Life, Brains and Consciousness

Featured Speaker: Ed Chaplin, M.D

This new book-reading group will read a series of popular books on the brain and consciousness written for a general audience. Over the year, the series will sequentially explore perception, the origins of consciousness, the brain as a prediction machine and our notion of consciousness and the self. This quarter we will read The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. As the title suggests, the book challenges our commonsense notions of perception, reality and consciousness and presents alternative models of perception and consciousness.

July 9: Chapters 1–3
July 23: Chapters 4–7
August 6: Chapters 8–10
August 20: Chapter 11 and Appendix

Presenter Biography

Facilitator: Ed Chaplin, M.D., is a Fellow in the American Academy of Neurology with a longstanding interest in the cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, particularly the neuroscience of human awareness, the generation of human action and knowledge management. He received his medical degree from the University of Louisville School of Medicine and did post-doctoral training in neurology and then served as a full-time faculty member at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine. After moving to San Diego he became the Medical Director of Quality Assurance at Scripps Mercy Hospital.