Thomas Metzinger

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher,...

Philosopher and scientist Thomas Metzinger argues that neuroscience's picture of the self as an emergent phenomenon of our biology, and the attendant fact that the self can be manipulated and even controlled, raises novel and serious ethical questions. If, as Metzinger argues, our conception of the self is a sort of tunnel-vision-like experience of the world—with little left in and...