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Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Mon 12 Jun 2006 12:00 PM PDT  

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, April 4-8

Tucson Convention Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA

The event is over and the abstracts of each presentation have now been published online at the Center for Consciousness Studies website.

The hundreds of presentations are a cross-section of the current state of the art of scholarly thinking and research into the deep questions  re the nature of human consciousness. They include the latest results in a host of relevant areas; including neurophysiology, cognition, artificial intelligence, computer simulations, quantum physics, philosophy, escatology, meditation & yogic disciplines, and other altered states of consciousness.

I think they're sufficiently relevant to SCIY that I've taken the liberty of posting the entire set of abstracts here, so they can be easily searched. They are organized into 6 main sections:

[01.0 Philosophy
[02.0 Neuroscience
[03.0 Cognitive Sciences and Psychology
[04.0 Physical and Biological Sciences
[05.0 Experiential Approaches
[06.0 Culture and Humanities

You can find each of these sections by copying & finding their italicized number, including the opening bracket ( [ ) and the closing dot zero (.0) . E.g., to find the sections corresponding to Neuroscience, enter [02.0 into your browser's "Find" function ("command F"). Do not include any leading or trailing spaces.

In a future article, I'll breakout the articles in Section 4. Physical and Biological Sciences, which are of special interest to me.

I look forward to people familiar with the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother becoming invited presenters at future Tucson "Science of Consciousness" conferences.

Section (1) below is the official blurb describing the conference.

Section (2) is the entire text of the all the official abstracts.

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Section (1) Official Conference Description

Toward a Science of Consciousness- Are we there yet?

This is the seventh in a series of biennial interdisciplinary conferences on consciousness held in Tucson in even-numbered years since 1994. The “Tucson conferences” have helped to catalyze the recent development of scientific research on all aspects of the problem of consciousness.

The Tucson conferences stress interdisciplinary exploration, bringing together perspectives from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, computer science, physics, biology, anthropology, contemplative traditions, the arts, medicine, and other areas.  A continuing focus of the conference is the integration of the first-person and third-person perspectives on the phenomena of the mind.

One may ask: “How much closer are we in moving toward a science of consciousness?” Are we there yet? Or, as in the “Myth of Sisyphus” are we farther away as new, confusing details about brain activities are discovered without revealing the nature of consciousness? We do not yet understand consciousness, but it is fair to say that, at the very least, we understand the problem

far better.

The dictionary defines science as: “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena”. Among these, consciousness has clearly been identified, described, experimentally investigated and elicited theoretical explanations (though disagreements certainly exist among various approaches in each category). Regarding observation, consciousness cannot be directly measured or observed by third persons, but first person accounts are prevalent. Thus it appears that, yes indeed, there may now be a science of consciousness.

Some highlights of the scheduled program include the following:

The plenary program is now complete: the Keynote talk on Wednesday, April 5 will be given by Giulio Tononi M.D., Ph.D. of the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin. Professor Tononi has put forth the "Information integration theory" of consciousness, building upon and quantifying earlier work with Gerald Edelman on the Dynamic Core hypothesis. Tononi and colleagues are pursuing this approach using a variety of experimental and theoretical modalities. Sleep is another key interest of Tononi and his group who have recently shown significant differences in cortical connectivity in sleep versus wakeful consciousness.

His keynote talk should complement both the opening Plenary session on Neural correlates of consciousness (Walter Freeman, Ralph Freeman, Hakwan Lau), and the "Dream Debate" (Alan Hobson and Mark Solms).

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is the most accomplished autistic person in the world. She is the author of best-selling “Thinking in pictures and other reports from my life with autism”, “Emergence: Labeled autistic”, “Animals in translation” and other books, videos and DVDs, and an accomplished lecturer who has been featured on major television programs and magazines.

Dr Grandin was one of the “challenged” people featured in Oliver Sacks’ book. “Anthropologist from Mars”. Sacks described Grandin’s first book “Emergence: Labeled autistic” as “Unprecedented because there had never before been an 'inside narrative' of autism; unthinkable because it had been medical dogma for forty years or more that there was no 'inside,' no inner life, in the autistic. . .extraordinary because of its extreme (and strange) directness and clarity. Temple Grandin's voice came from a place which had never had a voice. . .and she spoke not only for herself, but for thousands of others. . .”

Seeming to have unique insight into the conscious minds of non-verbal animals, Grandin is also known for her work in handling and humane slaughter of cattle and other animals. She is an Associate Professor at Colorado State University, and her websites are https://templegrandin.com/templehome.html and  https://www.grandin.com/  The abstract for her talk (on Saturday April 8) "I think in pictures instead of language" can be found here.

Dream debate: The significance of dreams and the role of Freud and the unconscious will be the topic of a formal debate between psychiatrists J. Allan Hobson from Harvard Medical School, and Mark Solms from London’s St. Bartholomew's and Royal School of Medicine. Hobson maintains that dreams are noise whose bizarre character stems from the same neurochemistry responsible for hallucinations, and that Freud is irrelevant. Solms points to new imaging results showing significant activity in brain regions underlying emotional drives and reward during REM sleep. The debate will reprise Solms’ 2004 Scientific American piece "Freud returns" and Hobson’s response "Like a bad dream". This should be fun.

The eminent cognitive science pioneer Douglas Hofstadter from Indiana University will also speak at Tucson for the first time. He is Professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, History, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology. Professor Hofstadter has received (among other awards) a Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim fellowship and a 1980 American Book Award for "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid". He has also written "Metamagical themas: Questing for the essence of mind and pattern", and (with Daniel Dennett) "The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul". Professor Hofstadter is now writing a book about consciousness and will speak to us about his new ideas.

