Events
Winter 2024 - Radway Workshops
Division of Humanities
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Wellbeing in Early Buddhism: Zombies, Experience, and the Value of Consciousness
Stanford University
Autrement: Thinking and Feeling Disalienation in Francophone Fiction
Fall 2022 - Models of Consciousness 2022
Mathematical Approaches to Consciousness
Stanford University
Winter 2020 - Radway Workshops
Philosophy
University of California Irvine
"Quantum Records and Experience"
Philosophy
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
"How to Ascribe Belief to Animals"
Spring 2019 - Radway Workshops
Philosophy
University of California San Diego
"How to Explain the Flow of Time"
Fall 2018 - Conference on the Nature of Time
Speakers include Dean Buonomono, Jenann Ismael, David Eagleman, Craig Callender, Richard Muller, Jim Hartle, Ronald Gruber, John Perry, Roger Shepard and Paul Skokowski
* * Advance Registration is Required * * due to limited seating.
To Register, contact: ronaldpgruber@gmail.com or paulsko@stanford.edu [View Poster]
![[View Poster]](assets/flyers/Time.jpeg){kind=link}
We are grateful to the Friedken Foundation, the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, the Claire and John Radway Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, and CSLI for their generous support in sponsoring this conference.
Past Events
Spring 2018 - Radway Workshops
Emeritus, EECS
MIT
"Logic will take you by the throat"
We are grateful to CSLI, the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, and the Claire and John Radway Foundation for their generous support in sponsoring this talk.
[View Abstract]Spring 2018 - Quantum Mechanics and Mind
A Special CEC and SFSU Event: "International Conference on Quanta and Mind"
Events Room at the J. Paul Leonard Library (LIB 121), San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco, California-
Valia Allori
Philosophy, Northern Illinois University -
Harald Atmanspacher
Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich -
Petr Bob
Psychology, Charles University -
Otavio Bueno
Philosophy, University of Miami -
Leonardo Paulo Guimaraes De Assis
Suppes Brain Lab, Stanford University -
Ehtibar Dzhafarov
Psychology, Purdue University -
Benj Hellie
Philosophy, University of Toronto -
Menas Kafatos
Physics, Chapman University -
Stanley Klein
Visual Science, UC Berkeley -
Catarina Moreira
Finances, University of Leicester, and Engineering, University of Lisbon -
John Perry
Philosophy, and Center for the Explanation of Consciousness, Stanford -
Paavo Pylkkanen
Philosophy, University of Helsinki -
Arkady Plotnitsky
English, Purdue University -
Paul Skokowski
Symbolic Systems, and Center for the Explanation of Consciousness, Stanford -
Henry Stapp
Lawrence Berkeley Lab -
Guiseppe Vitiello
Physics, Universita di Salerno
We are grateful to the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies and the Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University, the Center for the Study of Language and Information, and the Claire and John Radway Foundation for their generous support of this conference.
Fall 2017 - Radway Workshops
Philosophy
San Francisco State University
"Types of Attention: Intelligence and Phenomenality"
Liberal Arts
San Francisco State University
"The Consciousness Causes Collapse Hypothesis in Quantum Mechanics"
Winter 2017 - Radway Workshops
Psychology
University of Connecticut
"Metacognition and the Frontal Lobes”
Fall/Summer 2016 - Radway Workshops
Anesthesiology and Center for Consciousness Studies
University of Arizona
"The Orch OR Theory of Consciousness as Quantum Computation in Brain Microtubules: Status and Update After 20 Years"
Spring 2016 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness
DLCL
Stanford
"The Rise of the Neural Subject"
Psychology, SFSU
Neurology, UCSF
"The Function of Consciousness in the Nervous System: Passive Frame Theory"
French & DLCL
Stanford
"Paul Valéry’s Fantastic Consciousness: Nature and the Self"
Winter 2016 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness
Psychology
UC Berkeley
"Consciousness Without Control"
Philosophy
UC Berkeley
Alex Reben
Stochastic Labs
"Social Robots"
Philosophy
UC Riverside
"Crazyism about Consciousness and Morality"
Fall 2015 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness
Philosophy
UC Berkeley
"Consciousness"
Philosophy
University of Texas at Austin
"A New Solution to the Mind-Body Problem"
Neurology
Stanford
"Clinical & Physiological Insights Into Conscious Awareness"
Spring 2015 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness
A Special Radway Workshop:
"Information and Mind"
A Conference in Honor of Fred Dretske
Barwise Room, Cordura Hall
-
Fred Adams
Cognitive Science, Delaware -
Dennis Stampe
Philosophy, Wisconsin -
Paul Skokowski
Symbolic Systems, Stanford -
John Perry
Philosophy, Stanford
![[View Poster]](assets/flyers/Dretske_Poster_Small_.jpg){kind=link}
We are grateful to the Stanford Philosophy Department, the Stanford Humanities Dean’s Office, The Stanford Office of the Provost, The Center for the Study of Language and Information, the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, and the Stanford Humanities Center for their generous support of this conference on the life and work of Fred Dretske.
