Video talks (blog link) featuring – The Hard Problem of Consciousness (David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, & Donald Hoffman) ; Christof Koch: The scientific pursuit of consciousness ; Olaf Blanke: Out-of body experiences, consciousness, and cognitive neuroprosthetics ; and Ned Block: Two Forms of Higher Order Theories of Consciousness
With Consciousness in Mind (Part 3) video talks featuring – The Hard Problem of Consciousness (David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, & Donald Hoffman) ; Christof Koch: The scientific pursuit of consciousness ; Olaf Blanke: Out-of body experiences, consciousness, and cognitive neuroprosthetics ; and Ned Block: Two Forms of Higher Order Theories of Consciousness
“Naturalised metaphysics exists to say how the world is in the light of all the sciences”. In this exclusive interview, James Ladyman discusses how metaphysics can contribute to objective knowledge, one that is based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and how a fundamentally relational view of reality may help in thinking about consciousness.
In this exclusive interview, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë discusses his latest book, ‘Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature’, which raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, he offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
Basil Hiley is one of the most outstanding living quantum physicists. Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics, he was David Bohm’s longtime collaborator and co-author of his final book, ‘The Undivided Universe’. In Bohm and Hiley’s work on implicate and explicate order, mind and matter are considered to be different aspects of the same process. In 2012 he was awarded the Majorana Medal for “best person in physics”. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas and work.
Dynamic lecturer, progressive scholar, and one of the most prolific writers and translators of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, B. Alan Wallace seeks ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind.
Higher-Order (HO) theories of consciousness have in common the idea that what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of some kind of higher-order representation. In this exclusive interview, Rocco Gennaro discusses Higher Order Theories and the Consciousness Paradox, which asks the question – how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis?
Antti Revonsuo is a cognitive neuroscientist, psychologist, and philosopher of mind. He is best known for his Threat Simulation Theory, which states that dreams serve the biological function of rehearsing possibly threatening situations in order to aid survival. In this exclusive interview he discusses the dreaming brain as a model of consciousness.
Stuart Hameroff’s research involves a theory of consciousness developed over the past 20 years with eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose. Called ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’), it suggests consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in protein polymers called microtubules inside the brain’s neurons, vibrations which interfere, ‘collapse’ and resonate across scale, control neuronal firings, generate consciousness, and connect ultimately to ‘deeper order’ ripples in spacetime geometry. Consciousness is more like music than computation.
What is the function of dreaming? To answer this “we then need to ask ‘what is the function of waking consciousness?’ To answer that question we need to know what waking consciousness is doing”. Dreaming is the most often occurring altered states of consciousness, yet its function remains unsolved. In this exclusive interview, Katja Valli discusses her research and work into the content, neural correlates and function of dreaming.