Consciousness

  • J. Allan Hobson
Scientific American Library, $34.95, £23.95
This self-portrait of René Magritte appears in Consciousness by J. Allan Hobson (Scientific American Library, $34.95, £23.95). The book explores the relationship between the mind and the brain from the premise that “we are our brains and our brains are us”. Thus, it describes brain structures and functions that are now understood to be fundamental to conscious experience. Here is what the book has to say about the Magritte self-portrait. “He is, of course, Magritte, but only in the sense that Magritte is Everyman, the essential person with all the unessential details left out. The consciousness of the bowler-hatted man is generic, having the same formal features every day and — by the light of the moon — every night, in a reliably state-dependent manner.”