Being You is not as simple as it sounds. Somehow, within each of our brains, billions of neurons work to create our conscious experience. How does this happen? Why do we experience life in the first person? After over twenty years researching the brain, Anil Seth puts forward a radical new theory of consciousness and self. His unique theory of what it means to ‘be you’ challenges our understanding of perception and reality and it turns what you thought you knew about yourself on its head.

“Anil Seth’s radical theory of consciousness challenges our understanding of perception and reality, doing for brain science what Dawkins did for evolutionary biology.” (publisher’s note)

About the author

Anil Seth is a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness science. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Sackle Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex.

Praise for the book

A brilliant beast of a book. A wide ranging synthesis pulling together disparate stands from philosophy, science, literature, personal experience and speculation – this latter being the most exciting for me, despite some proposals being as yet unproven. Seth proposes to explain not just what and how we are, but probably provocative for some folks, why we are the way we are. Why do we have the feeling of continually being the same person? (when obviously I, at least, am not) Why do we have this feeling of being self aware? What is it for? Hugely inspirational – I filled up 10 pages with exuberant notes. Keep a pencil handy. (David Byrne)

‘Seth thinks clearly and sharply on one of the hardest problems of science and philosophy, cutting through weeds with a scientist’s mind and a storyteller’s skill.’ (Adam Rutherford, writer for The Guardian a.o.)

Seth provokes us to think about thinking. And he offers what the interested reader needs – a book which makes complex ideas readable, relatable, and gripping. If you want to understand his subject better – he’ll help you. And who wouldn’t want to better understand consciousness? In our lives, there is nothing weirder or more fundamental. (Alex Garland, director of Ex Machina)

Paperback, published in 2022, 358 pages.