En busca del yo

The human mind is undoubtedly the most enigmatic entity in nature. So mysterious that for thousands of years human beings have shown an irremediable tendency to believe that it is the reflection of a "something", unique and immaterial, that constitutes our authentic being, whether we call it self, soul or spirit. We resist thinking that our mind is the mere product of the natural functioning of our organism. In Search of the Self aims to show how that belief is nothing more than an illusion that we cling to in an unthinking way. After exposing the cognitive phenomena that lead to the idea that the mind is an immaterial spirit, and even immortal, the book addresses the two qualities of the mind that make it especially mysterious compared to other entities and processes of our organism: the free will (our apparent ability to determine our actions spontaneously, not forced by external causes) and consciousness (that quality of the mind that consists in the ability to be aware of something). With the help of the results of some recent psychological investigations, the main theories that have tried to explain these two qualities are critically analyzed, to end up concluding that we lack good reasons to think that the mind (I, soul or spirit) can be something other than a part of the normal and natural physiological functioning of our nervous system.