Join the ASSC 17 Journal Club!

There are only two months left before the ASSC 17 meeting! Have you checked the ASSC 17 program and found that you were not so familiar with the topics of keynote lectures or symposium talks? Have you found that you would like to discuss about the debates with someone but couldn't find a companion to do so? 

Let's join the ASSC 17 journal club! This is a space for online study and discussion of selected material in advance of the ASSC 17 meeting. We'll periodically post a selection of material related to the major keynotes and talks featured at the meeting. Here we'll have a chance to get up to speed on several topics to help make the most of our attendance at the ASSC meeting.

We will begin the journal club by the recent debate on the Information Integration Theory of consciousness (IIT) between Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch, and John Searle. In order to get well-prepared before attending to this not-to-be-missed Roundtable, please don't be hesitate to join us and post your comments! (Join the first journal club now!)

Journal Club - Debating the IIT

Welcome to the first Journal Club! This is a space for online study and discussion of selected material in advance of the ASSC 17 meeting (early registration ends May 15!). We'll periodically post a selection of material related to the major keynotes and talks featured at the meeting. Here we'll have a chance to get up to speed on several topics to help make the most of our attendance at the ASSC meeting.

John Searle

Our first journal club concerns a recent debate playing out in the pages of the New York Review of Books. In the book review [1], John Searle critiques a theory of consciousness that's gained lots of traction in the past few years, the information integration theory of consciousness (IIT), proposed by Giulio Tononi. The particular book reviewed, "Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist", is by Christof Koch, and it expounds on the IIT. Following publication of the review, Koch and Tononi responded with a letter to the editors of the NYRB [2], challenging several parts of Searle's critique. Searle followed up with a reply of his own [2].

Giulio Tononi

Christof Koch

We chose this debate as our inaugural topic for a journal club discussion because it provides an excellent entry point to the issues at hand, and involves some of the most influential ideas motivating consciousness research today. Interestingly, Searle, Tononi, and Koch will continue this debate at the ASSC 17 meeting this July, appearing in a roundtable discussion moderated by Jennifer Goldman and Stuart Firestein!

We encourage you to read the (very brief) materials and then join in the discussion in the comments!

1. Searle 2013 New York Review of Books "Can information theory explain consciousness?"
[link to NYRB] [link to pdf printout]
 
2.  Koch & Tononi 2013 New York Review of Books "Reply to Searle: Can a Photodiode Be Conscious?" and Searle 2013 New York Review of Books "Reply to Koch & Tononi"
[link to NYRB] [link to pdf printout]
_______

 Optional readings:
- Tononi 2008 Biol Bull “Consciousness as integrated information: a provisional manifesto” [journal link]
- Koch 2009 Scientific American "A 'Complex' Theory of Consciousness" [magazine link]
- Tononi 2012 Arch Ital Biol “The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness: An Updated Account” [journal link]
- Tononi 2012 “Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul” [amazon link]
- Koch 2012 “Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist” [amazon link]

Student Spotlight: Thomas Andrillon

Welcome to our fifth Student Spotlight interview! This one features Thomas Andrillon, a cognitive neuroscience Ph.D. student. It was conducted by Ting-An Lin, one of the student member on the 2012-2013 ASSC student committee. 

Ting-An Lin: Hi Thomas, thank you very much for being our interviewee this time! Could you give us a quick introduction about yourself?

Thomas Andrillon: I am a PhD candidate in cognitive neurosciences working under the supervision of Dr Sid Kouider (ENS, Paris, France) and Dr Giulio Tononi (UW, Madison, WI, USA). I graduated from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) in Biology before pursuing my curriculum in Cognitive Sciences within the ENS Research Master in Cognitive Sciences (CogMaster). During my schooling years at the ENS, I had also the chance to get in contact with many different labs through internships. It permitted me to confirm my deep interest and specialization in the field of consciousness, which I considered at that time as the most enigmatic scientific mystery remaining. During these internships, I spent three semesters in Dr Tononi's Center for Sleep and Consciousness and one year in Dr Sid Kouider's Attention and Consciousness team.