At least to date, and as far as we know, consciousness exists only in biological brains, raising the question of whether biology - life itself - holds the key to its understanding. Author/physicist and Templeton award winner Paul Davies from MacQuarie University in Australia will speak on the nature and origin of life. Paul is the author of numerous scientific articles and popular books including"The fifth miracle: The search for the origin and meaning of life", "Mind of God: The scientific basis for a rational world", "About time: Einstein’s unfinished revolution", and many others.  

And the always to-the-point UC Berkeley’s John Searle, Mills Professor of Philosophy and Language will speak on "Dualism revisited", describing his latest views on status of modern approaches to the understanding of consciousness. Originator of the famous “Chinese room argument”, Searle is the author of "Mind: A brief introduction", "The mystery of consciousness", and "The rediscovery of the mind".

In the Meditation session, Antoine Lutz and John Dunne will discuss their findings (e.g. their PNAS paper) on EEG in Tibetan monk meditators vs control meditators. They found in the Tibetans the highest amplitude gamma synchrony ever reported!

Other plenary speakers will include philosophers David Rosenthal, Uriah Kriegel, Robert van Gulick and Paavo Pyllkanen, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists Walter Freeman, Michael VL Bennett, Dan Simons, Peter DeWeerd, Ralph Freeman, Susana Martinez-Conde and Steven Lehar, neurologists Nicholas Schiff and Steven Laureys, anthropologist Marylin Schlitz and virtual reality expert Maria Sanchez-Vives.

Plenary sessions will be devoted to topics including the neural-level correlate of consciousness, consciousness and chronic vegetative states, consciousness and emotion, Freud and dream science, cognitive architectures, visual fading, virtual reality, meditation and brain states and self-representational theories of consciousness and the physics of life.

The conference will also feature many concurrent and poster sessions on various topics including mainstream philosophy, brain imaging techniques, quantum theories of consciousness, unconscious processes and assorted first person experiential approaches.

Pre-conference workshops will provide in-depth tutorials in many different areas.

As always the personal interactions among the highly interdisciplinary attendees will be encouraged by social events including an opening reception, evening banquet at the beautiful Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and ever-popular Poetry Slam and Zombie Blues renditions. The conference will conclude with the traditional "End-of-Consciousness” party.

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Section (2) is the entire text of the all the official abstracts.

Sessions are listed at the end of each abstract

Poster Sessions 1 - 12 (P1-P12)

Concurrent Sessions 1 - 21 (C1-C21)

Plenary Sessions 1 - 12 ( Pl1-12)

1. Philosophy

[01.01] The concept of consciousness

1 Theories of perception: narrow, wide and open
Jennifer Matey <jmatey@ic.sunysb.edu> (Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Tucson, Arizona)

I discuss in depth, problems that theories of perception encounter when the term 'mind', and/or concept of a 'cognitive system' is applied too narrowly. A theory of perception can be considered complete if it can provide a thorough account of two phenomena, perceptual properties, and perceptual processes. Common accounts of perceptual properties and processes can be divided into two varieties. Both presume the materialist metaphysical paradigm. The two ontological varieties correspond with the location the material properties upon which components of perceptual processes and properties supervene vis a vis the perceiving subject. Theories of perception that account for the relevant phenomena in terms of properties and mechanisms that supervene solely on things internal to the perceiver are referred to as 'narrow' accounts. Perceptual theories that take external states of affairs to be necessary components of the cognitive system in order to account well for relevant perceptual properties and processes are referred to as 'wide' accounts. I argue that commonly held versions of narrow and wide accounts are not sufficient for this purpose. I propose a new account that resolves the shortcomings of both accounts That account presupposes close attention to the history, function and use of the term 'mind' and the concept of a 'cognitive system'. P1

2 Defining "experience" as prerequisite to explaining "conscious experience"
Anthony Sebastian <Anthony_Sebastian@msn.com> (Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, San Francisco)

Lack of a precise functional definition of the word "experience" acts as an obstacle to formulating a fruitful explanation of "conscious experience" at the most general level of narrative explanation. The practice of synonymizing "experience" and "conscious experience" occasions a missed opportunity to understand "conscious" as a *quality* of "experience", which can have qualities other than "conscious". After Leslie Dewart, I suggest a physiological definition of "experiencing" applicable to all sentient creatures. In experiencing events of reality, organisms must perform a physiological activity, first by receiving information about the event, then processing that information so as to generate a response (physical, mental) that serves the organism's biological and/or cultural imperatives, directed ultimately to the production of biological and/or cultural progeny: genes and/or memes. Experience-initiating events may reside/originate in either the world outside the organism (external reality) or the world inside the organism (internal reality). In performing the physiological activity of experiencing events of reality, in the elemental sense as defined above, the organism lacks what generally goes by the term "conscious awareness", either of the event experienced or of the ongoing activity of its experiencing the event. Elementally then, organisms perform the physiological activity of experiencing objects/events of reality "non-consciously". I emphasize that organisms *perform* the physiological activity of experiencing, just as they perform other physiological activities, such as regulating arterial blood pressure, walking, etc. As with any performance, performance of physiological activities admit of qualities of performance, for example, efficient or faulty regulation of arterial blood pressure, slow or brisk walking, articulate or stuttering speech. In that context, we can take the view that an organism's performance of the physiological activity of experiencing may admit of different qualities of performance. Humans can perform the physiological activity of experiencing events of reality "consciously", a quality of performance that I next show admits of physiological definition. It does not stretch to recognize that performance of the very activity of non-consciously experiencing an event in the external world, say, itself qualifies as an event of reality (i.e., of internal reality). As such it therefore potentially could initiate, within the organism, the performance of the activity of experiencing itself as an event of reality, given the organism's ability to experience events of reality, as I have defined "experiencing" performed elementally. A cognitively advanced organism might have the ability to receive information about that mental (physiologically-based) activity of its non-conscious experiencing of an event of external reality, leading it to generate an adjustive response. Performance of the physiological activity of an experiencing-complex consisting concurrently of experiencing the activity of a non-conscious experiencing has the quality we may define as "conscious", as it speaks appositely to our intuitive conception of "conscious" and our intimate acquaintance with conscious experience. This formulation provides a physiological explanation of "conscious experience" at the most general level of narrative explanation. A more proximate explanation requires understanding how we perform the physiological activity of receiving and processing the information about our receiving and processing information about objects/events of reality. P7

