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Anil Seth

Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and author of Being You.

12 books on the record · 11 Sep 2021 – 11 Sep 2021 · @anilkseth

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

recommends it

Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio

Another book I wanted to mention in this context is a fairly obvious choice, Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error, which is a foundational book about the self, in particular because it reconnects emotion with rationality and the body.

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

recommends it

How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Then, finally, there is Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions are Made, which is very recent and very up to date.

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

loved it

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I loved his Never Let Me Go, which I thought was beautifully delicate and raw and powerful.

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

loved it

Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith

There's a book, which isn't in the five I've chosen (though it could well have been), Peter Godfrey Smith's Other Minds, which I think is a beautiful exploration of other minds.

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

loved it

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger

Metzinger has also written a trade book called The Ego Tunnel, which is a shorter, more accessible account of the same core ideas. It's from 2009, so it's been around a while, but it's a really wonderful book.

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

recommends it

The Mechanical Mind in History by Philip Husbands & Owen Holland

There are a couple of other books I'd have loved to have included here. My PhD supervisor, Phil Husbands, and Owen Holland, have a recent book called The Mechanical Mind in History

on fivebooks.com · 11 Sep 2021

Everything Anil Seth recommends — not just books — on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.