Lin: What interesting books or papers you've been reading these weeks? Why did you like them?

Andrillon: I must confess that I am not the best example of the students always up-to-date with the  literature of their field. It is hard to continuously keep track of what is going on in science. However, most of the time, the important trends are hard to miss, even for me. For example, I have been really impressed by the profusion and quality of the recent publications of the researchers at Dönders University, in particular Dr Simon van Gaal and Dr Floris de Lange. In Paris, we have a new generation of young researchers such as Dr Valentin Wyart and Dr Vincent de Gardelle. Even if their main topic of interest are different than mine, the quality of their work is amazing. Nevertheless, I save some time for more casual readings. I am always dazzled to realize how rich and inspiring the intuition of a poet or a novelist can be for the scientific work. To this extent, the reading of Jose Luis Borges' “Everything and nothing” was a profound joy.

Lin: When and how did you initially become interested in consciousness? 

Andrillon: I cannot really remember when exactly started my interest in consciousness. Perhaps because I was curious of the topic for a long time without necessarily conceiving that one could study it scientifically. I guess it was a latent desire that one day became conscious. However, I remember hesitating, during my Bachelor Degree, between ecology and cognitive sciences as a topic of specialization. I chose cognitive sciences since they are dealing with what appeared to me as fundamental questions to understand human kind. Among them and firstly was the great enigma of consciousness. I felt deeply attracted by the humanist importance of the question as well as the feeling of facing a problem too big, too deep, too difficult. To paraphrase Dennett, there was a whole continent to explore, maybe the last one on Earth, and I wanted to have a part, even humble, in it.

Lin: You've been organized a Brain and Consciousness Seminar, what's that seminar about? Which lecture is your favorite one? Why?

Andrillon: The Brain and Consciousness Seminar is a seminar organized at the ENS by Dr Sid Kouider, Dr Catherine Tallon-Baudry and myself. Its purpose is to scout for what is new within the neurosciences of consciousness, for what is growing. To achieve this goal, we decided to invite young researchers from Europe and farther so that they can present their recent work and projects. It has, of course, to deal with consciousness from a neuroscientific and preferentially experimental perspective. But the idea is to keep an eye on the new tracks, even if not classic. In short, a good way to be up-to-date without reading too much!

It is hard for me to choose one lecture in particular. I was impressed by Dr Floris de Lange presentation, I was delighted by Simon van Gaal's enthusiastic approach or by Dr Hakwan Lau's work. Last time, we had the chance to receive Jakob Hohwy, a philosopher. For once, discussing more ideas and concepts rather than data and experiments was very stimulating, especially for students.

Lin: You have several opportunities to live and work abroad. I found that you've spent more than one year at University of Wisconsin at Madison under the direction of Dr. Giulio Tononi. What did you learn during that internship?

Andrillon: I went to Dr Giulio Tononi's lab twice. Once for my gap year and a second time for my master thesis. For me, living and working abroad, especially in the US, was a child dream. Regarding what I learned from it, I cannot be disappointed. Above all, it was my first experience, my first dive into the scientific community. Due to the peculiar situation of the lab, lost in Wisconsin but full of Europeans, there was a special atmosphere. We were sharing, between lab members, much more than the working hours. I had also the chance to work closely with Dr Yuval Nir, now in Israel, who taught me how to do research, with rigor and enthusiasm. And the importance of trust in scientific interactions. Besides, of course, I learned a lot through the discussions and meetings I had with Dr Tononi. Dr Tononi is a true humanist scientist and he taught me the importance of humanities in sciences, notably in neurosciences of consciousness. However, I also learned that research is sometimes a tough, demanding but not so rewarding job. A good thing to know before starting a PhD.

Lin: Could you recommend some papers or books for students who are interested in sleep and consciousness?

Andrillon: When I  left Madison after my first year there, Dr Tononi offered me the first version of the now published “Phi”, his last book. It is an unusual but beautiful work. You may be disappointed if you expect dry science with solely facts and figures. This book is full of reveries and artworks. But behind the fictional layer, the great themes of consciousness (and sleep) are magnificently depicted. In my mind, one of the greatest skills of Dr Tononi is the clarity of his reasoning. This book is a good example of it. I would highly recommend it. Another passionating book on sleep is the « Sleep and Dreams » from Michel Jouvet. A must read for the ones discovering the field.