[01.02] Ontology of consciousness

3 Paralysis and the enactive theory of perception
Kenneth Aizawa <kaizawa@centenary.edu> (Shreveport, LA)

Where it is commonly thought that perceptual experience is caused, in part, by sensorimotor skills, in *Action in Perception*, Alva Noe proposes the more radical hypothesis that perceptual experience is constituted, in part, by sensorimotor skills. This paper will review cases in which individuals are paralyzed by neuromuscular blockade, such as that caused by succinylcholine. These individuals apparently lose their sensorimotor skills, but still have perceptual experiences. These kinds of cases have recently come to public attention in reports of awareness during surgery. These cases constitute a serious challenge to the enactive theory of perception which predicts that loss of a constituent of perceptual experience will eliminate perceptual experience. C9

4 Critique of Searle's interpretation of the ontological statute of Freud's unconscious
Jonas Coehlo <jonas@faac.unesp.br> (Ciencias Humanas (Human Science), Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru, Sao Paulo, Brasil)

John Searle, in The rediscovery of the mind, criticizes the thesis of the existence of a unconscious mental state. According to Searle, the unconscious only can be accepted as content that can become conscious. Although he admits an aspectual and intrinsic unconscious intentionality, he also defends that its ontology consists totally of neurophysiological phenomena which produce subjective conscious thoughts. In this sense, unconscious beliefs would be dispositional states of the brain to produce conscious behavior or thoughts. Searle considers that the mental life is constituted by conscious states and by neurophysiological processes that in some conditions generate consciousness. In this way, there would not be any deeply unconscious mental state, that is, absolutely not accessible to consciousness. It is in this sense that Searle criticizes Freud stating that for Freud the unconscious mental states have an ontological statute, existing as unconscious intrinsic mental states. Is this interpretation of the ontological statute of Freud's unconscious correct? We intend to show that it is not. In spite of accepting both, the neurophysiological process and the existence and causal role of conscious and unconscious mental states, Freud's view can not be interpreted as a dualism of substance that considers mental states existing independently of body processes. The hypothesis we will develop is that the possibility to unveil unconscious thoughts from the conscious thoughts does not mean that the unconscious thought as such is in any other place but rather that its content can be inferred from the traces it imprints on the conscious thoughts. In other words, Freud would accept the thesis that the mental states as such are always conscious but those mental states from which can infer unconscious thoughts have a characteristic content as we can observe in representations that were submitted to condensation-work. P7

5 Phenomenal unity, mereology, and the individuation of experience
Brian Fiala <Brian.Fiala@asu.edu> (Tempe, AZ)

In ordinary speech, we individuate experiences in a wide variety of ways. The following are all legitimate ways of using the word 'experience': "the car crash was a traumatic experience"; "crossing Antarctica by dogsled is an experience I'll never forget"; and "uncle Steve had a near death experience". Philosophers and scientists likewise devise various ways of individuating experiences: they talk of visual experiences, auditory experiences, color experiences, hallucinatory experiences, and so forth. Michael Tye endorses a monist metaphysics of experience on which these ways of counting experience are, strictly speaking, false (2004). Tye claims that there are no purely visual experiences, purely auditory experiences or purely taste experiences. Instead, normal subjects have only a single multimodal experience that is describable in more or less rich ways. When you bite into a juicy red apple, for example, you don't have a visual experience of redness, a taste experience of sweetness, and a distinct auditory experience of *crunch!*. Rather, you have one big (red & sweet & *crunch!*) experience, describable in more or less complete ways. To motivate his monism, Tye considers a family of regress arguments that appears to threaten competing pluralist views of phenomenal unity. The regresses aim to show that if pluralism is true, then it is impossible for a subject to achieve total phenomenal unity. But it is plausible to think that it is possible (or even necessary) for a subject to achieve total phenomenal unity. According to Tye, this kind of regress constitutes a serious problem for pluralist theories of experience. He concludes that we should opt for a monist metaphysics of experience instead. I will first argue that we ought to reject monism about experience. Adopting experiential monism runs contrary to ordinary and technical ways of individuating experiences, and more seriously, it is not necessary to block the regresses. A holism about experience will block the regresses just as well, and as a bonus it is consistent with pluralism about experience. I'll also argue that when we look carefully at which logical properties of phenomenal unity are doing the work in blocking the regresses, we see that the unity relation closely mirrors the mereological relation (cf. Bayne & Chalmers' "subsumption" relation, 2003). If this is right, we might sidestep the regress arguments by adopting any theory on which experiences can enter into something relevently analogous the mereological relation. Atomism could work just as well as holism, so long as the atoms can enter into the right kind of relation. Finally, I'll argue that treating the unity relation like the mereological relation helps to make sense of the Sperry split-brain cases. I conclude that it is worth our while to investigate the connection between phenomenal unity and the mereological relation more deeply. P1

6 A few words about the type of relations between mind and body
Diana Gasparian <anaid6@yandex.ru> (Philosophical, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia)

