Overview

Consciousness matters. Arguably it matters more than anything. The purpose of this book is to build towards an explanation of just what the matter is. Nicholas Humphrey begins this compelling exploration of the biggest of big questions with a challenge to the reader, and himself. What's involved in seeing red ? What is it like for us to see someone else seeing something red? Seeing a red screen tells us a fact about something in the world. But it also creates a new fact - a sensation in each of our minds, the feeling of redness. And that's the mystery. Conventional science so far hasn't told us what conscious sensations are made of, or how we get access to them, or why we have them at all. From an evolutionary perspective, what's the point of consciousness? Humphrey offers a daring and novel solution, arguing that sensations are not things that happen to us, they are things we do - originating in our primordial ancestors' expressions of liking or disgust. Tracing the evolutionary trajectory through to human beings, he shows how this has led to sensations playing the key role in the human sense of Self. The Self, as we now know it from within, seems to have fascinating other-worldly properties. It leads us to believe in mind-body duality and the existence of a soul. And such beliefs - even if mistaken - can be highly adaptive, because they increase the value we place on our own and others' lives. Consciousness matters, Humphrey concludes with striking paradox, because it is its function to matter. It has been designed to create in human beings a Self whose life is worth pursuing.

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Reviews

[ Seeing Red is] a collection of small and unexpectedly lucid thought experiments on a topic that has universal appeal...Humphrey provides a refreshing take on this ancient topic...One of the key merits of Seeing Red is its multi-disciplinary approach to defining something that has eluded definition for centuries. Humphrey draws upon philosophy, art, and psychology in turn, producing a holistic narrative that almost seems a microcosm of human experience. And this is part of Humphrey's particular gift: he demonstrates a poetic understanding of the human psyche, its desires and insecurities...[This is] a book that is, above all, written for the sake of asking questions rather than answering them.--Nancy Yang Harvard Book Review (05/01/2006)

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

Author Information

Nicholas Humphrey is School Professor in the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics.

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