Inter-Disciplinary D E V E L O P M E N T S
	Towards a Science of Consciousness
[2] The Tucson Conferences of 1994 & 1996

Under the clear desert skies of Arizona in the northern spring of 1994, quite a remarkable event happened in the history of collaborative scientific research and development. Hosted by the University of Arizona, an international and interdisciplinary conference was convened entitled "Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness"

Perhaps the simplest statement as to the background of this event exists on its home website in Arizona. Here, the Background Paper - prepared by the conference committee - provides the following outline:

"The role of consciousness in science has had its ups and downs over the past century. After dominating the stage throughout William James' era, the concept was banned from polite discussion for many decades by the behaviorists. Even after the emergence of cognitive science in the sixties and seventies---which undermined behaviorism by demonstrating the objective reality of inner states---the "C-word" remained slightly off-color in polite scientific discourse. Why discuss something that can't be measured?

In the past few years much of this has changed. Scientists with unimpeachable credentials in a wide range of fields, from psychology to molecular biology to mathematical physics, have begun to assert that understanding the nature of consciousness is an important scientific goal, perhaps the most important question that science faces at the present time. But how to begin?

We take the view that the problem of consciousness transcends the traditional boundaries of scientific organization. Clearly, psychologists and psychiatrists have important contributions to make, but so do biochemists who study the various actions of mood altering chemicals. In addition to philosophers, who have thought about the nature of consciousness for many centuries, computer scientists are now entering the discussion, as are neural network analysts, electrophysiologists, quantum physicists and ethnologists. From such a description, some might suppose that the discussion is spinning out of control, but we are more optimistic. It is a time of great intellectual excitement; old perspectives are changing and new concepts are emerging in this vast interdisciplinary area."

"First of all---we must admit---the problem of consciousness was not solved. Nonetheless several interesting lines of investigation were suggested. Perhaps the most central issue concerned the ontological basis for a theory of consciousness. Is consciousness based upon a nonphysical aspect of reality? Or does it emerge from the electrochemical interactions of tens of billions of neurons as is assumed in the field of cognitive neuroscience? Is classical neuroscience up to the task of explaining consciousness or must one appeal to the mysteries of quantum mechanics to capture its essence? Is a new, and yet to be discovered, element of reality at the base of consciousness? Arguments for each of these positions, and more, were aired and vigorously defended in a convivial atmosphere."

This background then concludes with a with a number of key questions concerning the nature of consciousness which were forthcoming from the conference proceedings. Follow the link of the full text to see whether you can answer any of these.

In response to the announcement of the conference in 1994, there were received by the program committee a total of around 130 abstracts. As had been planned, these were classified and scheduled in accordance to whether papers would be presented by way of a plenary or concurrent address, or by way of poster presentation.

Of all the papers presented at this conference, perhaps the most influential was the opening keynote paper of David Chalmers, whose background in Philosophy and Computer Science permitted him to make a systematic and comprehensive assessment of the current state of affairs. The paper, entitled "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" commences as follows:

"Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.

To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that these methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance and a double-aspect view of information."

Facing Up the the Problem of Consciousness - Full text (16p) from David Chalmers' web-site.

In this keynote paper to the first of the Tucson conferences, David Chalmers goes on to delineate the difference between the "easy problems" (cognitive functions like discrimination and the focus of attention) and the "hard problem" (why should any of this be accompanied by phenomenal experience?).

Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem - JCS compliation of articles, reviews and discussion.

Acknowldeged by many as a plain and direct statement of the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, Charmers' statement has been received with great interest by many parties, and has been covered in a multitude of publications and magazines. In fact, such were the responses to this statement of the problems faced by scientists in the specifications of consciousness that, following the years after the conference, many discussions and articles arose in relation to this paper alone. The web page (above) presents many discussions related to this issue.

In conclusion to this section, it would be fair to comment that althought the "statement of the hard problem" was, in retrospect, perhaps the singularly most discussed issue to be set forth at the first Tucson, there were many other issues raised and discussed at the conference, and then pursued in its aftermath. The next section examines the web-sites which stock a wealth of resource articles which have - in many cases - been engendered as a result of the conference. For interested researchers who might wish to determine the directions in which interdisciplinary discussion was evolving, these sites might provide a starting point.

In this aftermath of the first Tucson conference, there gradually appeared more and more discussion papers and articles relating largely to the information presented, but sometimes exploring new territory. Although there are numerous isolated web sites on the planet which would house extremely interesting articles concerning the conference information, a number of sites stand out as interdisciplinary information archives in this area:

Journal of Consciousness Studies - Controversies in science and the humanities ...