If we try to characterize the direction of the modern consciousness research we find some tendency to keep some kind of "privileged vocabulary" as R. Rotry says, that is of scientific vocabulary which still provides criteria of satisfactory solution of the "mind-body problem". Most clearly it can be seen from the program of demonstration of the productive connection between body and consciousness, i.e. in the understanding of the fact how physical produces nonphysical. But if we assume that mental states are not equal to physical and have their own ontological status, then it would be quite reasonable to expect that the type of relations between mind and body will differ from that used in science. Nowadays philosophy and science itself seem to realize that we can get very deep in our studies and registration of changes in the brain which accompany mental states, but not to get any access to mental states themselves, to what is called "first-person ontology". The problem is that all the connections between consciousness and objects are explained from the point of view of the world of physical objects (it's typical for J. Searle). Any search for the foundations of consciousness is equal to the attempts to present connections between consciousness and objects as connections between one object and another. For this connection to be described within the natural science approach it must belong to one research field, and it means that they must have one and the same nature. But, as was mentioned before, consciousness is not such a thing as body. It's difficult to deny that the connection between body and consciousness is not a material one. In other words this connection can be described as conceptual, but not as physical, chemical or biological. On the other hand, if we believe consciousness is an object then there must be something that is aware of the consciousness which becomes an object in this process. If we accept the pair "consiousness  object of consciousness", then there must exist a new consciousness that would make consciousness itself the object of consciousness. Here we have an alternative: either to stop at one of the points of the line, but then the whole line will put itself in the field of unconscious and we meet an introspection that is not conscious of itself. Or we agree to the endless regress which leads to nothing. If we resume everything said above we may say that a number of fundamental premises of science stop working as they should when they are applied to consciousness. First of all, consciousness is not an object that can be counted or related to some other object. And second is that we try to get access to consciousness through the frame of logical categories which itself is the fundamental attribute of consciousness. It is not clear at all what can be meta-description in this case. P1

7 Conceivability, higher-order patterns, and physicalism
Amir Horowitz <amirho@openu.ac.il> (History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies, The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel)

According to the zombie argument, zombies - beings who are physically identical to us, phenomenally conscious beings, but who lack phenomenal consciousness altogether - are conceivable and hence possible. The possibility of zombies, in turn, is taken to entail that the instantiations of phenomenal properties are not necessitated, or logically determined, by the instantiations of any physical properties. This paper argues that the assumption that the instantiations of phenomenal properties are necessitated, or logically determined, by instantiations of physical properties, does not imply that one cannot conceive of the former without the latter, as long as phenomenal properties are irreducible to physical properties in the way that multi-realizable higher-order properties are irreducible to lower-order physical properties. The zombie argument, then, fails to refute the physicalist view that phenomenal properties are higher-order physical properties which are irreducible to lower-order physical properties C1

8 Perceptual consciousness is more than the head?
Yoshifumi Ikejiri <a1yoshi@yahoo.com.tw> (Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan)

According to Noe's sensorimotor contingency theory, perceptual consciousness is not only constituted by the neural activity, but also by the active body that is required for exercising sensorimotor knowledge. However, Block holds vehicle internalism and argued against Noe's radical vehicle externalistic view. For Block, "sensorimotor know-how and perceptual experience are causally related, but that is no reason to think that they are constitutively related" and "the issue of the constitutive supervenience base for experience is the issue of what isand is nota metaphysically necessary part of a metaphysically sufficient condition of perceptual experience." To sum up, Block thinks that Noe conflated causation with constitution, and that it is wrong to support a claim about constitutive relation by appealing to a causal relation. However, I think that Block's point is misleading. For Noe, the body's activities, or actual movements, are not factually needed for one to have perceptual experiences. A patient with spinal cord injury could still have normal perception in the case that his sensorimotor knowledge is kept intact and he can exploit it smoothly. To say that the sensorimotor knowledge is bodily skill is in a counterfactual sense rather than a factual sense. Therefore, one needs not to do anything explicitly to cause perceptual consciousness, rather, one only needs to exercise the sensorimotor knowledge counterfactually and this exercising activity is perceptual consciousness. Perceptual consciousness counterfactually depends on body, not causally does, and this counterfactual dependency could be viewed as constitutive. Nonetheless, it should be noted that even Block's attack is ineffective, Noe still have to face challenges to his vehicle externalistic claim. With supporting evidences and arguments presented so far, it still favors vehicle internalism. That is, it is metaphysically possible for one to exploit one's bodily skill just within one's head. Either the counterfactual understanding of how stimulation varies with movement or the factually exercising activity of such understanding is possible to be neural activity alone. Any claim that sole neural activity is not enough should contain more metaphysical constrains to show beyond brain activity there is something necessary for perceptual consciousness to asise. P1

9 Individuation of personal minds in panexperientialist models
Peter Lloyd <peter.b.lloyd@fencroft.com> (Fencroft Ltd, London, UK)

The difficulty (some would say impossibility) of reducing consciousness to physics is well known and will not be rehearsed here. This difficulty has led some authors to propose that phenomenal consciousness (or some protophenomenal precursor of it) is in fact a fundamental component of the intrinsic quality of physical substance, as opposed to the extrinsic properties that are known to physics. (Historicallly, see Eddington 1928, Russell 1927. More recently, see Lockwood 1989, Chalmers 1996, Rosenberg 2004, Strawson 2005.) This seems like an elegant solution to the so-called 'Hard Problem' of consciousness. A key problem, though, is that consciousness as we observe it empirically exists only at the level of human minds, not at the micro-level of atomic or subatomic particles. There is therefore a problem for pan-experientialists to give an account of the individuation of personal minds. It will be argued that this cannot be done: any model that makes the conscious mind isomorphic to a spatially extended system (which anything like pan-experientialism must do) is vulnerable to some form of the 'argument by dissection' put forward by Lloyd (1999). As a response to this, it is argued that (a) pan-experientialism can usefully be regarded as a special case of idealism (following Lloyd 2005), and that (b) if we relax certain assumptions of pan-experienialism so as to get a more general idealism, then personal minds can be regarded as primitives and not as needing to be built up from micro-level consciousness. References: Eddington, A (1928), The Nature of the Physical World, NY: Macmillan. Russell, B, (1927), The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul. Chalmers, D.J. (1996b), The Conscious Mind. Oxford: OUP. Lockwood, M. (1989), Mind, Brain & the Quantum: The Compound 'I'. Oxford: Blackwell. Rosenberg, G.H (2004), A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. Oxford: OUP. Strawson, G. (2005), Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism (or at least Micropsychism). Plenary paper, Toward a Science of Consciousness, 17-20th August 2005. Lloyd, P.B. (1999), Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics. London: Ursa. Llloyd, P.B. (2005), Mental Monism Considered as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem, in: A. Batthyany, D. Constant, & A.Elitzur, 'Mind: Its Place in the World.Non-reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness', Frankfurt: Ontos, in press 2005. C15

