The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago.
What the authors did here was reground it in neuroscience (scientific materialism) rather than the generic philosophical primitives of phenomenology (which in this case fade into the background a bit, although they remain relevant to all empirical work per se), and draw out some of the impacts of that shift.
> The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago.
More like a thousand years ago, if you include Eastern traditions of insight meditation. "Conscious experience is mostly just memory" is the core insight of what in those traditions is called "no self".
The conscious mind is just as much of a conditioned phenomena as the subconscious mind. I don’t see what this has to do with no-self.
I didn’t get the impression that the insight of no-self is that consciousness is “just X”. Consciousness is there, clearly (you’re not unconscious). Just like any other conditioned thing.
As Sam Harris phrases it, thoughts and senses are "merely representations" in consciousness. The self, as we perceive it, is a representation in consciousness.
What the authors did here was reground it in neuroscience (scientific materialism) rather than the generic philosophical primitives of phenomenology (which in this case fade into the background a bit, although they remain relevant to all empirical work per se), and draw out some of the impacts of that shift.