Consciousness and Time

2nd-3rd April 2008

Abden House, Pollock Halls,
University of Edinburgh

Supported by

Description of Workshop:

Are our conscious experiences discrete snapshots separated by gaps too short for us to perceive, much as in a movie we do not notice the gaps between frames? Or should we rather think of conscious experience as temporally extended allowing us to experience what William James called "the specious present"? What kinds of neural and computational mechanisms might underpin conscious experiences that happen through and over time? This workshop will bring together leading experts from philosophy,cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology to discuss these and other questions concerning the temporal nature of consciousness.

This workshop is funded by Volkswagen Stiftung and is the first in a series of three workshops that will be run by the Subjective Time Collaborative Research Project which forms a part of the European Platform for the Life Sciences, Mind Sciences and Humanities. For further details regarding the Platform visit Volkswagen Stiftung.