Consciousness: The Hard Problem

Will consciousness ever be explained by neuroscientists?

What is the latest philosophical and scientific thinking in explaining how the wet stuff in our heads creates the world we experience?

An expert panel consisting of Dr. Anil Seth, Professor Barry Smith and Professor Chris Frith discuss these questions and more.

This event was held at the Royal Institution on Wednesday 7 March 2012 and forms part of a series curated for the Royal Institution of Great Briatin by Alok Jha.

Seth is co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. His research crosses the fields of computational neuroscience, consciousness science and neurorobotics. In addition to contributing new insights into the mechanisms of action selection, he has developed new ways to link brain activity to conscious experience and he is an authority on the statistical analysis of causality. He is also chair of the upcoming annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which will take place in July.

Smith is director of the Institute of Philosophy where the aim is to promote and facilitate high quality research in philosophy, making it available to the widest possible audience both inside and outside the academic community. According to Smith, "Consciousness creates, in each of us, an inner life where we think and feel; a realm where we experience the sights, sounds, feels, tastes and smells that inform us of the world around us."

Frith is professor emeritus at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

Source: 33rd Square | Consciousness: The Hard Problem

Alok Jha: Consciousness: the hard problem? - Discussion