CONSCIOUSNESS CHRONICLES 2
SUMMARY
In Chronicles volume 2, we explore the Singularity, the implications of developing artificial intelligence and whether we could ever build a machine that is self aware. We also explore the deeper relationship between body and mind, and the potential of avatar technology to help disabled people.
In a major section on consciousness and sex, four leading researchers share their approaches to this essential and always compelling area of our lives. And we talk to three successful artists about their insights into consciousness and the creative process.
Featuring DAVID CHALMERS ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY HARMUT NEVEN BEN GOERTZEL ROBERT J. SAWYER
ROBERT PEPPERELL JAMES KERWIN JENNY WADE TORSTEN PASSIE KELOPATRA ORMOS BARRY KOMISARUK
HENRIK EHRSSON FREDERIQUE DE VIGNEMONT
2 x DVD set | 288 mins | Region 0 (all regions) | $14.95
In a major section on consciousness and sex, four leading researchers share their approaches to this essential and always compelling area of our lives. And we talk to three successful artists about their insights into consciousness and the creative process.
Featuring DAVID CHALMERS ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY HARMUT NEVEN BEN GOERTZEL ROBERT J. SAWYER
ROBERT PEPPERELL JAMES KERWIN JENNY WADE TORSTEN PASSIE KELOPATRA ORMOS BARRY KOMISARUK
HENRIK EHRSSON FREDERIQUE DE VIGNEMONT
2 x DVD set | 288 mins | Region 0 (all regions) | $14.95
PREVIEWS
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DAVID CHALMERS
AI AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS David Chalmers received his Ph.D. in 1993 in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Indiana University. He is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University and Director of the Centre for Consciousness. He's also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He works in the philosophy of mind and related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. He is especially interested in consciousness, but also philosophical issues about meaning and possibility, in the foundations of cognitive science and of physics. He famously coined the phrase "the hard problem" of consciousness, which has since been adopted across the field. |
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ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY
NANO TECHNOLOGY Anirban Bandyopadhyay completed his doctorate in supramolecular electronics at IACS, Kolkata, in 2005. He is a permanent scientist in NIMS, Tsukuba Japan. In 2008, he and his colleagues invented nano brain an artificial molecular device that mimics a fundamental hardware feature of our brain. Apart from holding executive positions in various scientific organizations and editorial board of information related journals, he is involved in setting up a global platform of creating super-intelligent machine "Bramha". |
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HARMUT NEVEN
QUANTUM COMPUTING AND CONSCIOUSNESS Harmut Neven is Director of Engineering, Visual Search at Google. Neven studied Physics and Economics in Köln, Paris, Tübingen, Aachen, Jerusalem and Brazil. He wrote his Master thesis on a neuronal model of object recognition at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics under Valentino Braitenberg. In 1996 he received his Ph.D. from the Institute for Neuroinformatics at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, for a thesis on "Dynamics for vision-guided autonomous mobile robots" written under the tutelage of Christoph von der Malsburg. |
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BEN GOERTZL
AI AND PHILOSOPHY Ben Goertzl Ph.D. is CEO of AI software company Novamente LLC and bioinformatics company Biomind LLC, leader of the open-source OpenCog AI software project, Director of Applied Research of the Singularity Institute for AI, and Chairman of Humanity+ (a futurist organization). Before entering the software industry he served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand, and is currently an adjunct professor at Xiamen University in China, where he helps manage the "Artificial Brain Lab" focused on the quest to build conscious robots. |
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ROBERT J. SAWYER
CONSCIOUSNESS IN SCIENCE FICTION Robert J. Sawyer's bestselling science-fiction novels have long explored issues of consciousness. In FlashForward and the ABC TV series based on it, the consciousness of all human beings is displaced forward in time for a period of two minutes. In The Terminal Experiment, a biomedical engineer records the final cessation of consciousness at death. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the science-fiction field’s top awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. |
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ROBERT PEPPERELL
CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS Robert Pepperell studied at the Slade School of Art, leaving in 1988. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s he exhibited numerous innovative electronic works, including at Ars Electronica, the Barbican Gallery, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, the ICA, and the Millennium Dome. He is currently Professor of Fine Art and Head of the Fine Art Department at Cardiff School of Art & Design.Central to his work is an investigation of the nature of perceptual consciousness, carried out through both philosophical inquiry and the practice of painting and drawing — topics on which he lectures internationally. |
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JAMES KERWIN
STORYTELLING AND CONSCIOUSNESS In addition to numerous film festival grand jury prizes, James Kerwin has earned distinctions such as the Accolade, the Telly, the Axiem, the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant, and the R.C. Norris Screenwriting Award. He was named "Best Director" and "Best Screenwriter" by New York Visionfest for Yesterday Was a Lie, his feature film debut released by Entertainment One. Kerwin's live stage credits range from classical (Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis) to modern (David Ives' Seven Menus and Mere Mortals for Noah Wyle and Daniel Henning's Blank Theatre Company). A member of Mensa and Phi Beta Kappa, Kerwin also lectures at conferences on the science of film perception and consciousness. |
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JENNY WADE
SEX AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE Jenny Wade Ph.D. is an international lecturer and presenter on transformative processes, both those that occur in normal as well as altered states of consciousness. Author of two books based on her research, Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness and Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil, who makes development processes accessible to any audience in fascinating and moving ways. Dr. Wade serves on the core faculty of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where she conducts and oversees research in human development. |
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TORSTEN PASSIE
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SEX Torsten Passie M.D., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor for Consciousness Studies, Hannover Medical School, Germany. He has done extensive research over more than 20 years on the use of hallucinogenic drugs, altered states of consciousness and shamanic practices in psychotherapy and healing. He is also an experienced addiction therapist and researcher, and the chief physician of the German model-project of heroin-assisted treatment for opiate addicts. He studied Philosophy and Sociology (M.A.) at Hannover University and Medicine at Hannover Medical School. |
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KLEOPATRA ORMOS
INTEGRATING SEXUALITY INTO DAILY LIFE Kleopatra Ormos M.D. has spent her career refining methods that integrate principles of neuroscience, psychiatry, ancient medical and spiritual practices, nutrition, and exercise to help her clients improve their emotional and physical health, and guide them in their personal and professional growth. She received her M.D. degree at Semmelwies University, School of Medicine in Budapest, Hungary and her diploma in Acupuncture at the Boltzmann Institute in Vienna, Austria. She completed her psychiatric residency at SUNY, Stony Brook, New York. Inspired by her travels and field studies she also studied Buddhism and yoga. |
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HENRIK EHRSSON
THE FUTURE OF AVATAR DEVLOPMENT Henrik Ehrsson is Senior Lecturer, Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. Henrik Ehrsson is a cognitive neuroscientist interested in the problem of how we come to sense that we own our body. He thinks the key to solving this problem is to identify the multisensory mechanisms whereby the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from one's body and from the environment. By clarifying how the normal brain produces a sense of ownership of one’s body, we can learn to project ownership onto artificial bodies and simulated virtual ones; and even make two people have the experience of swapping bodies with one another. This could have important applications in the fields of virtual reality and neuro-prosthetics. |
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FREDERIQUE DE VIGNEMONT
HEIGHTENED BODY AWARENESS IN DANCERS Frédérique de Vignemont (CNRS) works in philosophy of cognitive science. After a PhD in philosophy supervised by Pierre Jacob on self-consciousness at the Jean-Nicod Institute (CNRS, Paris), she did a post-doc in cognitive psychology supervised by Patrick Haggard on tactile perception at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL, London). In her work, she addresses questions about bodily awareness from a multidisciplinary perspective, such as the sense of bodily ownership, the spatial content of bodily sensations, the distinction between body schema and body image, etc. She is currently visiting the department of philosophy at New York University, where she is writing a book on bodily awareness. |