The Brains Blog — Consciousness

Symposium on Gross and Flombaum, “Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? The Challenge from Probabilistic, Hierarchical Processes”

It’s a pleasure to launch our latest Mind & Language symposium on Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum’s “Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? The Challenge from Probabilistic, Hierarchical Processes” from the journal’s June 2017 issue. Our commentators include Jacob Beck (York), Nico Orlandi writing with Aaron Franklin (UC Santa Cruz), and Ian Phillips (Oxford). How are the neural …

Neurotypical subjective experience is caused by a hippocampal simulation

John Schwenkler May 1, 2017 May 1, 2017 Consciousness / Neuroscience

[[This is a guest post by Matt Faw, a filmmaker who together with Bill Faw is the author of a recent paper in WIREs Cognitive Science, “Neurotypical subjective experience is caused by a hippocampal simulation”. The post is a précis of their article.]] Consciousness. One of the problems in finding its neural …

A few links of interest

John Schwenkler April 11, 2017 April 11, 2017 Consciousness / perception

A BBC Radio 4 series on “The Uncommon Senses”, with Barry Smith (University of London) and sound artist Nick Ryan. A full list of episodes is here.
A special issue of Nautilus on the topic of Consciousness, including a profile of Christoph Koch and an essay on Russellian Monism by Hedda Hassel Mørch (NYU/Oslo).
And some more Barry Smith, with an essay on “overestimating consciousness” at IAI.

Why the science of consciousness needs philosophy

John Schwenkler March 10, 2017 March 10, 2017 Action / Consciousness / Neuroscience / Philosophy of Mind

Alva Noë writes at NPR: To move forward and understand the human mind, or the minds of nonhuman animals […], we need to look outside the brain at the animal’s behavior, that is, at how animals live, what they do, what problems they face, and what the circumstances are in which they …

CFP: Minds, Brains, and Consciousness

John Schwenkler March 9, 2017 March 9, 2017 CFPs / Consciousness / Neuroscience

Proposals are welcome for the Third International Conference on Philosophy of Mind, which will be held at University of Minho, Braga (Portugal), on October 11-12, 2017. The main theme of the Conference is “Minds, Brains and Consciousness”. Graduate students, junior researchers and senior scholars are welcome to submit their work. Keynote speakers: Prof. Andy …

Launch of the ALIUS Bulletin

John Schwenkler February 28, 2017 February 28, 2017 Consciousness

The ALIUS Bulletin is an annual publication of the ALIUS research group, featuring in-depth interviews with prominent scholars working on consciousness and its altered states (ASCs). The goal of the Bulletin is to present a clear outline of current research on ASCs across a variety of disciplines, with an emphasis …

CFP: Scientism and Consciousness

John Schwenkler February 19, 2017 February 19, 2017 CFPs / Consciousness

CALL FOR POSTGRADUATE PAPERS: SCIENTISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS A Conference at Keele University, UK, 27-28th June 2017 Keynote Speakers: Philip Goff John Cottingham James Tartaglia Keith Frankish Christopher Norris The term ‘scientism’ has traditionally been used by philosophers to denote an uncritical, excessively deferential attitude towards the (usually natural) sciences, along …