The Feeling of Life Itself

Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed

By: Christof Koch

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain, three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece, give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information.

Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation - it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

©2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)2020 Tantor

Needs the illustrations

This audio absolutely needs the illustrations to follow the technical parts of the book. Also the narrator pronounces neuronal so that it sounds like urinal.

Life is Amazing

Good overview of IIT and the theory of consciousness. The book gets rather complex in the later chapters and hard to listen to without the axillary picturea. The coda is the best, but I won't spoil it for you.

Good Theory. Unsatisfying read.

I wanted very much to find this book valuable having just finished Alan Lightman’ Transcendent Brain in which he speaks highly of Koch’s Theory. And I did admire the essential discussion of his notion of his IIT of Consciousness being pervasive in all beings.

But I wanted him to write more of the Brain’s function in evoking Consciousness than he did, he concentrated too much on the Nuts and Bolts of Neuronal activity and not, at least for me, of his overall vision of Consciousness arising from that low-level activity.

For this reason I found the book unsatisfying though I like what I understand of his Theory. I have to give it only Three Stars but it was an enjoyable read. ***

It explains the complexity of our brains but we should not stop trying to understand why.

I like the reader of the book. Sounds like he wrote it. I don't know if he didn't.

One of the great books on consciousness

I don't think information integration Theory is the final explanation of consciousness, but it is an important step along the way. this is one of the best books I've ever read on consciousness