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Toward a Science of Consciousness.

April 8-12, 2002. Tucson Convention Center,
Tucson, Arizona.
Sponsored by the Center for Consciousness Studies,
University of Arizona.

Reviewed by Michael Punt

mpunt@easynet.co.uk

see also www.consciousness.arizona.edu

Imagine a biennial conference that has been running for eight years about a topic that is at the very center of our understanding, a conference which draws together scientists, doctors, philosophers, artists, para-scientists (and a fair share of other "outsiders"). What could they possibly agree on? This year at the Toward the Science of Consciousness Studies conference at Tucson the answer was simple: no-one knew what consciousness was. If what you imagine is stimulating then this conference would have met with all your expectations, if alternatively such a imaginary scenario fills you with horror, then perhaps consciousness studies is not for you. One thing is for sure, no matter what discipline that you have been trained in, imaginative leaps are the order of the day just to begin to understand what is at stake in these discussions. For this reason (and a whiff of political correctness) the voice of who was talking seemed as significant as what was being argued, and for this reason much that was delivered a Tucson this year attended to first person experience rather than the dry detached tones that one would expect in a scientific conference (or a review such as this). That is not to say that the experiments were designed without scientific rigour, nor that universal and generalised conclusion were not drawn, but the necessary transdiciplinarity of the discourse imposed a welcome modesty - particularly as the claims became most unsettling. Dick Bierman for example, began by reminding us that science was not concerned with miracles æand then discussed his result with fMRI on subjects who appeared to anticipate emotional stimuli; responding in advance to the horrific pictures in a random set of benign and malign images. Similarly Dean Radin's evidence seemed to show that global thought could affect a global network of random number generators. More speculative suggestions came from the panel that dealt with sleep behaviour disorders, (parasomnias) and the proposal, argued by Petra Stoerig, that we might need to revisit the cultural hierarchy between sleep and wakefulness, much as Fellini suggested in virtually all of his films. Perhaps the most transgressive suggestion came from Charles Tart who, it seems, has prized himself out of retirement to tackle the qualitative difference between hypnosis, meditation and consensus consciousness since younger scientists cannot afford the risk.

None of these fascinating interventions illuminated the causality of consciousness, nor did they yield fuller or more satisfactory descriptions. What they did achieve was a radical challenge to the mono-disciplinarty of western thought that now stands as a barrier to intellectual growth. The thrust of much that was presented at Toward a Science of Consciousness called for imagination as a part of a research method, not as a distracting diversion at the end of a hard day in the laboratory. For this reason Consciousness Studies is a prime site for scientists and artists to collaborate, to fuse their distinct and specific skills into a new and powerful instrument of enquiry. What was clear in the week of presentations and poster sessions was that this was generally understood in the coffee crowd. But old (cultural) habits die hard, and it was with some regret that very often the imaginative arts were not subjected to the same courtesy that the laboratory rats enjoyed. At worst high profile speakers were embarrassingly ill informed and unashamedly philistine in their reckless treatment of scholar's work in the humanities, often however the point was simply missed in the theatrical rhetoric of academic performance. In exceptional contrast to this was Amy Ione's measured and courageous presentation in which she spoke on equal terms with both artists and neurological scientists and, if nothing else, showed a model of how these constituencies might collaborate on terms of mutual respect and even consideration. The fact that she was an exception æwas a great pity, especially since there is a wealth of other engaging speakers informed by high quality scholarship that could have been drawn upon.

The research project at the Center for Consciousness Studies at Tucson is perhaps one of the most important ongoing projects - certainly for the Leonardo constituency, not for what it may or may not tell us (eventually) about consciousness, but for the model that it proposes for seeking new insight into those aspects of human experience that still languish in the deep shadows of the Enlightenment. As such its contribution to human affairs could be as significant as quantum physics - an imaginative intervention that on the evidence of the twentieth century freed the creative impulse from the tyranny of mechanistic rationalism. The difficult, and unenviable task for the scientific panel is to manage the heterogeneous collection of contributors with a professional symmetry so as to benefit from the skills of those people for whom imaginative leaps are all in a day's (or night's) work.

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