10 Searle's expanded notion of the physical
Leopold Stubenberg <stubenberg.1@nd.edu> (Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN)

Searle is among the growing number of philosophers who have argued that we must expand our notion of the physical to solve the mind-body problem. When the mental and the physical clash, the materialist reacts by attenuating the mental until coherence can be restored. Reversing this trend, Searle proposes to leave the mental intact and to enlarge the physical until it can accommodate the mental in its unreduced form. "What I mean" Searle tell us "is that the consciousness precisely as an irreducibly qualitative, subjective, first-personal, airy-fairy, and touchy-feely phenomenon is a process going on in the brain." Thus the qualia of conscious experience are features of the brain in just as literal a sense as its weight and size and structure. This is what Searle's idea of the expanded notion of the physical amounts to. While this view is very attractive, it does raise a serious question: How are these special qualities "in" the brain? How does the brain manage to realize or instantiate these remarkable qualities? For unlike the traditional physical qualities the qualia of the brain remain undetectable to the external observer. Thus we need an answer to the question in what sense of "in" these qualities are in the brain. In addressing this question I will follow up a hint that Searle gives us when he says that his view is "quite similar" to the version of the identity theory formulated by Grover Maxwell. The sort of view that Maxwell advocatesclosely based on Bertrand Russell's ideas about this questionis intriguing. But it also manifests a glaring lack of the theoretical virtues that Searle values so highly: simplicity, obviousness, commonsensicality, etc. I conclude that the Maxwell/Russell view is not available to Searle. Hence he still owes us a (simple, obvious, and commonsensical) answer to the question how the qualitative features of consciousness are in the material brain. C15

11 Dynamic emergence and the epiphenomenality of consciousness
Rex Welshon <rwelshon@uccs.edu> (Philosophy, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, Colorado)

In this paper, I try to assuage skeptical concerns about emergent consciousness in particular by assuaging skeptical concerns about emergents in general. I begin by entertaining the hypothesis that conscious events dynamically emerge from the physical events of the central nervous system. Neither the physical structures responsible for the emergence of consciousness nor a definition of 'consciousness'' are provided. Rather, on the assumptions that some conscious events exist and that some of them bear a relation other than type identity to physical events, the hypothesis that conscious events dynamically emerge from physical events is considered. A general ontological model of dynamic emergence, with consciousness as the test case, is provided. This model identifies upward causation, high-level causation, and downward causation as constitutive claims of the species of emergentism defended. Next, Kim's Supervenience Argument for the epiphenomenality of emergent events is analyzed. I argue that it is unsuccessful because it does not fully acknowledge the differences between supervenience and causation. Against the Supervenience Argument, supervenient emergents need be neither always disqualified as causes nor always preempted by low-level causes. For, using the subset strategy of novel causes found in Shoemaker, Yablo, and Wilson, supervenient emergents can have their own causal powers and, in virtue of having their own causal powers, they are not always disqualified as causes. Again, using the subset strategy of novel causes, the Supervenience Argument's charge that emergents over-determine low-level causes is shown to be mistaken. In the conclusion, I suggest that emergence is less controversial than has often been made out and that for that reason offers more to those sympathetic to physicalism and less to those sympathetic to dualism than has frequently been thought. But I also point out that, just as supervenience may state the mind-body problem without solving it (as Kim has claimed), so too dynamic emergence may state the problem of conscious causation without solving it. C15

12 The logic of phenomenal transparency: How to be a phenomenologist and a physicalist
Kenneth Williford <kwwilliford@stcloudstate.edu> (Philosophy, St. Cloud State University, St Cloud, Minnesota)

One traditional view is that we have introspective access to all the essential properties of consciousness. This view has sometimes been used to motivate dualism. Critics of the view, concerned to defeat dualism, have sometimes taken their critique so far that they have made it difficult to see what connection introspective data bear to the theory of consciousness. An unattractive dilemma looms: either (i) pare down the pretensions of phenomenology to such an extent that introspective data play at most a minimal role in the theory of consciousness, and thereby salvage physicalism, or (ii) accept the traditional view of the powers of introspection, and forsake physicalism. I argue that introspective data can and should play a heuristic and regulative role in the construction of a physicalistically acceptable theory of consciousness. Proponents and opponents of the traditional view have typically run together two distinct theses. The first is that if one's consciousness has a given property, then it will seem to one to have that property upon proper introspection; call this Strong Transparency (ST). The second is the converse claim that if consciousness seems upon proper introspection to have a given property, then it does in fact have it; call this Weak Transparency (WT). I argue that the conjunction of ST and WT is indeed incompatible with physicalism but that there is a defensible version of WT that is compatible with physicalism. Moreover, WT is enough to give a legitimate role to introspection in theorizing about consciousness. Perhaps surprisingly, I argue that ST is to be rejected not merely because it is incompatible with physicalism but on phenomenological grounds. This implies that there are properties of consciousness, perhaps essential ones, that are not accessible to introspection. And this paves the way for an explanation of the "Zombie" intuitions. I argue that the ease with which we can conceive of Zombies, etc., can be explained by the fact that consciousness has properties that are introspectively inaccessible to it. Furthermore, on the basis of this account, claims about the "diaphanousness" or "emptiness" of consciousness can be given a precise articulation which undercuts the uses to which those claims have been put by Representational theorists of consciousness and others. Finally, the framework I propose can arguably be used to solve the so-called "grain problem," according to which conscious perceptual states cannot be identified with brain states because the former seem to have properties that the latter could not have. C1