A publication from the UK which presents an indepth view of the contemporary interdisciplinary discussions. A quick browse of their Contents Page reveals selected abstracts and reviews which extend back over 7 substantial issues to 1994. Many of the articles so presented at this website relate to material presented at the original seminar. Further their JCS OnLine Content offers access to the logs of E-Mail discussion forums of some of the Tucson principal players to-date in the debating of various scientific issues which have been identified as being foundational (or not so foundational:) to the scientific specification of consciousness.

PSYCHE - An interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness ...

Published out of the Monash University, Australia and maintained by Patrick Wilken is a comparably similar sized archive of reference material in this area concerning the 1994/1995 discussions, reviews, abstracts, articles, discussion lists services, etc. From my point of view (in consideration of other articles held at my website) one of the more interesting reviews to be found there concerns that of Francis Crick's book entitled The Astonishing Hypothesis - The Scientific Search For The Soul. It is recommended that this site be noted by independent research students.

Towards a Science of Consciousness - The First Tucson Discussions and Debates

Although this is a simply one web document, it provides an in-depth view of the book of the same name. As it reveals - the papers collected in this book are a substantial record of the views presented at the conference, and are organized and integrated to explore the whole spectrum of scientific approaches to consciousness. Its authors are Stuart Hameroff, Alfred Kaszniak and Alwyn Scott. This web document - even in its form of an outline to the book, is quite informative as to the content of discussions and developments.

Metaphysical Review - Essays on the Foundations of Physics

Another long-term (and independent) player in the inter-disciplinary fields is this free newsletter is consistent of comments, letters and book reviews related to conceptually difficult problem in physics and science in general. On its home page it provides as short FAQ concerning the nature of metaphysics and defines metaphysics as "The study of the fundamental or primary causes and the underlying nature of things". It shows how you may obtain a free subscription or even how you may contribute articles. It has historical and text-searchable archives going back to June of 1994. It is made available by the University of New Hampshire. Its new July 1996 publication will feature a review entitled "400 years of Descartes".

To find out what happened out there in the desert under the skies of the Northern Spring of 1996 - specifically during April 8-13, at the Tucson Convention Center Music Hall - there exist a number of existent and comprehensive information resources. By my final count, there were over 560 abstracts submitted to the conference from all over the planet. The conference committee, with the experience of the initial interdisciplinary conference of 1994 behind them, established in the planning stages two methods of classification.

Firstly, in terms of the presentation of the interdisciplinary information there were identified three major schedules: Plenary, Concurrent and Poster. While the plenary speakers were scheduled sequentially over the days of the conference, the concurrent schedules ran in parallel, while the Poster presentations were allocated a more informal exhibition and timetable at the end of the day.

Additionally, this range of abstracts was classified in accordance to the following five major themes .... Philosophy, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Physics/Mathematics and Phenomenology/Culture.

Credit should be allocated to the ground-breaking work of the team of people who were responsible for the organisation, administration and management of this second conference, and the home website should be the first point browsed by researchers interested in the global harvest of Tucson II - 1996:

Tucson II - Conference Headquarters ... The University of Arizona.

At this site you will find the actual organisational framework for the conference, the session timetables and activity schedules, the scientific program committee, and all general information relating to the conference. Summaries are presented along with attendee critiques and links to coverage from both The New York Times and New Scientist. There exists a list of abstract contributors at the Tucson II web-site, but it is prototype textual version. It represent the first collation of over 560 abstracts received from all over the planet, each each attempting to provide illumination in regard to the scientific specification of the parameters of consciousness. This collation document was used later on down the track by the following two websites - as an input document to be indexes - in the publication of this information on the web.

Journal of Consciousness Studies - Special Edition - Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996

The Journal of Consciousness Studies, represented on the Scientific Program Committee by Keith Sutherland, was always in a good position to be able to publish reporting information concerning the developments. However, what has been achieved in this area represents an extremely ambitious and interesting approach to information archival concerning the disparate range of abstracts which were received in response to the well posted forthcoming conference. The JCS have engineered a slightly broader classification mechanism, and have meticulously allocated each of the abstracts received - from those of the plenary speakers, through those of the concurrent speakers, down to those selected only for poster presentation - in accordance to this broader ontology. A certain degree of cross referencing has been enabled within this online database of abstracts, and they are listed by author and by classified subject matter. All-in-all the presentation of the harvest information arising from the second Tucson conference has been top-rate. Anyone connected to the web from anywhere in the planet can research - if need be - the 510 different approaches received to the specification of scientific consciousness.

