Overview
- Released this week, Pollan’s tenth book surveys consciousness through science, Indigenous practice, literature, and personal psychedelic experience.
- He reports no consensus in the field, citing at least 106 competing theories and emphasizing the limits of current scientific approaches.
- Pollan argues that today’s AI lacks feeling, embodiment, and vulnerability required for real experience, casting doubt on claims of machine consciousness.
- Interviews with figures such as Christof Koch and Antonio Damasio foreground the case that feeling precedes computation in conscious life.
- Warning that platforms now trade in attention and even emotional attachment, he urges readers to defend their inner life against commercial capture.