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The one thing we can know for certain is that we are conscious. Maybe you live in a simulation. Maybe we're all brains in vats. Perhaps everybody else only appears to be conscious, and you are sole person with the "lights on". Whatever the underlying reality might be, you can be convinced of your awareness and experience: the very act of thinking about it is the proof. And yet, consciousness remains one of science's most intractable mysteries. We don't know how the tangle of molecules that form our neurons, seemingly the same stuff of which everything else is made, results in a conscious experience. In Conscious, Annaka Harris seeks to explore the parameters of what we know about consciousness, give us a tour of the popular thinkers and thoughts, and advocate for an unorthodox solution.

If you haven't read much on the topic, this is a great, quick introduction that is sure to expand your mind. If you have, you'll recognize many of the themes and examples, but appreciate the clarity and concision of the descriptions. Harris introduces the hard problem of consciousness (that aforementioned bugaboo of nonthinking matter giving rise to thought) and the common ballpark solutions: perhaps consciousness is an emergent property arising from the complexity of neuronal connections, or the frequencies generated by their activity, or the act of information processing itself. She looks at edge cases that cast light on the topic: plants react to stimuli and form memories based on experience, and yet we know they don't have anything we would call brains. We're pretty sure that a dog is conscious, but is there something that it's like to be a bat? Or a shrimp? When did consciousness arise in the evolutionary time frame? Is it an all-or-nothing proposition, or can you be 15% conscious? We have created artificial intelligence (AI) that also has complexity, information processing, and stimulus response... When it tells us it's conscious, will we believe it?

Harris also presents aspects of our own conscious experience that throw off expectations and constrain our theories. Our brains fudge a lot of our sensory inputs to create cohesive "binding": a perception that things are happening simultaneously. A serious neurological look at our decision-making processes reveals that decisions are only reported to our conscious "selves", and not made by them. This casts doubt on the concept of free will, and Harris explores the societal and logical implications of that particular illusion. Brain surgeries have revealed split-brain patients whose left and right hemispheres don't talk to each other, resulting in multiple, competing centers of consciousness (for example, the right hemisphere takes an action based on information the left hemisphere doesn't have, and the left hemisphere comes up with its own justification for the action). This suggests we might have multiple centers of consciousness that work together to create the semblance of a whole. Sleep is an interesting window into our ability to generate vibrant simulation without concurrent sensory input. "Locked-in syndrome" lets us know that it's possible to be conscious without the ability to speak or generate any indication of awareness (with frightening implications for anesthesia and end-of-life decisions). Drugs can alter consciousness and even remove the illusion of an "I" that is doing the experiencing. Practiced meditation can accomplish similar feats of breaking the illusion of self-as-passenger within the body.

About halfway through the book, Harris switches gears and advocates for a solution that many have written off: panpsychism. Panpsychism addresses the problem of consciousness arising from non-conscious material by positing that consciousness is inherent in ALL matter to begin with. The common criticism is that this sounds mystical and absurd on its face: we picture desk chairs upset that we're sitting in them, or individual atoms with attitudes. Harris agrees that these are absurd conclusions to draw, and regrets the baggage of the term. This is not a claim that every object is conscious to a human level: there are degrees of consciousness and there are objects that we should expect to have no information processing worth considering. Harris points to a number prominent scientists (she has talked to an impressive array of thinkers and researchers for this book) who have entertained a version of panpsychism that might resolve some of the problems traditional models haven't made headway in solving. And yet, she admits that even with the hard problem addressed, many other issues remain (such as explaining qualia - the subjective attributes we experience - and the fact that this theory doesn't fare well with Occam's demand for simple explanations). Harris insists she's not completely convinced of panpsychism, but is convinced that it's worth taking seriously. I would love to have heard some potential ways this hypothesis could be tested. While I do not leave convinced, I will pay attention to panpsychist explanations far more than I would have otherwise. For the remainder of the book, Harris continues her interesting conversation on consciousness, but now in the light of panpsychism's potential explanatory power.

As a funny aside, Annaka Harris references journalist and author Michael Harris (no relation), psychedelic researcher Robin Carhart-Harris (no relation), reporter and meditation promoter Dan Harris (no relation), but not neuroscientist, author, podcaster and meditation proponent Sam Harris (her husband). It's quite the convention of Harrises, and the exclusion of her very-qualified-on-this-topic partner seemed like a conscious (heh) effort to avoid him having too much influence or getting outsized credit for the book. Alternately, I wondered if he wanted to avoid being seen as championing panpsychism. According to on Sam's podcast, he was simply too preoccupied with his podcast and meditation app to return the copy-editing favor that she bestows on his books.

Bottom line: it's a quick read, well written, that will give you a lot of food for thought. Or whatever is going on in your head.