In terms of paper, I must mention the review from Yuval Nir and Giulio Tononi “Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology” (TICS, 2010). Maybe the article I have read the most and each time with great pleasure. The references' section is a good starting point to wander in sleep and consciousness literature. Recently, Sid Kouider wrote an interesting article, alas only in French, on the perspectives of consciousness studies. It is related to the fascinating debate published in TICS between Sid Kouider and Ned Bloch on phenomenological and access consciousness

Finally, I would recommend reading Aristotle's essay “On Sleep and Dreams”. It is incredible how a man, about 2300 years ago, was able to formulate, with a rigorous method, the great scientific questions regarding the study of sleep and dreams. Sometimes, the one to admire is more the one raising the question rather than the one answering it.

Thomas Andrillon is a Ph.D. candidate at the École Normale Supérieure. His website is at https://sites.google.com/site/thomasandrillon/.

Student Spotlight: Annelinde Vandenbroucke

Welcome to our fourth Student Spotlight interview. This one features Annelinde Vandenbroucke, a cognitive neuroscience Ph.D. student. It was conducted by Kingson Man, the 2012-2013 chair of the ASSC student committee. 

Kingson Man: Hi Annelinde! Thank you for giving us this peek into the life of a young consciousness scientist. First question: would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

Annelinde Vandenbroucke: Very difficult. I’d go for 100 duck-sized horses, as the thought of a horse-sized duck with an enormous beak scares me more. I imagine if I had a club, I could swing those little horses away, while with a huge duck, I wouldn’t know what to do…

Man: Are clubs allowable? I'll check the rule book. Meanwhile, please tell us briefly about your work: what, where, with whom, and why taxpayers should keep funding it.

Vandenbroucke: I’m doing my PhD at the University of Amsterdam, in the Cognitive Neuroscience Group at the Brain & Cognition Department. My supervisor is Victor Lamme and I collaborate with Johannes Fahrenfort, Ilja Sligte, Martijn Wokke, and many more. My PhD is about the qualities of perception without attention, or, what can your visual system still process if you don’t pay attention to a certain stimulus. In my experiments, I have seen that the visual system actually does quite well without the interference (or at least, with little interference), of attention. Objects are processed as integrated wholes, and many items can be remembered even when attention is focused on a different task. First of all, I think academic research should be funded in general, because obtaining knowledge is an extremely important piece of development on all levels. I believe that my type of research in particular can help to understand and therefore perhaps “optimize’’ perception, in the sense that we learn how to improve our ability to obtain and maintain visual information.  

Man: What's the best career advice you've received?

Vandenbroucke: 1. Don’t be afraid to contact people whom you find interesting and 2. try to always ask at least one question.

Man: What's the worst career advice you've received (besides that time I told you to challenge Ned Block to a sake drinking contest at ASSC 15 Kyoto)? 

Vandenbroucke: Pfiew, really wouldn’t know….

Man: Give me two names: who is the rightest and who is the wrongest in the field of consciousness today? You don't have to specify which is which.

Vandenbroucke: I thought hard about this question, but actually, I can’t give you an answer. I think every theory that’s out there today is neither totally wrong nor totally right, we just don’t know yet. I sympathize most with those trying to distinguish attention from consciousness, because I think that saying that only through attention you can reach conscious processing is nonsense. On the other hand, I can also appreciate theories proposing that consciousness is all about functions, maybe not necessarily attention, but cognitive functions in general. Then again, when does something qualify as a function? In conclusion, I’m going back and forth on the issue, so no clear answer here.

Man: That's a very considered and politic answer to an impolitic question. Tell us about a paper or two in consciousness research that you've read and loved in the past year?

