For millennia, humans have sought to answer a seemingly unsolvable problem: What is the relationship between our conscious, subjective experience—what we see, hear, smell, taste, and think—and the physical world that surrounds us? Is the reality of the physical world constructed through our subjective experience, or does the physical world we perceive have an independent, objective reality? To date, no scientific theory has succeeded in unifying consciousness (i.e., conscious experiences) and what we take to be the physical world.

Led by Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this engaging three-part series will feature in-depth and wide-ranging conversations with leading scientists and thinkers on the ideas and challenges surrounding the fundamental nature of reality. Each session will present two prominent speakers who share how their personal stories and experience have come to shape their current thinking and work in their fields of expertise.

 

The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 | 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Why is it that fundamental laws discovered through pure mathematics have been able to describe the behavior of our physical world with such precision? Given that the physical universe is comprised of mathematical properties, some have posited that mathematics is the language of the universe, whose laws reveal what appears to be a hidden order in the natural world. Physicist S. James Gates, Jr. and science writer Margaret Wertheim explore the uncanny ability of mathematics to reveal the laws of nature. Learn More

 

Human Cognition and the AI Revolution
Thursday, December 6, 2018 | 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Discovering the true nature of reality may ultimately hinge on grasping the nature and essence of human understanding. What are the fundamental elements or building blocks of human cognition? And how will the rise of superintelligent machines challenge our ideas about cognition, reality, and the limits of human understanding? Logician/mathematician Roger Antonson and computer science pioneer Barbara J. Grosz join forces to shed light on these questions and to analyze what lies ahead on the horizon of AI. Learn More

 

Reality Is Not As It Seems
Thursday, February 7, 2019 | 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The prevalent view in cognitive science is that we construct our perception of reality in real time. But could we be misinterpreting our perceptual experiences? Does what we perceive with our brain and senses reflect the true nature of reality? Might evolution have shaped our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, without enabling us to see reality as it is? Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan analyze the implications of these questions for our understanding of human consciousness. Learn More

 
Presented By
The Nour Foundation | NYAS | To The Best of Our Knowledge
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Past Conferences
Unlocking the Unconscious: Exploring the Undiscovered Self

Unlocking the Unconscious:
Exploring the Undiscovered Self

Annals of the NYAS, Vol. 1406

Bringing together leading scientists and scholars to probe the realm of the unconscious mind through a mix of disciplinary approaches, including neuroscience, cognitive psychology and psychotherapy.

 

What is the relationship between conscious awareness and the unconscious mind? Psychologist and psychoanalyst Efrat Ginot, psychiatrist George Makari and cognitive neuroscientist Heather Berlin join forces to shed light on the latest insights into the fascinating and still emerging science of the unconscious.

 

Where do our dreams originate from, and what do they tell us? Psychologists and sleep specialists Deirdre Leigh Barrett, Kelly Bulkeley, Rubin Naiman examine dreams from a variety of perspectives, including how they might be interpreted and even directed in some cases.

 

Writer Siri Hustvedt, psychologist Sonu Shamdasani, and neuropsychologist Mark Solms tackle everything from the varieties of noetic experience and the role of intuition to the phenomenon of peak experience and Jung’s concept of the “collective unconscious.”