Consciousness—long relegated to scholarly debates—is suddenly more than an academic issue, arising in current controversies over the moral status of artificial intelligence and invertebrates. This head subject is the topic of popular science writer Michael Pollan’s latest book, A World Appears, which offers readers a charming, witty, insightful, and eccentric account of Pollan’s efforts to understand the elusive concept—a journey in which, he writes, he knows less at the end than he did at the beginning.
You can read Ned Block’s full review here.