“I believe the human self-model was successful because it installed your social group as an ideal observer in your mind, and to a much stronger degree than was the case in any other primate brain. This created a dense causal… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
For a human being, to possess a consciously experienced first-person perspective means to have acquired a very specific functional profile and distinctive level of… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
At 19, I basically held the position that if you were intellectually honest and really wanted to get in touch with political reality then… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
I think that there is an ongoing conspiracy in the philosophical community, an organized form of self-deception, as in a cult, to simply all… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
You cannot be a rational subject without veto-control on the level of mental action. — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
Someone who cannot stop his outer flow of words will soon be unable to communicate with other human beings at all. — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
I believe that if we would carefully apply the distinction between transparency and opacity to the different layers of the human self-model, looking at… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
As far as inner action is concerned, we are only rarely truly self-determined persons, for the major part of our conscious mental activity rather… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
Subjectivity is an ability, the capacity to use a new inner mode of presenting the fact that you currently know something to yourself. — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
One of the interesting characteristics of the Ego Tunnel is that it creates (as Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo called it) a robust "out-of-the brain… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
As a first-order approximation, I would say that phenomenality is "availability for introspective attention": Consciousness is a property of all those mental contents to… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
I could never understand how someone would embark on their life without having first confronted and clarified the truly fundamental questions. — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
A lot of evidence shows that most of our cognitive processing is unconscious - phenomenal experience is just a very small slice or partition… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
“First, we developed the self-model, because we had to integrate our sensory perceptions with our bodily behavior. Then this self-model became conscious, and the… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
Only as long as we believe in our own identity over time does it make sense for us to make future plans, avoid risks,… — Thomas Metzinger Copy Share Image