IAC Workshop: "Self and Un-Self"
Barwise Room, Cordura Hall-
Michaela Hulstyn
Ph.D. Candidate
French & DLCL, Stanford
"Narrative Models for Unselfing" -
Gerhard Kreuch
Ph.D. Candidate
Philosophy, Vienna
"Self Feeling"
Winter 2015 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness
Winter Term Talks are co-sponsored by the Stanford Neurosciences InstitutePhilosophy
Mississippi State University
"Molecules, Mechanisms, and (Aspects of) P-Consciousness"
Director, SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind
UC Santa Barbara
"Tales from Both Sides of the Brain"
Psychology
UCLA
"An Epistemological Argument for a Higher-Order Theory of Conscious Perception"
Associate Director, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Carnegie Mellon
"Explaining the Sense of Agency"
Fall 2014 - Geballe Mini-Series on Proust & Consciousness
[View Poster]Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French
DLCL, Stanford University
"Proust and Consciousness: Discussion of Excerpts from Philosophy as Fiction"
Department of French
UC Berkeley
"Proust and Photography: Albertine and Memory Production"
Albert Newen
Philosophy
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
"Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception"
Spring 2014
Engineering, University of Tokyo
Logothetis Lab, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany
"A Turing Test for Visual Qualia and the Chaotic Spatiotemporal Fluctuation Hypothesis"
Philosophy
CUNY Graduate Center
"Two Concepts of Mental Quality"
Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy
Oxford University
"The Silence of Psychology and the Consistency Fallacy"
Research School of Psychology
The Australian National University
"Disambiguating Viewer-, Stimulus-, and Object-Centred Neglect."
Winter 2014
Albert Guerard Professor
DLCL, Stanford University
"Consciousness as Self-Observation: Historical Junctures"
Neil van Leeuwen
Philosophy
Georgia State University
"Is Thoroughgoing Skepticism Psychologically Possible?"
Spring 2013
DLCL & Department of French & Italian
Stanford University
"Consciousness and the Visionary Mind in Near-Death Experiences."
Abstract: The association of near-death with "the tunnel and the light" and visions of the afterlife has become so canonical that at least one literary character laments "being cheated" because she has to turn back before achieving a the visionary state. But in real life and in fiction, near-death visions are not as predictable as this canonical view leads us to believe. This talk discusses instances of "resistance to vision," that is, cases where people actively contest the visionary mind, and especially its cultural priming, at times during the near-death experience itself. Two central questions are: (1) who or what "resists vision" in this instance? can we still speak of a singular consciousness here?, and (2) what are the purposes of such resistance, and what kind of truth or authenticity is sought here?
Philosophy
Australian National University and Princeton University
"The Knowledge Argument for Representationalists."
Abstract: I will talk about what the many philosophers of mind who classify themselves as physicalists sympathetic to representationalist accounts of perceptual experiences have to say in response to the knowledge argument.
Winter 2013
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
MIT
"Learning to See Late in Life."
