Questioning Consciousness

Questioning Consciousness brings together neuroscientific, psychological and phenomenological research, combining in a readable format recent developments in image research and neurology. It reassesses the mind-body relation and research on 'mental models', abstract concept formation, and acquisition of logical and apparently 'imageless' inference skills. It is argued that to be conscious of an object is essentially to imagine in a habituated way what would happen if we were to perform certain actions in relation to the object; and that mental images fit together to build up abstract concepts. This analysis shows why conscious information processing is so structurally different from — yet interrelated with — non-conscious processing, and how mind and body interrelate as a process to its substratum in the way that a sound wave relates to the medium through which it passes. (Series A)

Nigel J.T. Thomas, California State University, in Psyche 3(4), October 1997:
A considerable potential contribution to the development of consciousness studies and cognitive science, showing us a possible escape route from the dead-end view of cognition as mechanical, unconscious computation with which spurious and quite ineffable 'qualia' just happen to be somehow associated. Not only does the book provide a promising new general theoretical direction, but there are also many points of detail that could be usefully tested, explored, clarified, and reworked by experimental as well as theoretical research.