THESIS - The Higher Times Education Suppliment Internet Service

THESIS provides a further resource concerning these 510 abstracts received, and uses the same classification system and database as JCS. Additionally, THESIS has made available RealAudio data in which you may hear certain of the key speeches via the internet. Further resources offered here include an archive of daily reports submitted from the conference, profiles on some of the speakers, an instant guide to the intellectual factions, an extensive collection of previously published articles relavant to many issues discussed and concludes with a suppliment and a web-based questionaire for the public.

On the search for the neural correlate of consciousness
"The search for the `neural correlate' of consciousness has exploded in recent years, with a plethora of seemingly incompatible proposals. Given that we do not have a `consciousness meter' for detecting conscious experience directly, any such research requires some pre-experimental background principles to get off the ground (e.g., in formulating criteria for the presence of consciousness). These principles are usually left implicit, but an explicit analysis of their nature has strong consequences in the search for a neural correlate of consciousness. In this talk I will draw out some of these consequences and sketch a theoretical synthesis of current empirical work in the area."

In conclusion, one might ask what was achieved out of the second conference. To answer this question, perhaps something might be said concerning the development of the classification system which arose intially in the management of the conference, and subsequently in the web publishing houses which attempted to present these seemingly disparate specifications of consciousness to the planet.

If you recall, there were originally five major themes of areas identified concerning the nature of the interdisciplinary spectrum. The first four of these five were the more traditional areas of Philosophy, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and Physics/Mathematics. The fifth theme, previously labelled Phenomenology/Culture was found to be redefined into another six areas. These were Experiential approaches, Anomalies of consciousness, Humanities, and Culture and Society.

Of course, while the expansion of this classification could have well been expected due to the open nature of the call for international papers on the science of consciousness, it is encouraging to see that the traditionally non-scientific disciplines of endeavour being represented in the overall picture of the specifications. And after all, would anyone have expected differently?

It may be of interest to some researchers to actuall view the classification structure employed in this ambitious and milestone event. At both the JCS and THESIS sites, the same structure as delineated below is hyperlinked to the abstracts which have been classified into these categories and sub-categories:

1.0 Philosophy - 1.1 The concept of consciousness, 1.2 Ontology of consciousness, 1.3 Knowing what it's like and the knowledge argument, 1.4 Qualia, 1.5 Machine consciousness, 1.6 The function of consciousness, 1.7 The `hard problem' and the explanatory gap, 1.8 Higher-order thought, 1.9 Epistemology and philosophy of science, 1.10 Personal identity and the self, 1.11 Free will and agency, 1.12 Intentionality and representation, 1.13 Miscellaneous.

2.0 Neuroscience - 2.1 Vision, 2.2 Other sensory modalities, 2.3 Motor control, 2.4 Memory and learning, 2.5 Neuropsychology, 2.6 Anesthesiology, 2.7 Cellular and sub-neural processes, 2.8 Quantum neurodynamics, 2.9 Pharmacology, 2.10 The binding problem, 2.11 Language, 2.12 Emotion, 2.13 Time, 2.14 Specific brain areas, 2.15 Miscellaneous.

3.0 Cognitive Science & Psychology - 3.1 Attention, 3.2 Vision, 3.3 Other sensory modalities, 3.4 Memory and learning, 3.5 Emotion, 3.6 Language, 3.7 Mental imagery, 3.8 Implicit and explicit processes, 3.9 Unconscious/conscious processes, 3.10 Sleep and dreaming, 3.11 Cognitive development, 3.12 Artificial intelligence & robotics, 3.13 Neural networks and connectionism, 3.14 Cognitive architectures, 3.15 Ethology, 3.16 Task performance and decision making, 3.18 Theory of mind, 3.19 Intelligence and creativity, 3.20 Miscellaneous.

4.0 Physics & Mathematics - 4.1 Quantum theory, 4.2 Space-time relativity, 4.3 Integrative models, 4.4 Emergent and hierarchical systems, 4.5 Nonlinear dynamics, 4.6 Logic and computational theory, 4.7 Holography, 4.8 Bioelectromagnetics/resonance effects, 4.9 Thermodynamics, 4.10 Miscellaneous.

5.0 Biology - 5.1 Evolution of consciousness, 5.2 Biophysics and living processes.

6.0 Experiential approaches - 6.1 Phenomenology, 6.2 Meditation, contemplation & mysticism, 6.3 Hypnosis, 6.4 Biofeedback, 6.5 Other altered states of consciousness, 6.6 Transpersonal and humanistic psychology, 6.7 Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, 6.8 Lucid dreaming.

