What is it like to be something?

Ways through

Two routes, each starting somewhere different. Nothing here is a prerequisite for anything else, and every question stands on its own. A stop opened from a route carries it: the foot of the question offers the next one.

1. What you are not seeing

   Perception, attention, language, memory and choice: five places to ask how much of what the mind hands you it made itself.

   Take this route

   1. 01How much of what you see is invented?
   2. 02Why do we miss what is in front of us?
   3. 03Does the language you speak change what you see?
   4. 04Can you trust a memory?
   5. 05Do we choose what we do?

2. The lights going out

   Sleep, dreams, anaesthesia and a divided brain, four ways of asking what has to be present for anyone to be there, then why there is experience at all and whether a machine could have it.

   Take this route

   1. 01Why do we sleep?
   2. 02Why do we dream?
   3. 03Where does anaesthesia take you?
   4. 04What makes you one person?
   5. 05Why does anything feel like anything?
   6. 06Could a machine be conscious?