, feel, and experience self-awareness.

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with The Mind's I.

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 The Mind's I.

07

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

David Eagleman · Philosophy

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives is a collection of forty short, fictional vignettes, each imagining a different version of what happens after death.

Shares consciousness and identity with The Mind's I.

08

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Alan Watts · Philosophy

The Book, published in 1966, is Alan Watts's most direct attempt to explain the central illusion he spent his career examining: the belief that each of us is a separate self, enclosed in skin, confronting an alien world.

Shares consciousness and identity with The Mind's I.

09

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Alan Watts · Philosophy

The Wisdom of Insecurity, published in 1951, is Alan Watts's argument that the anxiety pervading modern life is a direct consequence of the attempt to find permanent security in an impermanent world.

Shares consciousness and identity with The Mind's I.

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 artificial intelligence with The Mind's I.

11

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark · Science

Life 3.0 is Max Tegmark's accessible survey of the questions raised by the prospect of human-level and superhuman artificial intelligence: What are the plausible paths to AGI?

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with The Mind's I.

12

Ulysses

James Joyce · Literary fiction

Ulysses takes place on a single day — June 16, 1904 — in Dublin, following three characters: Leopold Bloom, an advertising canvasser; his wife Molly; and Stephen Dedalus, the young writer from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Shares consciousness and identity with The Mind's I.