Thomas Metzinger is professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an adjunct fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on analytical philosophy of the mind and philosophical aspects of neuro- and cognitive sciences, as well as connections between ethics, philosophy of the mind, and anthropology.

He has edited two collections on consciousness, Conscious Experience (Imprint Academic, 1995) and Neural Correlates of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2000) and is the author of Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (MIT Press, 2003). In 2009, Metzinger published The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (Basic Books, 2009), a popular account of his work that also discusses the ethical, cultural and social consequences of consciousness research.

In this lecture, Metzinger will address the questions: What exactly are the essential, non-conceptual, pre-reflexive layers in conscious self-representation?  What constitutes a minimal phenomenal self? He will defend the claim that the content of phenomenal self-consciousness is the content of a “transparent” model in the brain and will draw on recent research on out-of-body experiences (OBEs), full-body illusions (FBIs), and robotic re-embodiment.