Researchers Explore What Contemporary Science Cannot Explain

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Science Daily

A team of University of Hertfordshire philosophers lead by Professor Paul Coates and Dr Sam Coleman is conducting a three-year research project to explore conscious experiences that contemporary science still cannot explain.

Funded with £380,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and involving the collaboration of some of the world’s leading philosophers and cognitive scientists, the project will attempt to answer the mystery of consciousness.

Professor Coates explains: “When we see a sunset or hear a symphony our sense organs, brains and bodies are moved in ways that are well understood by the physical and biological sciences. But during such experiences we also enjoy distinctive forms of conscious awareness. Yet this undeniable fact about our conscious lives is stubbornly resistant to scientific understanding. How is it even possible for purely physical brain activity to produce conscious experience? How do the qualities that manifest themselves in experience relate to the very different properties that are referred to in scientific descriptions of the physical world?”

To find the answers to these questions Professor Coates and Dr Coleman and their team will re-examine our fundamental concepts relating to consciousness and physical reality. They will look at experimental results in psychology and brain science and at phenomenology and other forms of philosophical enquiry.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090123075632.htm

[Smith_3]

1. Good book on the subject:

Roger Penrose - "The Emperor's new mind"

[FarrenH]

2. It certainly covers many of the presumed areas of enquiry

although "The Emperors New Mind" specifically focuses on perceived hurdles to machine emulation of human conciousness. One criticism I have of the otherwise excellent book is that Penrose apparently buys into Searle's sophomoric (and self-evidently specious) "Chinese Room" thought experiment, which is surprising considering Penrose is a distinguished mathematician. Nonetheless, an excellent and wide-ranging book.

[Smith_3]

4. What would you recommend for further study of the subject?

I have also read "The creative comso" by Thomas Goernitz, but I find that he makes too far fetched assumptions (and some parts I simply don't understand).

[ColbertWatcher]

3. You'd think Science Daily could come up with a better headline.

How can they go from "science is researching the mind" to "Science doesn't know, so science is going to find out"???

I guess popular science publications aren't immune from sensationalism.