SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM
Welcome

Welcome to A Revolution in Neuroscience: Alternative Models of Consciousness! We're so glad you're here tonight.

This event was organized by Mona Sobhani and Allison Paradise. We facilitate an online community through this website and organize events related to science and spirituality throughout the year. We're excited to welcome you to our community! Sign up below to receive a monthly newsletter featuring new, exciting research (papers, books, podcasts, etc) and access to the Google group. We'll also share a copy of the symposium recording with you after the event. [Note, we do not send traditional marketing and promotional materials, this box is required by GDPR].

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Before You Put Away Your Phone...

Everything we do for the Exploring Consciousness community, including this symposium, we do as volunteers. We don't have a budget. We don't have corporate sponsors, yet. 

The cost for this symposium is almost certainly more than whatever you're thinking it is. If you're here, sitting in a seat, reading this message, please actively participate in this event beyond the ideas you plan to contribute. Please donate to our Go Fund Me. When you see how much we're trying to raise you'll realize how vital your support is. ALL DONATIONS ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
Agenda

Below is the program for the evening. You'll notice we don't have an intermission, and you've probably already noticed that we don't have snacks. Please don't hesitate to come and go as you need. We're recording all of this, thanks to the incredible generosity of Daniel Ingram of the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC), so you can catch up on anything you missed later. Though we will need your email address to send you the recording, so please remember to subscribe to our mailing list above.

6:30 - 6:50: Introduction: Mona Sobhani and Allison Paradise

6:50 - 7:50: Speaker Presentations:

​What We Talk About When We Talk About Consciousness ​Does Precognition Tell Us Anything About Consciousness?Integrated Information Theory under Analytic Idealism Nested Observer Windows: The NOW model as a potential architecture for hierarchical consciousness Spacetime is a headset: Conscious dynamics beyond spacetime
7:50 - 8:20: Panel Discussion, moderated by Mona Sobhani & Allison Paradise. All speakers and Christof Koch (Allen Institute of Brain Sciences; in person)

8:20 - 10:00: ​Group Discussion with all attendees and speakers


Abstract

Consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries of science. Despite decades of research and theory, consciousness researchers are far from closing the gap between neurons and phenomenological experience with a widely-accepted theory. While the dominant theory in neuroscience proposes that consciousness arises from the brain, the past few decades have seen alternative theories based on experimental evidence being published in scientific journals – including the idea that consciousness is fundamental. This symposium will present an array of alternative theories of consciousness and the brain and include group discussion about possible alternative mechanisms.

Bios

Learn more about our outstanding presenters below. Bios are presented in the order people will be speaking.
Allison Paradise

​Allison is the founder and CEO of The Epicenter and author of the children's book The Mistake. The Epicenter empowers children and young adults to re-connect with themselves and their limitless potential. Allison is the founder and former CEO of My Green Lab, a non-profit organization with a mission to create a culture of sustainability through science. Under her leadership, My Green Lab became a global leader that has transformed the life sciences industry. Allison worked as a research scientist and imaging consultant before founding My Green Lab. Allison holds degrees in neuroscience from Brown and Harvard. She is a frequent keynote speaker and in 2019 was invited to give a TED talk about her work in sustainability.

Allison studied neuroscience with the hope of understanding the seemingly inexplicable phenomena she regularly experienced. She is excited to continue her search into the unexplained with such an open-minded group of scientists.
Mona Sobhani, Ph.D.

Mona Sobhani, Ph.D., is a cognitive neuroscientist, author, and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. She is the author of the Ommie 2022 Best Spiritual Book Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe (Park City Press). In the Cosmos, Coffee, & Science substack, she writes about science & spirituality, the psychedelic renaissance, altered states of consciousness, and the transpersonal. She is co-founder of Exploring Consciousness, a community of curious scientists who are seeking to understand consciousness, spirituality, and the nature of our reality. She also served as a scholar for the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets.

Mona's work is available on her website and through Cosmos, Coffee, & Science on Substack (formerly for The Brave New World of Psychedelic Science Substack).
Bernardo Kastrup, Ph.D.

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on 'Scientific American,' the 'Institute of Art and Ideas,' the 'Blog of the American Philosophical Association' and 'Big Think,' among others.
Jonathan Schooler, Ph.D.

Jonathan Schooler, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara, Director of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential, and Acting Director of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. His research intersects philosophy and psychology, including the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering and theories of consciousness.  A former holder of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Jonathan is a fellow of several psychology societies and the recipient of numerous grants from the US and Canadian governments and private foundations. His research has been featured on television shows including BBC Horizon and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, as well as in print media including the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Nature Magazine. With over 250 publications and more than 40,000 citations he is a five time recipient of the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science™  Highly Cited Researcher Award.
Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D.

​Dr. Mossbridge uses science and technology to deepen our understanding of unconditional love, time, and human experiences like how these relate to corresponding physical events. She was awarded her BA in neuroscience with highest honors from Oberlin College, her MA in neuroscience from UC San Francisco, her PhD in communication sciences and disorders from Northwestern University, and she did her post-doctoral fellowship work in cognitive neuroscience at Northwestern University. Currently, she is an affiliate professor in the Dept. of Biophysics and Physics at University of San Diego, the co-founder of the nonprofit TILT: The Institute for Love and Time, the founder of Mossbridge Institute, senior consultant at TangibleIQ, and an author and co-author of multiple books and scientific articles related to mental and informational time travel, artificial intelligence and unconditional love. Dr. Mossbridge has just moved to the DC area to further explore how she can support government science and technology efforts.
Donald Hoffman, Ph.D.

Donald Hoffman received a PhD in Computational Psychology from MIT, and is a Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is an author of over 100 scientific papers and three books, including The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes (2019), and Visual intelligence: How we create what we see (1998). He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, LA Review of Books, and Edge, and his work has been featured in Wired, Quanta, The Atlantic, Ars Technica, National Public Radio, Discover Magazine, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. He has a TED Talk titled “Do we see reality as it is?”
@donalddhoffman
Christof Koch, Ph.D.

Christof Koch is best known for his work exploring the physical basis of consciousness in humans, animals, and machines. A physicist and neurobiologist, he was for more than a quarter of a century a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In 2011, Dr. Koch became the Chief Scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and in 2015, its president. He remains at the Allen Institute, now as a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, seeking to understand consciousness, its place in nature, and how this knowledge can benefit all of humanity. He is the author of five books and more than 350 peer-reviewed publications (cited more than 140,000 times) on biophysics, neuroscience, selective visual attention and perception, and consciousness. A vegetarian, cyclist and dog lover, he lives on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, see www.christofkoch.com
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Photo credit: Erik Dinnel, Allen Institute