Consciousness is being attuned to the world

Alva Noë, professor of philosophy at the University of California, has written in his 2009 book entitled Out of Our Heads: "to understand consciousness in humans and animals, we must look not inward, into the recesses of our insides; rather, we need to look to the ways in which each of us, as a whole animal, carries on the processes of living in and with and in response to the world around us. You are not your brain. The brain, rather, is part of what you are."

Noë explains: "In this book I use the term 'consciousness' to mean, roughly, experience. And I think of experience, broadly, as encompassing thinking, feeling, and the fact that a world ‘shows up’ for us in perception.”

 

“Conscious states are typically states that you and I can talk about, that influence what you and I do, and so they are states that you and I can make use of in planning.”

 

"The problem of consciousness, as I am thinking of it here, is that of understanding our nature as beings who think, who feel, and for whom a world shows up.

 

"Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body, and world. Indeed, consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context.

"Brains don’t have minds; people (and other animals) do.”

"The world is not a construction of the brain, nor is it a product of our own conscious efforts. It is there for us; we are here in it. The conscious mind is not inside us; it is, it would be better to say, a kind of active attunement to the world, an achieved integration. It is the world itself, all around, that fixes the nature of conscious experience."

Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads, pp. 9-10, 142.