Thomas Metzinger
Professor of Theoretical Philosophy
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany
Profile – Thomas Metzinger (b. 1958)
Thomas Metzinger is no one. A German philosopher, and director of research groups in neuroethics and theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, he claims that no one ever had or was a self. In Being No One, and his later book The Ego Tunnel, he argues that what we take to be persistent entities are really ongoing processes: the contents of transparent self models. He has experienced and written about many ‘altered states’, including lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, meditation, and drug-induced experiences, and is concerned about the ethical implications of our rapidly advancing phenotechnology. When we can choose which areas of phenospace we want to visit, or can enhance our cognitive skills with specially tailored chemicals, we will need to take responsibility for the consequences. Hence much of his work is in the new field of neuroethics. Metzinger was a co-founder of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and has edited books on conscious experience and the NCCs.
More biographical information
Interview with Richard Marshall, ‘All about the ego tunnel’, for 3:AM Magazine
Interview with Michael Taft for Being Human, September 2012
Twitter @ThomasMetzinger
Publications
List of publications on Wikipedia
List of free downloads of papers in English and German
Citations on Google Scholar
Quotes on Goodreads
Selected publications relevant to consciousness
Frith, C. D., and Metzinger, T. (2016). What’s the use of consciousness? How the stab of conscience made us really conscious. In A. K. Engel, K. J. Friston, and D. Kragic (Eds), The pragmatic turn: Toward action-oriented views in cognitive science (pp. 193–214). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Books preview here.
Lenggenhager, B., Tadi, T., Metzinger, T., and Blanke, O. (2007). Video ergo sum: Manipulating bodily self-consciousness. Science, 317(5841), 1096–1099. Paywall-protected journal record here. Direct PDF download of peer commentaries (preprint) here.
Metzinger, T. (1995a). Faster than thought: Wholeness, homogeneity and temporal coding. In T. Metzinger (Ed.), Conscious experience (pp. 425–461). Thorverton, Devon: Imprint Academic. Google Books preview here.
Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (1995b). Conscious experience. Thorverton, Devon: Imprint Academic. Google Books preview here.
Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (2000). Neural correlates of consciousness: Empirical and conceptual questions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Books preview here.
Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (2003). Being no one: The self-model theory of subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Books preview here.
Metzinger, T. (2005). Out-of-body experiences as the origin of the concept of a ‘soul’. Mind and Matter, 31, 57–84. Paywall-protected journal record here. Direct PDF download (final version) here.
Metzinger, T. (2009). The ego tunnel: The science of the mind and the myth of the self. New York: Basic Books. Google Books preview here.
Video
List of video and audio material in English and German
The transparent avatar in your brain. TEDx talk, Barcelona, July 2013
Interview with Sue Blackmore, June 2015
Body-representation and self-consciousness: from embodiment to minimal phenomenal selfhood. Lecture (with abstract) on the phenomenal self-model, Max Planck Institute, Leibniz, February 2013
Being no one: Consciousness, the phenomenal self, and first-person perspective. Lecture introduced by Alva Noë, UC Berkeley, February 2005
Audio
The nature of consciousness. Conversation on consciousness and self, Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast
You are not a self: Bodies, brains, and the nature of consciousness. Interview (also touching on free will) for ABC podcast All in the Mind, October 2009 (includes transcript)