science

The Science of Consciousness

The Science of Consciousness is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Science of Consciousness rather than just read about it. In short: The Science of Consciousness (TSC; formerly Toward a Science of Consciousness) is an international academic conference that has been held biannually since 1994. It is organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies of the University of Arizona.

Key takeaways

The Science of Consciousness belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Science of Consciousness to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Science of Consciousness from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Science of Consciousness (TSC; formerly Toward a Science of Consciousness) is an international academic conference that has been held biannually since 1994. It is organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies of the University of Arizona. Alternate conferences are held in Arizona (either Tucson or Phoenix), and the others in locations worldwide. The conference is devoted exclusively to the investigation of consciousness.

Associated people The main organizer is Stuart Hameroff, an anestheologist and the director of the center that hosts the conference. One of the speakers at the first conference, David Chalmers, had co-organized some of the following ones, until the event became too far away from the scientific mainstream.

Conference books Three books published by MIT Press have resulted from the conference. John Benjamins published a book containing selected proceedings from TSC 1999.

Independent academic coverage An essay review Toward a science of consciousness:Tucson I and II by J. Gray was printed in ISR Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Volume 24 Issue 4 (1 April 1999), pp. 255–260. Michael Punt reviewed TSC 2002 in the journal Leonardo. In the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Christopher Holvenstot reviewed TSC 2011, likening it to The Greatest Show on Earth. A review of TSC 2012 may be found in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. A commentary on dropping the word "Toward" was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in 2016.

Media coverage Chapter 8 of John Horgan's book The Undiscovered Mind is entirely devoted to his experiences at the first (1994) TSC conference. In The New York Times, George Johnson wrote about the 2016 conference that "wild speculations and carnivalesque pseudoscience were juxtaposed with sober sessions". The conference and its main organizers were the subject of a long feature in June 2018, first in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and re-published in The Guardian. Tom Bartlett concluded that the conference was "more or less the Stuart [Hameroff] Show. He decides who will and who will not present. [...] Some consciousness researchers believe that the whole shindig has gone off the rails, that it’s seriously damaging the field of consciousness studies, and that it should be shut down."

See also Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which puts on a similar series of conferences about consciousness.

References

External links TSC webpage

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Science of Consciousness

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Science of Consciousness claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Science of Consciousness before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Science of Consciousness ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Science of Consciousness

In research: The Science of Consciousness appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Science of Consciousness in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Science of Consciousness is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic conferences, Consciousness, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Science of Consciousness outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “The Science of Consciousness” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study The Science of Consciousness in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Science of Consciousness means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Science of Consciousness out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Science of Consciousness in simple terms?

Why does The Science of Consciousness matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Science of Consciousness?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Science of Consciousness.