Vandenbroucke: When I find myself thinking about articles that I loved reading the past year, a lot of them are not necessarily about consciousness, but about attention or working memory. There is a paper that I’ve been reading that’s not from 2012, but I liked it a lot. It’s a study by Rahnev et al, 2011, that looked at objective and subjective responses for attended and unattended items. It shows that when you equate detection sensitivity, you get different response criteria for attended and unattended items. Although I don’t fully agree with the conclusions the authors draw, I do think their study is set up very well and shows that it is important to control for response factors that cause differences between conditions and isolate the factors you are interested in. It inspired me to do a particular experiment last year and that is what I like most about articles: when they make you want to do more research.

Man: When and how did you initially become interested in consciousness? 

Vandenbroucke: I was doing my masters (General Research Master Psychology – in The Netherlands, a masters and PhD are two separate programmes) when I was at a party. Somebody told me that for some reason, he could always tell whether something was bothering somebody, and thereby often fell into heavy conversations, as people felt he was easy to talk too (probably, this person – I don’t remember who it was – either told this after I told him I study Psychology…You often get these types of reply then, or he was hitting on me). As I was focusing on visual perception already, I wasn’t interested in the clinical part, but wondered what made him ‘see’ that other people were troubled. I thought people might also pick these things up unconsciously, and there might even be visual clues that can be ‘read’ without the reader knowing why he/she has this information. I kept wondering whether there would be large individual differences in picking up and binding (un)conscious information and how I could do research on this. Shortly after, I followed a course on conscious and unconscious processing by Victor Lamme. When he gave a lecture about iconic memory and what kind of role it might have in conscious processing, I was convinced that this was the topic that I should study. I never got to linking visual perception of faces and conscious/unconscious information processing though, but perhaps someday…

Man: Do you believe the Hard Problem will be (dis)solved within our lifetimes? 

Vandenbroucke: If it will be solved, it will not be in our lifetimes. If it will be dissolved, that could happen within in our lifetimes.

Man: What's the next step for you, professionally? What is your assessment of the academic or "alternative" job climate out there?

Vandenbroucke: Ideally, I would like to do a PostDoc in the United States, so I’m preparing to write a grant proposal. I’m still realistic in the sense that I know that there are not many places out there, and there’s of course the possibility that I won’t get a grant or position at a university. I believe then I could find my way doing research in an institute, perhaps with more social relevance. In my PhD, I’ve learned that I like doing research a lot, and I believe there are still plenty of opportunities of doing research outside academic science, even though you may have to shift your specialty.

Man: I've often been struck by how *interesting* our colleagues are – perhaps the field of consciousness is self-selecting in this regard. What do you do for fun outside the lab? Extreme cliff diving? Extreme boxing against polar bears? Extreme stamp collecting? 

Vandenbroucke: Yes, aren’t we an extreme bunch of people? I like crazy cooking, extreme traveling, heavy dancing, powerful singing (the last two mostly with my lab partners), and actually, doing all that in a normal fashion as well.

Man: Thank you so much, Annelinde, for doing this interview! It's such a great benefit for the more junior student members of the ASSC to get to know the more senior student members. Final question: What does the ASSC mean to you? What has it done for you? Any suggestions for improvements? 

Vandenbroucke: What I like best about ASSC is that the atmosphere is so open and relaxed. The annual meetings have always inspired me a lot and I’ve met many interesting people. If you have the opportunity to go to an ASSC meeting, do it! Sometimes I feel that with societies (and that counts for all societies I know, not only ASSC), the journal could perhaps be incorporated more. For example, give a short overview of much read papers in the newsletter, or link the Meetings with the Journal somehow.

Annelinde Vandenbroucke is a Ph.D. student at the University of Amsterdam. Her website is at http://www.cognitiveneuroscience.nl/index.php?p=502269&return=501105

Student Spotlight: Your ASSC Student Committee!

For this Student Spotlight, we have a quintuple-feature! We'll be introducing the student members of your ASSC Student Committee.


Kingson Man (chair, 2012-2013)

I am a neuroscience doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, mentored by Antonio Damasio. I study multisensory integration and how the different sensory modalities are bound together to generate our unified conscious experience. I feel most happy when I'm up in the mountains.