[01.03] Materialism and dualism

13 Causality in the thinking body
George Kampis <gk@hps.elte.hu> (History and Philosophy of Science, Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary)

In this paper I am developing the view that embodiment if understood properly as a biological notion offers a particular view of causality that in turn leads to a rethinking of the body. The work fits into a broader investigation into phenotypes in evolution [1] and into materialism. Here I elaborate remarks made in [2] where I discussed embodiment from the point of view of the self. The concept of embodiment implies a paradox that (despite the opposite rhetoric) it supports a strongly Cartesian view of organisms. A subjective self and its experience lies in the focus of embodied concepts like force, direction or action. I argued that in embodiment there is too much concern with the content of embodied mental states and too little with the coordination of interactions with biological meaning. To put it differently: the flesh is typically understood just as a source of a particular kind of structured experience  and interestingly, the same is true, with some modifications, even in artificial intelligence and robotics. However, situatedness, whole body interaction, sensorimotor coordination, adaptiveness and similar concepts of embodiment make also a more biological view possible. A biological minded strategy is the opposite of the above: first analyse causal interactions between phenotypes and their environment in cognition, then move on towards requirements for mental representations that utilize such interactions. To cut it short, the biological 'wisdom of the body' begins with the structure of causality, not of experience. Causal interactions in organisms, when viewed from this descriptive position (rather than through their consequences) involve a certain kind of interesting complexity. Whole body interactions and organismic actions are 'fat' (or as we say in [1] they "have 'depth'") in the sense that their effects are unbounded  the relevant phenotype traits that enter in an interaction (e.g. when an organism moves its leg) come along with an indefinite number of further, typically 'hidden' traits that are also modified as a consequence (such as the stretching of the skin or the change of the color composition of feathers as their angle changes in the motion, and so on  ad infinitum). I discuss how such hidden traits, i.e. traits with no ecological or cognitive-perceptual significance at a moment and in a given interaction can develop their own dynamics of causation that accumulates changes down on a chain and onto levels of ecological or cognitive significance (as when suddenly color, rather than the exact motion of the feathered leg determines evolutionary success). I also discuss how this notion can come to play a role in problems as diverse as ecological cognition and evolutionary niche construction. We will also see how the emerging picture of the body invites an anti-essentialist, relational ontology  with several notorious consequences. [1] Kampis, G. & Gulyas, L. 2004: Sustained Evolution from Changing Interaction, in: Alife IX, MIT Press, Boston, pp. 328-333. [2] Kampis, G.: Embodiment Without a Cartesian Self, in: Toward a Science of Consciousness, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, oral presentation. P7

14 Buddhism implies dualism
Katalin Mund <mundka@freemail.hu> (History and Philosophy of Science, Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary)

In their seminal book 'The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience' Varela, Thompson and Rosch suggested that by using first-person Buddhist methods, we can develop evidence for embodiment, which in turn would help to eliminate dualism between the mind and the body. In my presentation I try to show that Cartesian dualism has deeper roots. Even in Buddhism the method of introspection never results in a realisation of the non-existence of a separate soul. It cannot serve the purpose of eliminating dualism, because its ontology could not permit this insight. And what is more interesting, according to the Sutras and the commentaries of the Pali Canon, early Buddhist scholars were fully aware of this problem. Following this lead, I will talk about two topics: 1. Buddhist mindfulness/awareness (Vipasyana) meditation based on introspection. The purpose of this practice is to become mindful, i.e. to experience what the person's mind is doing as it is doing it, and to establish the presence of the mind in the world. The meditator understands that everything is changing all of the time, and there isn't any stable structure. The deconstruction of the self begins. The meditator attains higher and higher meditational levels, but, equally importantly, the 'seer' (i.e. subjective self) remains there, in the back. Even though theoretically anatman is accepeted as a basis, the subjective self as a centre pops up again and again by the very practise of meditation. 2. The philosophical problems of dualism in Buddhism Dualism in Buddhism has two levels: the problem of mind/body and the problem of subject/object distinction. Dualism appears to be an organic part of the Buddhist world concept, i.e. in the Dharma-theory, wehere they distinguished mental and material dharmas. Personality is analysed in a dynamic way according to the principal of "dependent arising' (pratityasamutpada). Nothing arises or ceases except in dependence on certain conditions. The application of this principle is most often done in terms of a series of twelve 'nidanas', or casual links, each one conditioning the one which follows it in the sequence. The most interesting part of this series, how 'name and form' emerges from consciousness. Name and form (nama-rupa in sanskrit) are sometimes translated as 'mind and body', because name (or nama) means feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention. Form (or rupa) means the four great elements, and the forms or physical bodies dependent on the four great elements. This is tha basis of the subject-object dualism. The etymology of 'vijnana' (consciousness) being derived from 'vi' + 'jnana', is a kind of knowledge (jnana) which separates (vi). It is defined that which 'vijanati': that which 'discern', 'discriminates', or distinguishes'. The working of vijnana, the discrimination constitute the dualism of object and subject, that is the objective world. it is possible that the reason why the Buddhist efforts of unification couldn't work is because the very concept of consciousness (vijnana) as such automatically implies dualism. P7

15 The case for physicalism from part-time analog zombies
Gualtiero Piccinini <piccininig@umsl.edu> (philosophy, university of missouri - st louis, St louis, mo, usa)

