It's not essential for a branch of science to explain why the phenomenon is there in the first place.

Physics, the overall enterprise of physics, incredible explanatory power about the universe,

completely doesn't tell us why there's a universe in the first place to explain.

We often set a higher bar for consciousness than we do for other things,

partly because we are conscious. We want that intuitive, aha, like, oh, that makes sense. There's absolutely no reason why a scientific account of consciousness should be intuitively satisfying. It would be nice if it were, but that's not strictly necessary.

I want to understand what it is like to be me better. What does it mean to be a self in the world? The way I've been going about this is by trying to

draw parallels between the way the brain constructs of the world and the way the brain

construct experiences of the self and the way the brain construct experiences of the self.

So rather than the self as being this inner observer of an external world.

Now the self is a perceptual construction too.

Welcome to Brain Science, the podcast where we explore how recent discoveries are helping unravel the mystery of how our brains make us human. I'm your host Dr. Ginger Campbell and this is episode 188. Today's guest is Anil Seth, author of

the fascinating new book Being You, A New Science of Consciousness.

But before I tell you about that, I want to remind you that you can get more episodes of brain science, complete show notes, and episode transcripts

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