What Is Consciousness?
Philosophy's Deepest Inquiry into the Mind, from Ancient Meditations on the Self Through Descartes and Phenomenology to the Hard Problem and AIBy Alex Omberg
Length3h 36m
About this audiobook
The greatest mystery in the universe isn't out there. It is inside your head.
You are conscious right now. You are reading these words, and there is a specific feeling of what it is like to be you doing so. But how does wet, physical brain matter create vivid, subjective experience?
This single question—the Hard Problem of Consciousness—remains the most baffling puzzle in both science and philosophy.
In What Is Consciousness?, Alex Omberg takes you on an exhilarating, 2,500-year journey through the ultimate labyrinth: the human mind. From the ancient temples of Greece and the deep meditation traditions of India, to the mind-bending theories of modern phenomenology and the cutting-edge frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, this book bridges the gap between ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience.
You will never look at yourself—or the world around you—the same way again.
Audiobook details
GenrePhilosophy, Science and Nature
Length3 hrs 36 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMay 10, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction: The Mystery You Are
44The Lived Body
2Chapter 1: Know Thyself
45Consciousness and Freedom
3The Divided Soul
46The First-Person Perspective
4Form and Function
47Chapter 8: The Hard Problem
5The Ruling Faculty
48Easy Problems and Hard Problem
Show all chaptersShow less
6Atoms of the Soul
49The Knowledge Argument
7The Self Examined
50The Zombie Argument
8Chapter 2: The Inner Light
51Materialist Responses
9The Self Beyond Experience
52The Structure of Experience
10No Self to Be Found
53Integrated Information Theory
11Maps of the Mind
54Living with Mystery
12The Argument from Introspection
55Chapter 9: The Panpsychist Turn
13The Living Laboratory
56The Appeal of Panpsychism
14Chapter 3: The Ghost in the Machine
57The Combination Problem
15Two Substances
58Responses to Combination
16The Interaction Problem
59Micropsychism and Russellian Monism
17Occasionalism and Parallelism
60Objections and Alternatives
18The Legacy of Dualism
61Emergentism as Alternative
19The Problem Evolves
62Living with Uncertainty
20Chapter 4: The Identity Puzzle
63Chapter 10: Machine Minds
21Memory and the Self
64The Chinese Room
22The Bundle Theory
65Narrow AI and General AI
23Thought Experiments
66The Hard Problem Returns
24What Are We?
67Ethical Implications
25What Really Matters
68The Spectrum of Consciousness
26Chapter 5: The Problem of Other Minds
69Alternative Architectures
27The Argument from Analogy
70The Future Is Arriving
28Philosophical Zombies
71Chapter 11: The View from Within
29Behaviorism's Response
72Neurophenomenology
30Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument
73The Question of Scope
31The Inference to Best Explanation
74Altered States
32Living with Uncertainty
75Disorders of Consciousness
33Chapter 6: Mind Equals Brain?
76Contemplative Science
34The Identity Theory
77Theoretical Pluralism
35Functionalism
78The Path Forward
36Eliminative Materialism
79Epilogue: The Light That Knows Itself
37The Explanatory Gap
80Appendix A: Timeline
38Property Dualism
81Appendix B: Annotated Further Reading
39The Persistence of Mystery
82Primary Sources
40Chapter 7: The Return to Experience
83Secondary Sources: Introductions and Surveys
41The Method of Epoché
84Secondary Sources: Specialized Studies
42Being-in-the-World
85Online Resources
43Embodied Consciousness
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