Acts of Consciousness
A Social Psychology Standpoint

An original book about consciousness which draws on interviews with former captives, thought experiment stories and treatments in the arts.

Guy Saunders (Author)

9780521111249, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 May 2014

348 pages
23.7 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'Guy Saunders' Acts of Consciousness … can be seen as a palliative to the individualist cultural tendency and a skilled attempt to understand as profoundly social the self and the consciousness that characterizes, indeed performs, it … If you are … interested in what it means to be human, the book is certainly worth reading.' PsycCRITIQUES

Drawing on compelling material from research interviews with former hostages and political prisoners, Guy Saunders reworks three classic thought experiment stories: Parfit's 'Teleporter', Nagel's 'What is it like to be a bat?' and Jackson's 'Mary the colour scientist' to form a fresh look at the study of consciousness. By examining consciousness from a social psychology perspective, Saunders develops a 'cubist psychology of consciousness' through which he challenges the accepted wisdom of mainstream approaches by arguing that people can act freely. What makes 'cubist psychology' is both the many examples taken from different viewpoints and the multiple ways of looking at the key issues of person, mind and world. This is a unique and engaging book that will appeal to students and academics in the field of consciousness studies and other readers with an interest in consciousness.

Introduction
Part I. To Be Conscious: 1. To teleport or not to teleport? (Parfit)
2. To be a person: ego, bundle and social theories
3. To be captive
Part II. To Have Consciousness: 4. 'What is it like to be a bat?' (Nagel)
5. Treatments of subjective conscious experience in the arts
6. A captive mind
Part III. To Know Consciously: 7. Landscape and the world about us
8. 'Mary the colour scientist' (Jackson)
9. Knowing how it feels to be free
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Psychology [JM]