The possibility of zombiesas traditionally conceived by philosophersentails property dualism. But traditional philosophical zombies are only a special and limiting case among the many varieties of zombie. There are also zombies whose possibility entails physicalism. Focusing on whether traditional philosophical zombies are possible, at the exclusion of all other zombies, skews the debate against physicalism. I introduce new kinds of zombie, which have not been discussed in the literature, and argue that the possibility of some of them entails physicalism. If that is correct, we reach a stalemate between physicalism and property dualism: while the possibility of some zombies entails property dualism, the possibility of others entails physicalism. Since these two possibilities are inconsistent, one of them is not genuine. Which? To resolve this stalemate, we need more than thought experiments about zombies. C1

16 Dualism revisited?
John Searle <searle@cogsci.berkeley.edu> (Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA)

For several decades, the prevailing orthodoxy in the study of the mind, especially in the philosophy of mind, was some version of materialism that denied the existence and irreducibility of mental phenomena. Recently, materialism has been in retreat, and dualism has reappeared. Dualism, for long regarded as obviously false, has now become a respectable theory. While rejecting materialism, I think dualism is equally mistaken. In this talk I will show that the arguments for dualism are invalid and that the dualist theory is mistaken. PL8

17 A future for dualism as an empirical science?
Charles Tart <cttart@ucdavis.edu> (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA)

Materialistic monism, so successful in the physical sciences, has become so pervasive that it has become a rather absolute habit of thinking, an unquestioned style of looking at reality, rather than being treated as a testable, but not necessarily complete, hypothesis for guiding research and theory. This critical presentation surveys empirically observable phenomena, both in nature and laboratory, which do not fit well with materialistic monism and suggest that a form of interactive dualism is necessary at this stage of our knowledge to work toward a complete scientific and philosophical understanding of mind. The basic laboratory paradigm is to take our knowledge of the material world as essentially complete and then set up a situation in which no observable effects, according to a monistic material paradigm, can happen. If something nevertheless happens, the comprehensiveness of materialistic monism is questioned and new questions arise about the nature of the phenomena observed. Such phenomena occurring in nature include out-of-body and near-death experiences and, under better observational conditions, extensive laboratory studies of psi phenomena (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis and paranormal healing), as well as semi-controlled studies of what would be the ultimate form of interactive dualism, communications from ostensibly deceased individuals suggestive of postmortem survival without a physical body. Some suggestions for further empirical research conclude the presentation. P1

18 Finding middle ground between Chalmers' functionalism and Searle's anti-functionalism: A neutral monist third way
Kevin Vallier <kvallier@u.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)

Abstract: Chalmers (1996) presents two arguments that he claims establish a kind of non-reductive functionalism: Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia. These arguments are meant primarily to combat the possibility of absent and inverted qualia, and to thereby show that what qualia we have is fixed by natural necessity via a certain sort of organizational invariance implemented by brains. Chalmers uses a related version of this argument to respond to Searle (1980) later on in his (1996). I intend to argue that the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia do not establish functionalism, but rather merely establish that mental states weakly supervene on functional states of the brain. By weakly supervene, I mean that functional states do not cause mental states, but rather strongly correlate with them. This will leave open a number of potential views. I intend to outline one such view, which I take to be compatible with Chalmers' (2003) Type-F monism or Russellian neutral monism. I will first show how one can accept both the conclusion of the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia arguments that for experience to change functional organization must change, and a Searle-style anti-functionalism. I will attempt to outline a view where the functional organization of the brain is necessary but not sufficient for mentality. My paper will consist of three parts: In the first section, I will discuss the proper upshot of the Fading and Dancing Qualia arguments: namely that is a matter of metaphysical necessity that experience once present will not change or disappear without a change in the functional organization of the brain. In the second section, I will show how this view is compatible with an anti-functionalist position, such as Searle (1980, 1992). In the third section, I will show how if one accepts both Fading and Dancing Qualia arguments and Searlean type anti-functionalist arguments that one is committed to a varying range of strongly anti-physicalist views. Time permitting, I will briefly discuss various different ontological options for someone who accepts both Chalmers' and Searle's arguments. P7

[01.04] Qualia

20 A defence of the conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts
Jussi Haukioja <jhau@iki.fi> (Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland)

The conceivability of zombies  of creatures physically like us, but without consciousness  is often claimed to cause problems for physicalism. Very crudely, the argument against physicalism would run as follows: zombies are conceivable; therefore they are metaphysically possible; therefore physicalism is false. The argument has been challenged on many grounds. One recent strategy, suggested by John Hawthorne, David Braddon-Mitchell, and Robert Stalnaker, is to claim that phenomenal concepts have a conditional structure, of something like the following form: (1)If the actual world contains non-physical phenomenal states, our phenomenal concepts refer to them. (2)If the actual world is merely physical, our phenomenal concepts refer to the physical states which actually play the appropriate functional role. We cannot then know a priori whether the zombie world is possible, because we cannot know a priori which kind of a world the actual world is. But we have an explanation of the "zombie intuition": the possibility of zombies is conceivable, because our phenomenal concepts do not rule them out a priori. The conceivability of zombies does not, then, entail their possibility, and physicalism is not threatened. Torin Alter has recently presented three objections to the conditional analysis. First, conditional such as (1) and (2) are, he claims, a posteriori, while they would need to be a priori for the response to the zombie argument to work. Second, he claims that the conditional analysis gives the wrong outcome in certain conceivable scenarios, and third, the conditional analysis only delivers the doubly modal claim that it is conceivable that zombies are possible, while the intuition driving the zombie argument is that zombies are directly conceivabile. In this paper I defend the conditional analysis against Alter's objections. The first two objections are seen to fail once we recognise that the conditionals which are supported by counterfactual reasoning are a little bit more complicated than (1) and (2). What we actually get is something like the following: (1') If the actual world contains non-physical phenomenal states and sensations of pain, and there is a non-trivial relationship between these two, our concept of pain refers to these non-physical states. (2') If the actual world is merely physical, and contains sensations of pain, and there is a non-trivial relationship between functional states and sensations of pain, our concept of pain refers to these functional states. These conditionals are, I think, a priori. They also give the right outcome in Alter's imagined scenario, so his first two objections do not succeed against this more elaborate conditional analysis. Finally, I will show that, while the conditional analysis (regardless of the details of the conditionals) entails that full zombie worlds are only indirectly conceivable in the above sense (their possibility is conceivable), it is fully consistent with the conceivability of individual zombies, and that is enough to account for the zombie intuition. Moreover, there is independent reason to think that full zombie worlds are not directly conceivable in the sense Alter seems to think. C1

