5 brilliant books on consciousness

Of philosophy’s many sticky wickets, consciousness is perhaps the most perplexing. The philosopher Simon Blackburn laid out the problem succinctly: “Our own consciousness seems to be the most basic fact confronting us, yet it is almost impossible to say what consciousness is.”

There are some questions surrounding this most basic fact: Do my conscious experiences feel the same as yours? How do they compare to an octopus’s? A sea anemone’s? Is consciousness limited to biological processes, or can machines experience it as well? Does it exist beyond the physical matter of atoms and elements? And how is my subjective experience shaped from flashes of neuron clusters? 

Each question has numerous competing answers, many plausible yet all incomplete. It’s even difficult to say when we became conscious of the problem. Some scholars contend consciousness is a relatively recent development in human history, with Neolithic or earlier humans not experiencing themselves as internal subjects. Even the word consciousness — in our sense of it — is relatively new, not making an appearance until the early modern era when philosophers like René Descartes, John Locke, and Gottfried Leibniz began exploring the issue.

All of which is to say, the problem of consciousness has given philosophers and scholars from other disciplines plenty to write about. To help us navigate it all, we asked five experts to recommend a must-read book on the subject. Here’s what they said.

The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers

Selected by Daniel Toker

In this 1996 book, Chalmers entered the debate over consciousness with a new theory. Consciousness, he argued, couldn’t be reduced to physical matter. Instead, it is irreducible — a fundamental part of nature, akin to time or space.

Chalmers also introduced the ideas of the “hard and easy problems of consciousness.” The easy problem is explaining how bodily systems enable organisms to process information and act accordingly. The hard problem is explaining how and why beings have conscious, subjective experiences at all (qualia in philosophical parlance). Physical processes may explain the former, but the latter requires something else. 

Because ideas like these have proven so influential in thinking about consciousness, Toker, a neuroscientist at UCLA, recommends those interested in consciousness read Chalmers’s book. He says, “Chalmers was one of the early people to push this idea that information theory [the mathematical study of how information is transferred and processed] might be a helpful framework for how to think about consciousness scientifically and philosophically.”

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett

Selected by Earl K. Miller

Dennett takes a different approach from Chalmers in this 1991 book. He proposes the “multiple drafts” model, which states that consciousness is a continuous account of the information processing occurring in the brain. The name comes from Dennett’s analogy that consciousness is like an academic paper being written and edited simultaneously by multiple people. Rather than an individual result, consciousness is a nonlinear, decentralized process from the brain’s “bundle of semi-independent agencies.”

In one of the book’s most controversial claims, Dennett essentially states that qualia is an ill-conceived concept and doesn’t matter in the debate. Which means, Dennett says, the so-called “hard problem of consciousness” isn’t a problem at all.

Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recommends Dennett’s book because of the profound, contrarian nature of his arguments. Miller says, “The most important thing about consciousness is the principle by which the brain makes it happen, not how you feel about it.”

The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch 

Selected by Christopher Timmermann

Instead of viewing cognition as contained within the brain, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch were among the first to propose that we broaden our understanding of mental processes to consider the whole body and its lived experiences.

In this 1991 book, the authors draw on a variety of fields to support and clarify their ideas. These include artificial intelligence, biology, neurology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and even Buddhism. They also introduce the concept of “enaction” to cognitive science — the idea that an organism creates its experiences through its perceptions and interactions with its environment.

Timmermann, a post-doc at Imperial College London at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, recommends the book because its ideas have reshaped the study of cognition and, by extension, consciousness ever since. “[It] is a landmark,” he says. “Though the full impact of this vision was not realized during Varela’s lifetime, it has gained renewed relevance. Today, enactive approaches inform influential accounts of how living beings actively create meaning and active research programs using meditation and psychedelics as serious tools for inquiring into consciousness.”

Philosophy of Psychedelics by Chris Letheby

Selected by Matthew W. Johnson

In this 2021 monograph, Letheby, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Western Australia, examines the philosophy of psychedelic drugs, specifically their use in psychiatric therapy. Reviewing the evidence of their lasting psychological benefits — when used in a safe and supervised environment — he also provides a philosophical analysis of the more mystical experiences associated with their use.

Johnson, a psychedelics researcher and associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medicine, recommends this book because “Letheby does a masterful job in arguing against the assumption that the insights gleaned from psychedelic experience reflect ground truth about metaphysics, including notions of consciousness.”

Instead, Letheby suggests that such assumptions may be a “comforting delusion,” one that should neither drive psychedelic therapy nor deter patients from the lasting benefits such therapies can offer. 

“Regardless of one’s opinion on these questions,” Johnson says, “grappling with [Letheby’s] logic and arguments will be useful for anyone exploring the implications of psychedelics for consciousness.”

Living on Earth by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Selected by Anil Seth

Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher at the University of Sydney, has written several books investigating consciousness in animals, and Seth, an author and neuroscientist, is a fan of them all. But it’s Godfrey-Smith’s 2024 book, Living on Earth, published last year, that gets Seth’s recommendation. In it, Godfrey-Smith explores the nature of conscious minds and how those minds come to shape their environments as active participants in evolution — not just passive beneficiaries of natural processes.

“It’s a sweeping, careful, and courageous exploration of a natural world suffused with life, with minds, and perhaps with consciousness, too,” Seth says. “The picture he paints reaffirms our continuity with the natural world and impresses on us the urgency of the choices we now face.”