This is me on Google Plus:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/108687793951785983986




Fauve Lybaert

I am a PhD-candidate in philosophy at the University of Leuven, Belgium. I am writing a dissertation on what the role of the formal self could be in the constitution of personal identity. I define the formal self as the self to which we refer (correctly), but which we do not first identify. Thus, it does not seem to be tied to any specific psychological or physical characteristics.

I love travelling and meeting interesting, inspiring people. I currently look into going through Mexico to arrive at the San Diego conference. I very much enjoy the arts. I have been involved in theater as an actress, reviewer and won several awards for writing and directing. The last years I turned towards dance as my main artistic outlet and got addicted to Argentinean tango.  I always study some language, currently Turkish. I am deeply concerned about human and animal suffering, try to give voice to the unheard (such as the Kurds in Turkey), am a vegetarian and wanna-be vegan. I am currently debating whether or not to trade academia for strategy consulting. I would greatly miss teaching university students, but think that publishing philosophy papers these days does not have so much impact.


Ting-An Lin


Currently I am a research assistant at Institute of philosophy of mind and cognition, National Yang-Ming University and also a member of Consciousness Research Group. I just completed my undergraduate degree in biology and spent my last year studying philosophy at UC Berkeley as an exchange student. I'm primarily interested in the self, the unity of consciousness, and the relation between them, especially focusing on the split-brain syndrome and dementia.

I enjoy writing, playing music, and engaging in the social movements. In order to inspire the awareness and discussions of public affairs of the department, I established the student newspaper of my department, Xi-bao, and was the editor-in-chief. I played piano and learned to play carillon at Berkeley; I played the incidental music of a Taiwanese movie on the Sather Tower Carillon. I’ve taken part in many social movements: demanding the freedom of assembly, demanding the land justice, against the death penalty, and against media monopoly.


David Zhou

David Zhou is a Master's student in computational biology at Carnegie Mellon University. His current research involves the use of statistical mechanics to investigate mechanisms of loss of consciousness during general anesthesia. Outside academia, he spends his free time biking, writing nonfiction and fiction, and daydreaming about algorithms.





Bradley Monk (2013 local student representative)

I'm currently a doctoral student at UC San Diego, in the Anagnostaras Molecular Cognition Lab. I'm primarily interested in mapping the neural network properties of memory formation, and study this process at the interface between behavior, genetics, and molecular neurobiology. I get excited about neurobiology and computer science.

More info at http://www.bradleymonk.com/about.html

Student Spotlight: Miguel Sebastián

Welcome to our third Student Spotlight interview. This one features philosopher of mind Miguel Sebastián and will be the final interview in our opening volley of Student Spotlights conducted by the ASSC Director of Communications Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu.

Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu: Hello Miguel! It's a pleasure to have you as our third Student Spotlight interviewee! I heard you've recently graduated and a post-doc in Mexico. Could you give us a quick introduction about yourself?

Miguel Sebastián: The pleasure is all mine Lynn. My name is Miguel Sebastian and I am engineer retrained as a philosopher of mind. I started studying the role of consciousness in artificial intelligence and ended up amazed by the wonderful mess of the study of consciousness. I graduated last year at the University of Barcelona and now I am researching and teaching at the UNAM in Mexico.

website: http://mindingthebrain.wordpress.com

Chiu: You've been around the world, Miguel! You completed your PhD with the LOGOS group at University of Barcelona, visited University of Warwick, NYU, and National Yang-Ming University. . . and now you're a post-doc at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México! Can you quickly introduce us to the research groups you've worked with and tell us why you choose them?

Sebastián: Logos is one of the best research groups in Analytic Philosophy in Europe and the number of activities there has incredibly increased since I started my studies --- more and more seminars, workshops, research projects, etc are taking place. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to do my PhD within this group. The strongest areas in Logos are Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language and my advisor, David Pineda, recommended me to visit the University of Warwick under the supervision of Naomi Eillan where I met a brilliant group of professors and students working on perception and language. Right afterwards I had the opportunity to visit Taiwan, where Allen Y. Houng is leading a great group of students and professors at National Yang-Ming University focusing on the study of the Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. In my opinion, if you are working on consciousness New York probably is the best place to be and I was given the opportunity to visit NYU and work under the supervision of Ned Block. The research atmosphere in NY is overwhelming and it was an amazing opportunity to discuss my work and theirs with students and professors (not only from NYU, but also from CUNY, Columbia and visiting colleagues). The experience was so fulfilling that I decided to go back to NYU as a visiting scholar right after graduating.

