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Home , Anil Seth, Max Velmans, Patricia Churchland, Susan Blackmore

The Return of - 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 asked an annoying in a transcendental 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 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 . 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 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. A History of the Future of Consciousness Sciences

THE DIVERSE VIEWS OF THE 2.40 p.m. Consciousness and the Physical Science 2.55 p.m. Andy Clark Consciousness Deflated 3.10 p.m. Bamboozled by Modal Logic 3.25 p.m. 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. Dualism, and Reflexive 9.15 a.m. Consciousness Never Left 9.30 a.m. Discussion 9.50 a.m. COFFEE

WHO IS CONSCIOUS?

10.20 a.m. 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 through Meditation – What are the

Cognitive Mechanisms? 1.45 p.m. 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 . She earned a PhD in from the 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, 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 , and 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 and . 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 and the philosophy of mind. Neurophilosophy is an in- terdisciplinary study of 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 .

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 , 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, , 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 , working memory and language), and move towards a better scientific 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. His main areas of philo- sophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics. Nagel is well known for his critique of reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” (1974). Continuing his critique of reductionism, he is the author of Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against a reductionist view, and specifically the neo-Dar- winian view, of the emergence of consciousness. Lecturers

The Return of Consciousness – A new science on old questions

ANTTI REVONSUO is a Finnish cognitive neuroscientist, , and philosopher of mind. His work seeks to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon. He is one of a small number of philosophers running their own laboratories. Currently, Revonsuo is a Profes- sor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Skövde in Sweden and of Psychology at the University of Turku in Finland.

NICHOLAS D. SCHIFF is the Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, Neurology, Weill Cornell Medical College since 2011. He directs an integrative translational research program with a primary focus on understanding the process of recovery of consciousness following brain injuries.

ANIL SETH Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sus- sex, and Co-Director of Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He leads a multidisciplinary research across neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, with a focus on understanding the biological basis of conscious - a key challenge for 21st century science.

GALEN STRAWSON is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, , the mind-body prob- lem, and the self). At present he is Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a consultant editor at The Times Literary Supplement for many years, and a regular book re- viewer for The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Independent, the Financial Times and The Guardian. He is the son of philosopher P. F. Strawson.

NAOTSUGU TSUCHIYA is the Neuroscientist and Associate Professor at Monash Universi- ty, Australia. One current project of his team is to test theories of consciousness, in particular the Integrated information theory of consciousness by the Italian-American neuroscientist and psychiatrist Guilio Tononi, using empirical neuronal data.

MICHAEL TYE is a Philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin who has made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind. Along with late , Tye defends the exter- nalist representationalist view of consciousness.

MAX VELMANS is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of . He co-founded the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psycho- logical Society in 1994, and served as its chair from 2003 to 2006. He was appointed National Visiting Professor for 2010-2011 by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, and in 2011 was elected to the British Academy of Social Sciences.

MARIEKE VAN VUGT is the Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Modelling Group at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. Part of her work focus on how we make decisions based on remembered information, and how we can use neural data to look at the dynamics of these decisions. In a related line of work, she investigates how decision making and memory are im- pacted by meditation practice. Organisation

PRESIDENT: Kurt Almqvist PROJECT LEADER: Anders Haag PROJECT LEADER ADMINISTRATION: Alexander Nyquist PROJECT COORDINATORS: Magdalena Bujak, Veronica Wahlberg STAFF: Hedvig Berntson, Nicole Bielak, Gabriella Hamilton, Matilde Jägerstig, Giuliana Michaj, Oscar Niklasson, Astrid Orre, Erik Ramsgård, Erik Ringdahl

JUNE 14TH – 15TH 2015 Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation Stureplan 3, 103 75 Stockholm, Sweden Avesta Manor, Sweden Telephone: + 46 8 788 50 50 www.axsonjohnsonfoundation.org A SEMINAR ARRANGED BY AXEL AND MARGARET AX:SON JOHNSON FOUNDATION