21 Qualia re-visited
Morey Kitzman <kitzmanm@mscd.edu> (Psychology, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Littleton, Colorado)

The following is a thought experiment which attempts to further the understanding of the notion of qualia, the subjective components of perception. Imagine that you are in a room and your only communication with the outside world is in the form of taps that occur on the outside wall of the room. You have never been outside the room and the taps correspond to different events in the external world. In fact, for every event outside the room there is a unique pattern of taps. The taps eventually form Morse code like sequences. Further imagine that you have the ability to move this room about, although you do not know how the room is moved. Your movements in the external world result in positive and negative outcomes. Soon you learn to avoid the negative and to seek the positive. Now one might argue that this is precisely the way our perceptual systems operates or could operate, if you substitute the brain for the room. There would be no need to really know what is outside the room, just make the appropriate responses to insure survival. A thermostat reacts to the temperature of a room without really knowing or experiencing the qualia of hot or cold. There is no reason to actual represent hot or cold within the system in order for it to function properly. A organism could have a device for sensing hot and cold without ever having to actually experience hot or cold. In the future, AI will produce machines that appear dramatically human without having to represent the external world inside them. . This all being true, why did nature go to the incredibly tedious task of making internal representations of some external world when it has dubious survival advantage? Furthermore, how did the inhabitant in the room decipher the code sequences and represent light as light, given that light never entered the room. Would we not require some equivalent of the Rosetta Stone to make the proper decoding? Could we have ever deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs without a Rosetta Stone? Where do we find our Rosetta Stone? What does this all mean? The paper will attempt to show the importance of distinguishing energy and information. The experience of light cannot be derived from information about light, light must modulate consciousness directly. Consequently, the fundamental property of consciousness is energy. P7

22 Quality as existence
Mark Pestana <pestanam@gvsu.edu> (Philosophy, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan)

In this paper I explain the sense in which the qualitative character of a subject's experience (the quale of experience) is representational of the sheer existence of both the objects of those experiences and, especially, of the subject of those experiences. This account hinges upon recapturing the original sense of qualitative accidents as various ways in which substances exist. In the initial section, I revisit this original Aristotelian characterization of qualitative accidents. He explicated this feature of things as a modification of/in the sheer existing of an individual substance. I proffer several examples of this modification in the be-ing of a substance and contrast this type of property with relational and quantitative features of things. This is followed by an account of the representational theory of consciousness and an account of the two ways in which the very existing of something and the quality of that existing can be represented. I first indicate how representations directly represent existing and the quality of existing in virtue of the spatio-temporal properties of the objects represented. However, such representations themselves possess a quality of being which arises from the being of the subject forming those representations. Accordingly, I next indicate how a representation indirectly represents existing in virtue of its own mode of existence. I conclude this section by explaining how "qualia", the qualitative characteristics of experiences, are these modes of existing of mental acts and states of mind. Be it noted that the existence that is represented directly or indirectly can be the existing of the subject of experience or of the some other thing. Throughout the analysis, I proffer examples of all of these types of qualitative modes. The paper concludes with a presentation of several examples of my analysis of the qualitative character of experience as the quality of existence. First, I describe the function and use of electro-optical mind control devices that operate by exaggerating the qualitative character of specific experiences in order to induce an overall mood change in the subject. This is readily construable as bringing about a change in the quality of the being of the subject of those experiences. Second, I describe states of mind induced by meditative exercises that are variously referred to as states of "pure consciousness", "empty mindedness" or (perhaps) "satori". While acknowledging that there are differences between different traditions in such characterizations, I indicate how such states of mind can be conceived as "dwelling within the be" of an objectless state of consciousness that is thereby representational of the existence of the meditating subject. Third, I characterize the "boundary states of consciousness" that figure centrally in existentialist psychology. These are states of extreme consciousness brought on by extra-ordinary engagements in/with/against the world, e.g., radical confrontation with one's own death, exposure to extremes of danger or gross injustices. The qualitative character of these experiences bespeak the qualitative character of the sheer existence of their subject. P7

23 Metaphorical heterophenomenology: Vim vs. the anti-matrix
Keith Turausky <bickbyro@gmail.com> (Tucson, AZ)

To support his "heterophenomenological" view of consciousness, Daniel Dennett has introduced the metaphor of "vim." Vim describes the intrinsic worth of a currency as imagined by those who use that currency. The metaphor is intended to poke fun at those who posit the existence of qualiaor, to use Dennett's coinage, those with the "zombic hunch." I will argue that, contrary to Dennett's intentions, the vim metaphor argues for panpsychism better than it discredits qualia. I will also present a more fitting metaphor for heterophenomenology: the "Anti-Matrix." In the "classic" Matrix, the extrinsic is an illusion, but in the Anti-Matrix, the intrinsic is an illusion. Dennett's views suggest that ours is an Anti-Matrix world, wherein massively deluded "zombic hunchers" perpetuate a false metaphysics. The suggestion raises troubling questions. While the Matrix is installed by outside forces to conceal a

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