Chiu: Tell us more about the people at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and your current work.

Sebastián: I started working at the UNAM in August. UNAM has one of the biggest graduate programs in the world and it has an impressive research institute in Analytic Philosophy (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas) with more than 40 researchers and several post-docs; undoubtedly a great place to work in Philosophy. Here I teach a course for graduates on Philosophical Theories of Consciousness and related issues in Cognitive Science. With regard to my current research, I am concentrating on two lines: the first one is focused on the relation between cognitive access and phenomenology and the contribution that the neuroscientific study of dreams can make to this debate. The second one explores the relation between the subjective character of experience and de se attitudes. The aim is to provide a naturalistic understanding of subjectivity in representational terms by unpacking the idea of representation as a subject --- which in turn, I think, would require clarifying in naturalistic compatible terms what it takes to self-ascribe a property (to represent a set of centered worlds) --- and to secure the project of grounding a naturalistic theory of, at least, de se content on our own experiences.

Chiu: What interesting books or papers you've been reading these weeks? Why did you like them?

Sebastián: I found Ned Block's "Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12 (2011), pp. 567-575 and posterior the discussion in TiCS (volume 16, issue 3, 2012) very interesting. In this paper, Block presents more recent evidence in favor of the thesis that consciousness does not depend on cognitive access. As I said before, my interest lies in the debate and different interpretations and replies to partial report experiments narrow down the kind of replies available for other interesting cases relevant to the discussion.

“Consciousness and the Self: New Essays” Ed. J. Liu and J. Perry (Editor). Cambridge University Press (2011) presents a very interesting collection of articles on the role that the self and self-awareness might, or might not, play in consciousness, a topic I find particularly interesting. In this line of research, I just received “Immunity to Error through Misidentification: New Essays.” Ed. S. Prosser and F. Recanati. Cambridge University Press (2012) and it looks promising (contrary to what it might look like, CUP is not sponsoring this reply).

I am also currently reading “The Walking Dead: book three”. Although the arguments are not very compelling (often hard to find) the comic is really good and I have the feeling that philosophers interested in consciousness have some kind of morbid fascination for, all kinds of, zombies.

Chiu: You've presented at almost all the consciousness-related conferences out there, Toward a Science of Consciousness, the Online Consciousness Conference, and of course, the ASSC. What's do you like about these conferences?

Sebastián: The ASSC focuses on the scientific study of consciousness and it provides an ideal framework for a productive interaction between psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers who, like me, consider that a multidisciplinary approach to consciousness is the best way to progress in our understanding of the topic.

Toward a Science of Consciousness is broader in scope combining different perspectives and traditions from Analytic Philosophy to Asian Philosophy, from Quantum theories to Neuroscience, and it has a very long tradition. It definitely provides a really inspiring atmosphere, which attracts leading experts in the field.

Finally, in the Online Conference Richard Brown has created an impressive virtual platform, and convinced many brilliant experts to take part in it. This democratizes possibilities of researching, because (nearly) everyone, from every corner of the world can follow and join the discussions taking place there. Although it is tough to discuss for two weeks, it is also incredibly rewarding. The great disadvantage of this type of conference is it doesn’t give you the opportunity to have a beer with your colleagues after the discussion, but all the rest is awesome --- and the call for papers is open now!

Chiu: If you were stranded on an island and there was only one book with you, what would that book be?

Sebastián: As you mentioned I have spent the last years moving from one place to another. Taking books with me is not an option anymore and I no longer carry paper books with me. If I were stranded on an island, most probably I would have my e-reader with me and plenty of books (philosophical and not so) in it. I can only hope that the island you mentioned has electricity so I can plug in my charger…

Miguel Sebastián is a post-doc at the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México (UNAM). His website is at http://mindingthebrain.wordpress.com

Student Spotlight: Yao-Wen Hsieh

Welcome to the Student Spotlight interviews again! Our second spotlight features Yao-Wen Hsieh, and was conducted by the ASSC Director of Communications Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu.

Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu: Hi Yao-Wen! Thanks for being our second interviewee for the Student Spotlight! We would like to learn more about the life and work of ASSC students and the different research institutions and opportunities around the world. Could you give us a quick introduction about yourself?

Yao-Wen Hsieh: My name is Yao-Wen (Zechs) Hsieh and I am currently a MA student in the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan, after graduating from a medical school. Although I read some philosophy before, I had only a vague idea about the combination of philosophy and sciences, or interdisciplinary studies, until I entered this MA program and attended the ASSC meeting in Kyoto last year. This approach to consciousness really excites me! I found that we could discuss many philosophy questions with experiments and clinical cases that are more intriguing than thought experiments, and I also enjoy studying philosophy with the help of my prior expertise.

Chiu: What recent articles are you reading now? What do you think is new and exciting about them?

Hsieh: Some books and articles inspired me lately, and I’ll mention two of them:

1. Burge, T. (2010). Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burge has developed his argument against “individual representationalism” for decades. However, in addition to the traditional analytical methodology with definitions and logical inferences, he begins to refer to scientific evidences. This is a good example for philosophers who intend to work out their arguments with scientific studies.

2. Lamme, V. (2010): How neuroscience will change our view on consciousness, Cognitive Neuroscience, 1:3, 204-220

In this article, Lamme concluded from neuroscientific evidence that the existence and mechanism of phenomenal consciousness can be explained by the recurrent loops in the brain. Surely some philosophers and scientists will question this thesis, but I am looking forward to the future development of this theory and I think his methodology is laudable. 

Chiu: You're a participant of the Consciousness Research Group at Yang Ming University, right? In the interest of full disclosure, I was also a member in Taiwan, and I'm sure the group has done exciting new work since then. What kind of work does your group do and what's the recent research focus?

Hsieh: Yes, I am a member of the Consciousness Research Group, a research group that comprises almost all the Taiwanese philosophers and students who are working on consciousness studies.  We hold international workshops, meetings, and speeches on consciousness regularly and maintain a blog (in Chinese), the Nexus of Consciousness (http://crg-tw.blogspot.tw/) to share up-to-date researches and news about consciousness studies with the public. Our recent focus is on the topic of the self. More precisely, we are building a new self-model based on recent scientific studies. We use this model to discuss the problems about the sense of self, self-consciousness, and the selves of psychiatric patients. We are also very interested in the debates about the distinction between access-consciousness and phenomenal-consciousness and its possible empirical support. We are considering the relevance of particular scientific studies and psychiatric cases (for example, autism) to this philosophical debate. CRG is a large group. We have a great variety of research topics and we can continuously benefit from each other’s works. 

Chiu: How would someone interested in your institution and research group sign up for visiting opportunities?  

Hsieh: We always welcome visiting scholars or students, and in fact, we have two foreign students (one from Macedonia and another from Belize) studying in our Institute now. Anyone interested in visiting our Institute should directly contact the professor he/she wants to study with and our administrative assistant Bella Yang (hnyang@ym.edu.tw). For more information about the institution, please visit our website (http://www.ym.edu.tw/phil/en/en_p1.htm).

Chiu: Any interesting hobbies you'd like to share? 

Hsieh: Although the graduate life is extremely busy, there are two activities I would not cut out. The first one is to walk out on the street and protest against the recurring unfairness in our society. I believe that philosophers, as intellectuals, have the duty to speak out for people. You can say that our government makes me an “outdoorsman.” I also regularly practice Tai-Chi. I start it about 1 year ago, and even not yet feeling any “Qi,” I can feel the integration of my whole body. My mind would also be refreshed! Tai-Chi is no doubt an excellent sport for a graduate student who always sits in front of his desk and reads papers for a long-time.

Yao-Wen (Zechs) Hsieh is a graduate student at Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan and a member of the Consciousness Research Group.