Review of Aristotle's Laptop: The Discovery of Our Informational Mind by Igor Aleksander and Helen Morton

Abstract

This book is both a history of attempts to understand consciousness, and a presentation of the authors' own theory. The history is well written and informative. The theory has some intriguing aspects, based on how a neurally controlled agent might locate itself in space. But for the most part they base their theory of consciousness on Giulio Tononi's proposal that sensations are trajectories of a neural system through a very high-dimensional state space. Because it is never explained how such a state space could influence verbal reports of the qualia of sensations, the theory leaves consciousness as a sort of vapor misting around the brain while waiting for a precise specification of its causal role.