I introduce and defend the notion of a cognitive account of the sense of ownership. A cognitive account of the sense of ownership holds that one experiences something as one's own only if one thinks of something as one's own. By contrast, a phenomenal account of the sense of ownership holds that one can experience something as one's own without thinking about anything as one's own. I argue that we have no reason to favour phenomenal accounts over cognitive accounts, that (...) cognitive accounts are plausible given that much of our mental activity has unnoticed effects on our mental life, and that certain illusory experiences of body ownership sometimes described as thought-independent may be best explained as imaginative perceptual experiences. (shrink)

I provide an analysis of the concept of an “affordance” that enables one to conceive of “structural affordance” as a kind of affordance relation that might hold between an agent and its body. I then review research in the science of humanoid bodily movement to indicate the empirical reality of structural affordance.

A glance at the contents of this book might be enough to persuade that it is absolutely required reading for anyone interested in the study of consciousness. The discussion is replete with insight into a number of neglected topics: colour in dream experience (chapter 1), echolocation in auditory experience (chapter 4) and closed-eye visualisations (chapter 8). More familiar themes such as the spatial qualities presented in visual experience (chapter 2), visual imagery (chapter 3), the introspectionist movement (chapter 5), conscious attention (...) and multisensory experience (chapter 6) are given genuinely novel treatment. Chapter 7, titled ‘The Unreliability of Introspection’ is almost a microcosm of the book as a whole; it is not quite representative of the entire book but it gives a strong flavour of the style of argument employed elsewhere, so the half-interested (or hurried) reader would be well advised to take it in as a taster. The book is written in accessible prose suitable for an .. (shrink)