Michele Farisco’s book, "The Enigma of Consciousness: What Does Its Relationship with the Brain Teach Us?", is the fifth volume in Biogem's The Two Cultures series, edited by Antonio Ereditato, Giuseppe Remuzzi, and Ortensio Zecchino and published by Rubbettino.

The book by Farisco, head of Biogem's Bioethics Unit and a collaborator of different international research groups in both the scientific and human sciences fields, offers a summary of the research he has developed in recent years on the topic of consciousness, understood both as the capacity for cognition and as the capacity for subjective experience. In close comparison with data emerging from the most recent studies on the brain, particularly cognitive, clinical, and computational neuroscience, as well as psychology and biology, Farisco develops a conceptual analysis of the topic, highlighting the lack of a definitive theory in both science and philosophy, the many open questions, particularly regarding possible forms of consciousness alternative to human consciousness (for example, in other animals or artificial systems), and the several ethical implications (for example, for patients with severe brain damage).

Rather than articulate definitive answers, the book aims to highlight the still open questions and propose a model for addressing them effectively. As the author writes: «I obviously have no definitive answers to the enigma of consciousness, which remains a mystery despite every effort to understand it. We can probably only approximate a satisfactory answer, without ever reaching a definitive solution: on the other hand, this is the beauty of consciousness, a mystery we can have an insight about by experiencing it rather than thinking about it. More than a knowledge of consciousness, we can aspire to a heuristic of consciousness: to define an approach, a method, a style of thought that allows us to advance in unveiling its mystery, and in the meantime gain new and more refined knowledge useful for caring for our consciousness, that is, for caring for ourselves. The necessary prerequisite for advancing on this path of self-revelation (or at least for not getting bogged down in the insurmountable limits of our self-understanding) is a fundamental intellectual humility.»

https://www.store.rubbettinoeditore.it/catalogo/lenigma-della-coscienza/