Abstract: The hope inherent in pursuing basic research is that sometime in the future the work will prove beneficial to society. This fruition can often take many years. However, in some instances, even the conduct of basic research can yield tangible societal benefits. I shall describe an effort that perhaps fits in this category. Named 'Project Prakash', this initiative provides sight to blind children on the one hand and helps address questions regarding brain plasticity and learning on the other. Through a combination of behavioral and brain-imaging studies, the effort has provided evidence of visual learning late in childhood and has illuminated some of the processes that might underlie such learning.
Philosophy
Australian National University and NYU
"Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism."
Harvard Medical School
Massachusetts General Hospital
"Is it OK to shoot that Zombie if it isn't Consciously Human? Is it OK to shoot that Zombie if it isn't Humanly Conscious? And How Can I tell the Difference?"
Abstract: In this presentation, we will discuss the construct of the cinema zombie as means by which we can address fundamental issues of how we view what is permissable among humans, among conscious humans, and ultimately among things that we consider living or not living. The cinema zombie presents an ideal substrate for these thorny ethical issues, and, given new developments in neuroscience, we can use what we scientifically understand about the experiences of self and other to desconstruct the rules and natural history that appear to govern the modern trope.
Fall 2012
Philosophy
New York University
"Conscious, Unconscious, Preconscious."
Slavic Languages & Literature
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Consciousness as Hesitation: Henri Bergson and David Bergelson."
DLCL, Stanford
"The Albino Gorilla."
Spring 2012
Psychology
Stanford
"How Wavelength Becomes Color: An Introduction to Color Science."
-
David Hilbert
Philosophy
University of Illinois at Chicago
"Constancy, Content and Inference." -
Steven Palmer
Psychology and Cognitive Science
UC Berkeley
"Human Color Preferences: An Ecological Approach."
Stanford Law School\
"Neural Implants: Legal and Ethical Issues."
Neurology
Stanford University
"Studying Human Conscious Perception By Electrical Stimulation of the Brain."
Winter 2012
Philosophy
Princeton
"Why Qualia are not Mental."
Philosophy
King's College London
"Kripke, the Hard Problem, and Intuitive Dualism."
Abstract: Many philosophers take the final section of Naming and Necessity to be arguing that the mere conceivability of mind-body separation leaves materialism with an intractably 'hard problem'. I shall show that this could not possibly have been Kripke's intention. However there is a different reading of his argument which helps us to see how the so-called hard problem stems from the intuitive incredibility of physicalism.
-
John Searle
Philosophy
UC Berkeley
"Problems and Successes in Giving a Neurobiological Explanation of Consciousness." -
Donovan Wishon
Philosophy
Stanford
"Russellian Acquaintance and the Phenomenal Concepts Strategy."
Philosophy
UC San Diego
"Chimerical Colors: Some Phenomenological Predictions from Cognitive Neuroscience."
Abstract: The Hurvich-Jameson (H-J) opponent-process network offers a familiar account of the empirical structure of the phenomenological Color Space for humans, an account with a number of predictive and explanatory virtues. Its successes here form the bulk of the existing reasons for suggesting a strict identity between our various color sensations on the one hand, and our various coding vectors across the color-opponent neurons in our primary visual pathways on the other. But antireductionists standardly complain that the systematic parallels discovered by the H-J network are just mere empirical 'correspondences', constructed post facto, with no predictive or explanatory purchase on the intrinsic qualitative characters of conscious sensations proper. My talk will dispute that complaint, by illustrating that the H-J model yields a rich variety of novel and unappreciated predictions, and some novel and unappreciated explanations, concerning the subjective qualitative characters of a considerable variety of color sensations possible for human experience, including color sensations that normal people have almost certainly never had before, color sensations whose accurate descriptions in ordinary language appear semantically ill-formed or even self-contradictory. Specifically, these 'impossible' color sensations are activation-vectors (across our opponent-process neurons) that lie inside the space of neuronally possible activation vectors, but outside the central and familiar 'color spindle' that confines the familiar range of sensations for the possible colors of external objects. These extra-spindle chimerical-color-sensations correspond to no color that you will ever see objectively displayed on a physical object. But the H-J model both predicts their existence and explains their decidedly anomalous qualitative characters in some detail. It also suggests how to produce these sensations by a simple procedure to be described in the later stages of the talk. The relevant color plates will allow you to savor these weird sensations for yourself, the better to evaluate the neural explanations sustained by the H-J model.
