cover image Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness

Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness

Nicholas Humphrey. Belknap Press, $19.95 (151pp) ISBN 978-0-674-02179-2

In this extended answer to the question, ""Can one's consciousness survive after one dies?""-asked by philosopher Thomas Reid in 1775 and Joe King, a disabled country singer, in 2003-Humphrey concedes he is working to ""develop a concept of consciousness which we, as theorists, can do business with."" He argues perception is neither solely nor necessarily a product of sensation, and, in fact, the two may exist independently of one another. Humphrey simplifies these intellectually rigorous discussions by returning to a central example of a person staring at a red screen. (Thus creating a ""red sensation."") Humphrey's conversational prose-the book is based on his lectures-is an odd fit for the scholarly material, but his approach makes his 30 years of experience in ""consciousness studies"" accessible to casual readers.