The Riddle Of The Self | F. T. Mikhailov

The question of consciousness, of its relation to being cannot in principle be reduced to a particular scientific problem of the correlation of mental and physiological processes or to a problem of the reception, processing and production of information. The essence of this problem is not what happens under my skull when I calculate the trajectory of a flight to the stars, but what in philosophy is called the question of the identity of thought and being. How is it possible that a person can mentally chart the road to the stars? How and why can he, in his thoughts, conceive of the existence of the Universe? How can the infinity of time and space be contained in the in­ stant of their realisation in consciousness? This is the key question of the human ability to set goals. And unless one knows one's way through the two thousand years history of solutions to this question, one will have little chance of even framing a correct approach to any partic­ular problem of the relation between mind and brain.
That is why I have called this book The Riddle of the Self. By suggesting that the Self, the Ego presents a rid­dle I imply that there may be many different ways of tackling it.
This book is not a calm and consistent academic expo­sition of compiled knowledge. It is more like a not very good transcript of a heated debate. And it is not in itself the answer to the riddle, but a discussion of how the prob­lem should be stated. It is about the method that should be used in the search.