Fall 2011
SHC Geballe Workshop on Pain Experience:
Barwise Room, Cordura Hall Speakers:-
Patricia Churchland
Philosophy
UC San Diego
"Research on Consciousness: the Anterior Insula, Small-world Organization, and Rhythms." -
Sean Mackey
Neurology
Stanford
"The Strain in Pain Lies Mainly in the Brain: Lessons Learned from Neuroimaging."
CNRS, Paris
"A Neurophenomenological Approach to Consciousness"
SHC Geballe Workshop on Pain Experience:
Barwise Room, Cordura Hall Speakers:-
Michael Tye
Philosophy
U Texas at Austin
"The Painfulness of Pain" -
Howard Fields
Neurology
UCSF
"What is Pain and What is it For?"
University of Texas at Austin
"Of Corporations, China-Body Systems, and Silicon Chips: The Importance of History to Phenomenology."
Spring 2011: Brain and Mind Forum
Philosophy
Stanford University
"What physical mechanisms of computation does the brain use?"
Philosophy
Duke University
"Consciousness and the Self"
Winter 2011: Brain and Mind Forum
Philosophy
University of Toronto
"Sensory Exploration and Empirical Certainty"
Psychology
University of Surrey
"Color Categories in Language and Thought"
Abstract: Although the color spectrum is physically continuous, color categories are present in both language (i.e., color terms) and thought (e.g., categorical perception of color). In this talk, I will outline a series of developmental studies that investigate the origin of colour categories. I will present converging behavioural and electrophysiological evidence that infants respond categorically to color. I will also present evidence that color categories are lateralized to the right hemisphere of the infant brain, and appear to switch to the left hemisphere when color terms are learnt. The findings will be related to fundamental issues in the cognitive sciences such as: i) how and when categories form; ii) the relationship between categories in language and thought; and iii) how categories are expressed in the brain.
Numenta Corporation
"Recent Advances in Modeling Neocortex"
Abstract: Coaxing computers to perform acts of perception, language, and robotics has been difficult. Our belief is that to solve many problems of machine intelligence we first need to understand the principles by which the brain works and then build machines that work on those principles. To this end, Numenta has developed models of the neocortex and is applying them to practical problems.The neocortex is structured as a hierarchy of memory regions with each region implementing nearly identical learning algorithms. We model this hierarchy and posit that each region in the hierarchy learns common sequences of patterns in its input. Sequence memory forms the basis of inference, prediction, novelty detection, and motor behavior. Numenta has experimented with different approaches to sequence learning, or more precisely, learning the variable order transition statistics of distributed patterns. A year ago we started development of a new sequence learning method that is deeply aligned with cortical anatomy. The new cortical learning algorithms address many difficult theoretical challenges. They appear to be a leap forward in understanding what layers of neurons are doing in neocortex.In this talk I will give an overview of our overall neocortical theory and then present the new cortical learning algorithms.
Fall 2010
The Neurosciences Institute
San Diego, CA
"Consciousness is Biological"
Abstract: A neurodynamic view of Global Workspace Theory suggests new predictions about perceptual consciousness, episodic memory, and the medial temporal lobe.
Spring 2010
Bioengineering & Psychiatry
Stanford University
"Optogenetics: new developments, new applications"
2008-2009
Fall 2009
Perception and Consciousness Reading Group. For details contact CECSpring 2009
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
"The person-model theory of understanding other minds"
UC Irvine
"Quantum mechanics, Wigner, and the temptation of dualism"
Tufts University
"Four dimensions of cognitive attitude space"
UC Berkeley
"Attention, space and consciousness"
Fall 2008
Duke University
"What we see: The texture of conscious experience"