In 1817 the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described “the willing suspension of disbelief” as an act of “poetic faith” through which a reader accepts fanciful aspects of a fictional work. Without this willingness the …
The Ego Tunnel and the Nature of Reality
Thomas Metzinger’s new book The Ego Tunnel weaves research in out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, phantom limbs and other extraordinary human occurrences with leading edge neuroscience to create a convincing picture of how neural activity constantly …
The Assumption of Reality
When we think about reality or talk about reality the big assumption we almost always make is that there is a reality to think and talk about. When Rene Descartes drew an astonishingly original distinction …