The Science of Consciousness

About this event

Our purpose in this group is to explore the science of consciousness, drawing from sources that range from neuroscience to cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Although we will occasionally draw from the insights of spiritual introspective traditions, our focus here will be on what can be supported by the best current science regarding how the mind supervenes on the brain. People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. The results suggest that Dualism tacitly constrains reasoning about one’s innate origins and its persistence after death. But since Dualism is “soft” and interacts with Essentialism, supernatural intuitions are chimeric, not purely ethereal. Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy, so named because the seizures’ first symptoms consist of an ecstatic/mystical experience, including feelings of increased self-awareness, mental clarity, and“unity with everything that exists,” accompanied by a sense of bliss and physical well-being. Is there a form of consciousness that does not instantiate minimal phenomenal selfhood or an epistemic agent model? Are selfhood (i.e., egoic self-consciousness, the experience of “being someone”) and perspectivalness (i.e., an individual and consciously experienced first-person perspective) necessary conditions for phenomenality? If they are not, what is the epistemological status of reports about such episodes. This week, we are considering, first, the paper 'How to Tell a Dualist' by Iris Berent, and then take a look at 'Minimal Phenomenal Experience' by Thomas Metzinger and 'Ecstatic Mystical Experience Through Epilepsy' by Fabienne Picard. https://www.philosophie.fb05.uni-mainz.de/files/2020/03/Metzinger_MPE1_PMS_2020.pdf & https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ecstatic-or-Mystical-Experience-through-Epilepsy-Picard/1190619f5bb2ef6ccc4d0f77ee2c1468323be179 & https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.northeastern.edu/dist/0/63/files/2024/01/Cognitive-Science-2023-Berent-How-to-Tell-a-Dualist-1eef95f04a840655.pdf