7.0 Anomalies of consciousness - 7.1 Parapsychology, 7.2 Medicine, healing and placebo studies, 7.3 Spiritual healing, 7.4 Psychoneuroimmunology, 7.5 Out-of-body experiences, 7.6 Miscellaneous.

8.0 Humanities - 8.1 Literature, hermeneutics and Linguistics, 8.2 Art, 8.3 Music, 8.4 Religion, 8.5 History, 8.6 Aesthetics, 8.7 Mythology.

9.0 Culture and Society - 9.1 Sociology and political science, 9.2 Anthropology, 9.3 Information technology, 9.4 Ethics and legal studies, 9.5 Education, 9.6 Business and organizational studies.

The Brain Project - PUBLIC Forums reporting on the conference - Sydney, Australia.

Presented by Stephen Jones in Sydney, Australia - August 14th to 18th August, 1996 - this website hosts an in-depth reporting and background to the 1996 Arizona conference. As part of the Brain Project, a development of a documentary opera about consciousness, this series of forums is supported by the Creative Development Branch of the Australian Film Commission. This independent review and forum concerning the emergence of collaborative and inter-disciplinary scientific specifications of the nature of conference also provides well prepared background notes on historical ideas of the Brain and the Mind, from the classical view of the greeks such as Plato, Aristotle and Galen, to the Humours and the rise of Mechanism (17th century view of the mind), to extracts from Descartes and Early Neuro-Physiology.

In conclusion, the website and forum offers an enormous and independent resource concerning the contemporary and background material in this field. Of exceptional worth is the site's list of Links and other references, which is extensive.

Tucson III - Conference Headquarters ... The University of Arizona.

The third international and interdisciplinary conference "Towards a Science of Consciousness" will be staged under the skies of the Northern Spring of 1998 - specifically between the dates April 28-May 3, 1998. As the inexorable chariot of time embodied in the triune system of earth and sun and moon bears us - one and all - towards this event, you can rest assured that the project committee of Stuart Hameroff, Al Kaszniak and Al Scott will update the conference headquarters home page (above). The conference committee are also co-sponsoring a meeting in Denmark in August, 1997 in conjunction with the Danish Research Council "Year of the Brain". It is additionally anticipated that there will be established a Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona.

Elsewhere on the planet, there have been other collaborative approaches - and individual approaches - towards a more informed scientific specification of the nature of consciousness:

Global Resource Indices

Philosophy of Mind: Comprehensive resources maintained by the Philosophy Dept, Duke University, US
Biosemiotics: An Information & Resource page from Alexei Sharov and Jesper Hoffmeyer, Virginia Tech, US
ECSC: European College for the Study of Consciousness (Conference Info)
Consciousness Research Laboratory: The CRL Project HeadQuarters at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science: A web page with numerous interdisciplinary resources by Ronald Lemmen at Sussex University
Tucson 1994: Surfing the Collapsing Waves of Consciousness on a Surfboard of Microtubules
Is Consciousness Explainable?: An electronic forum set up at Harvard Uni - read the comments - what do you think?

Tucson Papers - Presented and/or Submitted and/or Associated

Interested parties who have information of the web and who have browsed this document, please feel free to contact me via E-Mail and so too include reference to your research efforts in this expanding interdisciplinary field, "towards a Science of Consciousness".

(Chapter I) Towards a Science of Consciousness - Historical Preamble, Planet Earth, 520 bc

If you have not already done so, you may review the introductory chapter to this article concerning the Tucson Conferences of 1994/1996. It is consistent of a handful of observations relating to the further emergence of interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborations. This is then followed by three accounts, which - like life itself - are a mixture of truth and fiction, and follow the threads of three separate events on the terrestrial planetary surface of the earth in the northern spring of 520 bc.

For those who might wish to avail themselves of the background substantiations for the content of these three accounts presented in the "Historical Preamble, 520bc" then you will find a great range of such resource documentation at the website, Mountain Man Graphics, located in the Southern planetary regions, down in Australia.

All are welcome ... in particular the students of life.

It is hoped that this review has been of assistance to all researchers in these vast interdisciplinary fields of research which today constitute the myriad specialisations of mankind's knowledge concerning the world around him - and the world within him.

PRF Brown
BCSLS {Freshwater}
Mountain Man Graphics,
Newport Beach, Sydney, Australia

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Conclusion of Report on Tucson {1994 & 1996}
Section (2) in Interdisciplinary DEVELOPMENTS
Towards a Science of Consciousness

	Ever read "The Soul of the Indian" by Dr Charles Eastman?
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