ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World Are One
by Riccardo Manzotti
(O/R Books, £17)
EVEN readers familiar with key concepts in neuroscience and cognitive psychology are likely to find The Spread Mind a tricky read.
Not because Riccardo Manzotti is a poor communicator of complex material or that he lacks commitment to widening access to the science of consciousness but because the idea at the heart of his latest book is so profoundly subversive of scientific orthodoxy it demands careful reconsideration of experimental evidence and personal experience.
Experience is key to Manzotti’s theory of consciousness. Conscious experience is an aspect of nature, he suggests, and has no special status as a simulation or reconstruction of reality.
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