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The Return of Consciousness - a New Science on Old Questions

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The Return of Consciousness - a New Science on Old Questions The Return of Consciousness - A New Science on Old Questions JUNE 14TH – 15TH 2015 Avesta Manor, Sweden A SEMINAR ARRANGED BY AXEL AND MARGARET AX:SON JOHNSON FOUNDATION Outline The Return of Consciousness – A new science on old questions Remnats of ritual burials are by far the oldest findings Only in the end of the 19th century was the black box of human religious activaties we have access to, and a opend again. A certain philosopher asked an annoying belief in a transcendental soul that survives death is pre- question: “what is it like to be a bat?” He meant that un- sent in almost all religions. Gautama Buddah and other less science can tell ”what it is to be like someone”, “what Indian thinkers made knowledge about consciousness is it like to have a phenomenal consciousness”, science the central part of their spiritual message. For Plato the has failed. The subjective side of life must be explained. ideal world of the soul was the highest, while Aristo- le also considered a more earthly soul. René Descartes At the same time neuroscientists got new tools to study marked the beginning of modern philosophy and sci- the brain. With these new tools they undertake research entific thinking. He believed that you can only be sure on what happens, and where in the brain, where someone about one thing: the existence of your Self which is a thinks about a red tomato. In this way one could find thinking non-spatial entity. The 19th century saw the the neural correlates of consciousness. In this seminar birth of psychology as an independent limb on the tree we probe into the history of consciousness research as of science that grew out of philosophy. At that time well as examine the newest findings. psychology simply meant studies of Consciousness, but in the 20th century the perspective changed. Conscious- The latest theories in the field ask: What is cons- ness became considered a too evasive an object of study ciousness? How does it arise? Is it limited to the brain? and not a proper object of scientific inquiry. Instead the Does conscious experiences happen only in your head, behavior of Man should be studied. What output do you or is it maybe out of your head? In what way is cons- get from certain in-put? The Behaviouristic movement ciousness affected by brain injures? What about dreams, turned the inner man into a black box. In the 1950’s the so called near-death experiences and other phenomena perspective changed again. The black box was opened that many people find intriguing today? Where does a little. Now it became fashionable to try to understand science stand today on these issues and what grand the cognitive abilities of man. The new Cognitive scien- theories of consciousness can we depend upon in order ce turned the inner man into a non-conscious computer. to understand consciousness? Programme Sunday June 14th OPENING 2.15 p.m. Anders Haag Moderator 2.25 p.m. Anil Seth A History of the Future of Consciousness Sciences THE DIVERSE VIEWS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 2.40 p.m. Thomas Nagel Consciousness and the Physical Science 2.55 p.m. Andy Clark Consciousness Deflated 3.10 p.m. Patricia Churchland Bamboozled by Modal Logic 3.25 p.m. David Chalmers The Character of Consciousness 3.40 p.m. Discussion 4.00 p.m. COFFEE EVOLUTION, BRAIN AND CONSCIOUSNESS 4.50 p.m. Nicholas D. Schiff Mechanisms Underlying Recovery of Consciousness after Injuries to the Human Brain 5.05 p.m. Michael S. Gazzaniga Can Consciousness Be Split? 5.20 p.m Discussion 5.40 p.m. DRINKS 7.00 p.m. DINNER Programme Monday June 15th WHERE IS CONSCIOUSNESS? 8.45 a.m. Michael Tye Where, in Nature, is Consciousness? 9.00 a.m. Max Velmans Dualism, Reductionism and Reflexive Monism 9.15 a.m. Galen Strawson Consciousness Never Left 9.30 a.m. Discussion 9.50 a.m. COFFEE WHO IS CONSCIOUS? 10.20 a.m. Thomas Metzinger Consciousness, the Phenomenal Self and the First Person Perspective 10.35 a.m. Julian Kiverstein Why Consciousness is not in the Head 10.50 a.m. Amber Carpenter A Sense of Self and Responsibility among Buddhists 11.05 a.m. Paul Broks I Think Therefore I am Dead 11.20 a.m. Discussion 11.40 a.m. LUNCH ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 1.00 p.m. Antti Revonsuo Dreaming and Consciousness 1.15 p.m. Sakari Kallio The Existence of a Hypnotic State Revealed by Eye Movements 1.30 p.m. Marieke van Vugt Changing your Mind through Meditation – What are the Cognitive Mechanisms? 1.45 p.m. Susan Blackmore The New Science of out-of-body Experiences 2.00 p.m. Discussion 2.20 p.m. COFFEE THE GRAND THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 2.50 p.m. Owen Flanagan The Disunity of Consciousness 3.05 p.m Victor Lamme Why Consciousness is Not What we Think it is 3.20 p.m. Naotsugu Tsuchiya Empirical Testing of the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness 3.35 p.m. Discussion 3.55 p.m. Ending Remarks Lecturers The Return of Consciousness – A new science on old questions SUSAN BLACKMORE is an English freelance writer, lecturer, sceptic, and broadcaster on psychology and the paranormal. She earned a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey 1980 and did research in that field for many years. PAUL BROKS is an English neuropsychologist and science and play writer. He is a regular contributor to Prospect and has written for The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and Granta. Broks’s Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology (Atlantic Monthly Press) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. AMBER CARPENTER is the Associate Professor at Yale NUS College and Senior Lectur- er at University of York. Dr. Carpenter specialises in ancient Greek philosophy, and Indian Buddhist philosophy. In both Greece and India, metaphysics and epistemology mattered. Debates over what substance is, or what cause is, and debates over sources of knowledge or the nature of perception, are parts of wider disputes about the nature and domain of the ethical and of the human good. So is also the big question of Self and the nature of it’s ques- tionable existence. DAVID CHALMERS is a world renowned Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National Universi- ty. He is also Professor of Philosophy at New York University. In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. PATRICIA CHURCHLAND is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her con- tributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. Neurophilosophy is an in- terdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. She is UC President’s Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). ANDY CLARK is the Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Clark’s papers and books deal with the philosophy of mind and he is considered a leading scientist in mind extension. He has also written exten- sively on connectionism, robotics and the role and nature of mental representation. OWEN FLANAGAN is the James B Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philo- sophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, contemporary ethical theory, moral psychology, as well as Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the Self. Lecturers The Return of Consciousness – A new science on old questions MICHAEL S. GAZZANIGA is the Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, the study of the neural basis of mind. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. SAKARI KALLIO is the Researcher and head of Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy at Skövde University. His research has focused on the nature of hypnosis and his paper Altered Eye Movements Reveal a Hypnotic State (2011) received a win through inter- nationally. JULIAN KIVERSTEIN is an Assistant Professor of Neurophilosophy at the University of Amsterdam. As a specialist on Heidegger and continental phenomenology his research is focused on developing phenomenologically informed answers on questions in cognitive science, including time perception, conceptual thinking, empathy, free will, consciousness and the Self. VICTOR LAMME is the head of the Cognitive Neuroscience Group at the University of Amsterdam. His research is entirely focused on consciousness, using EEG, fMRI, TMS and a variety of manipulations. The question he hunts is if we can give a useful neural definition of consciousness (and separate it from attention, working memory and language), and move towards a better scientific understanding of the phenomenon? THOMAS METZINGER is a German philosopher. As of 2011 he holds the position of director of the theoretical philosophy group at the department of philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. From 2008 to 2009 he served as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is most famous for his book The Ego Tunnel. THOMAS NAGEL is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980.
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