DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

The Fiction of an Interpreter Behind the Interpretation

Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
By Thomas Metzinger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 699 pp. Cloth, $55.00.

In a very extensive work, Thomas Metzinger presents his self-model theory of subjectivity. The self-model theory of subjectivity (SMT) is mainly a representationalist theory that deals primarily with the phenomenal self. It is directed to asking what it means that mental states are subjective states and what it means that a concrete system possesses a phenomenal first-person perspective. Terms such as the everyday psychological "I," the contents of our self-consciousness, the soul, or what in scientific terminology is described as the self, all are analyzed as a result of specific information-processing events in the central nervous system.