Wanja Wiese - Experienced Wholeness: Integrating Insights from Gestalt Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Predictive Processing

When I started thinking about phenomenal unity as a graduate student, I had the impression that it was one of the most important problems surrounding consciousness, but at the same time it seemed completely elusive. A few years later, when I submitted an early version of this book as a dissertation, I still had the feeling that I could not quite see the path to an adequate solution to the problem, although I had a firmer understanding of what could be said about phenomenal unity in conceptually coherent ways. Since then, the manuscript has undergone a thorough transformation, and I hope the result shows that I have been able to shed significantly more light on some of the puzzles related to phenomenal unity and consciousness.

A lot of people have helped me throughout this process. First of all, I thank my supervisor Thomas Metzinger. He has been my teacher and mentor for many years and encouraged and supported me during all stages of my academic career so far. His comments on chapter drafts were always helpful and at some points enabled me to see problems from a completely different perspective. I also gained a more sophisticated perspective on various aspects of the topic by learning about predictive processing. For this I am extremely grateful to my second supervisor, Anil Seth; his work on predictive processing pointed me to relevant connections between theories of perception and other work in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. His rigorous way of integrating philosophical and empirical findings has served as a model for many parts of this book.

I am greatly indebted to the Barbara Wengeler Foundation for supporting me with a PhD scholarship for three years (20122015), for awarding me with a Barbara Wengeler Prize for my dissertation in 2015, and for funding trips to several conferences. This has provided ideal working conditions for me, because I have been able to focus entirely on my research. I also profited greatly from the many MIND meetings I attended in the past years. I am grateful to the Barbara Wengeler Foundation for making these regular workshops on current issues of philosophy and related disciplines possible. I am also grateful to Jennifer Windt, who has been the manager of the MIND Group for many years and who organized most of the MIND meetings from which I profited so much.

I thank Philip Laughlin at the MIT Press very much for his support and patience, and his assistant, Chris Eyer, for his support. I am grateful to Amy Hendrickson for creating the wonderful template and documentation at MIT Press.