The Meditations of Manuel de la Vega addresses the hard problem of consciousness in a nonreductive way. Which is to say the question is posited as to why no matter how much structural or functional explanation we may devise this does not quite satisfy attempts to grasp the essence the what it is like of being an embodied consciousness. The book's method aims to be faithful to its subject by its choice of format. It does not intend to offer fully articulated theory as univocal argument but to facilitate theory over the course of several exemplars and by way of various perspectives which in the end form a wholealbeit not a closed or finalized whole. While fully compatible with certain theories of consciousness and while yet incorporating much theorizing itself the book makes the point by its example that explanations of consciousness must not necessarily be theories and models and that the mode in which theories are rendered may be only part and perhaps not the most important part of what consciousness is or does. This is much in keeping with phenomenological methods with the anthropological-genealogical approaches of existentialists and with certain takes on aesthetics; in keeping also with the insights of post-structuralism and yet it does not exclude (and may even complement) some current computational or neurophysiological models of consciousness. . Language: English