Meditations of Manuel de la Vega

The Meditations of Manuel de la Vega addresses the "hard" problem of consciousness in a nonreductive way. Which is to say, the question is posited as to why, no matter how much structural or functional explanation we may devise, this does not quite satisfy attempts to grasp the essence, the "what it is like," of being an embodied consciousness. The book’s method aims to be faithful to its subject by its choice of format. It does not intend to offer fully articulated theory, as univocal argument, but to facilitate theory, over the course of several exemplars, and by way of various perspectives which in the end form a whole—albeit not a closed or finalized whole. While fully compatible with certain theories of consciousness, and while yet incorporating much theorizing itself, the book makes the point, by its example, that explanations of consciousness must not necessarily be theories and models, and that the mode in which theories are rendered may be only part, and perhaps not the most important part, of what consciousness "is" or "does." This is much in keeping with phenomenological methods, with the anthropological-genealogical approaches of existentialists, and with certain takes on aesthetics; in keeping also with the insights of post-structuralism, and yet it does not exclude (and may even complement) some current computational or neurophysiological models of consciousness.

Cora C. Cruz is an independent scholar and literary writer in New York. She studied philosophy at Hamilton College and then at the New School for Social Research. Her fiction has been published in 34th Parallel and the Tulane Review. She was a fiction finalist for a New Millenium Writings Literary Award. Her recent article on existentialism appeared in the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Journal.