Consciousness, Experience and Ways of Knowing (Perspectives from Science, Philosophy and the Arts)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Today often the issue that gathers focus inspite of its evasive nature, in discussions on consciousness, cognition, or even advancements in nanotechnology and biotechnology, is about Experience with a capital 'E'. The last few decades have seen tremendous achievements in not only creating new technologies and theories to understand life, nature and universe, but also have brought back the human factor into discussions.

Consciousness studies is one area that has emerged a significant one in bringing disciplines together as well as posing the challenge of the 'binding problem' of subjective experience. The puzzle how neural, discrete and quantitative processes give rise to consciousness that is subjective, unitary and qualitative has expanded the domain of consciousness studies to include as many different forms of human experience and ways of knowing.

Do experience and the way we understand have significant roles in altering our ideas about consciousness? This is one question, which we would explore in this two-day conference.

According to Thomas Kuhn, the late historian and philosopher of science, much of what we learn, including science, is by example. When we learn by example, we learn how to do something, not necessarily knowing everything that is involved in doing it. This kind of knowing was termed tacit knowledge by Michael Polanyi, where we do not fully know what it is that we know.

Today often the issue that gathers focus inspite of its evasive nature, in discussions on consciousness, cognition, or even advancements in nanotechnology and biotechnology, is about Experience with a capital 'E'. The last few decades have seen tremendous achievements in not only creating new technologies and theories to understand life, nature and universe, but also have brought back the human factor into discussions.

Consciousness studies is one area that has emerged a significant one in bringing disciplines together as well as posing the challenge of the 'binding problem' of subjective experience. The puzzle how neural, discrete and quantitative processes give rise to consciousness that is subjective, unitary and qualitative has expanded the domain of consciousness studies to include as many different forms of human experience and ways of knowing.

Do experience and the way we understand have significant roles in altering our ideas about consciousness? This is one question, which we would explore in this two-day conference.

According to Thomas Kuhn, the late historian and philosopher of science, much of what we learn, including science, is by example. When we learn by example, we learn how to do something, not necessarily knowing everything that is involved in doing it. This kind of knowing was termed tacit knowledge by Michael Polanyi, where we do not fully know what it is that we know.