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The NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness is devoted to foundational issues in the mind-brain sciences.  It takes an interdisciplinary approach, including philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, and other areas.

The directors of the Center are Ned Block and David Chalmers, both of whom are Professors of Philosophy and Neural Science at NYU.

The center hosts postdoctoral fellows and runs regular research workshops.  It also hosts a regular series of debates between leading researchers on foundational topics in the mind-brain sciences.

Upcoming Events

November 26, 2024: Workshop, Representational Format

Registration: HERE

Co-sponsored by 19 Washington Square North and the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness.

Speakers include: Susan Carey, Sam Clarke, Kathryn Davidson, Gabriel Greenberg, Gabriel Oak Rabin.

February 28 – March 1, 2025: Conference, Infant Consciousness

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness and the NYU Center for Bioethics.

Speakers include: Tim Bayne, Ned Block, Susan Carey, Anna Ciaunica, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Joel Frohlich, Alison Gopnik, Sid Kouider, Lorina Naci, Yusuke Nakashima, Claudia Passos-Ferreira.

Past Events

November 11, 2024: Book Launch and Panel, The Edge of Sentience by Jonathan Birch

Co-hosted by the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy and the NYU Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy, & Land Use Law, with co-sponsorship from the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness.

Speakers included: Jonathan Birch, L Syd M Johnson, John Olusgeun Adenitire, Claudia Passos-Ferreira.

April 19, 2024: Conference, The Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness

Co-hosted by the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program and the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program, with co-sponsorship from NYU Animal Studies, the NYU Center for Bioethics, and the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness.

More details available at: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/launch-event.

Speakers included: Kristin Andrews, Jonathan Birch, Lars Chittka, Robert Elwood, Becca Franks, Noam Miller, Jeff Sebo, Cleo Verkuijl, Alexandra Schnell, Anna Wilkinson, Katrina Wyman.

June 2023: Conference, ASSC 26

The Center organized the 26th meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, June 22-25 2023.

More details and reports available at: https://theassc.org/assc-26/ and https://twitter.com/ASSC26nyc 

Video recordings of four of the keynote talks and five of the symposia can be watched at the following links:

• • Thomas Nagel, “Psychophysical Monism as an Ideal”
  • Yoshua Bengio, “Source of Richness and Ineffability for Phenomenally Conscious States”
  • Joseph LeDoux, “Our Four Realms of Existence: A Fresh Look at the Science of What and Who We Are”
  • Elisabeth Parés Pujolràs, “The Neural Bases of Motor Awareness” 
  • “Animal Consciousness Beyond Mammals”, featuring Jonathan Birch, Andrew Crump, Matilda Gibbons, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and L. Syd M. Johnson
  • “The Interplay Between Consciousness and Learning: Empirical, Methodological, and Theoretical Advances”, featuring Lina Skora, Răzvan Jurchiș, Gaetan Mertens, and Eva Jablonka
  • “Broad-Spectrum Introspection: Metacognition and Self-Awareness Across Diverse Domains”, featuring Jorge Morales, Elisa Filevich, Tony Cheng, and Sarah Garfinkel
  • “Mathematical Spaces for Conscious Experiences”, featuring Johannes Kleiner, Andrew Lee, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, and David Rosenthal
  • “Affective Impact on Perception”, featuring Frédérique de Vignemont, Marisa Carrasco, Judith Domínguez-Borràs, and Hilla Jacobson

March 24, 2023: Debate, Do language models need sensory grounding for meaning and understanding?

March 25-26, 2023: Conference, The Philosophy of Deep Learning
The Center is co-sponsoring a debate on large language models, followed by a two-day conference on the philosophy of deep learning.

All talks in this event can be watched online at YouTube here:

Speakers include:

Yann LeCun (New York University / Meta AI), Brenden Lake (New York University), Jacob Browning (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University), Ellie Pavlick (Brown University / Google AI), Gary Lupyan (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Nuhu Osman Attah (University of Pittsburgh), Cameron Buckner (University of Houston), Patrick Butlin (University of Oxford), Rosa Cao (Stanford University), Tony Chen (MIT), Ishita Dasgupta (DeepMind), Jacqueline Harding (Stanford University), Anna Ivanova (MIT), Nikolaus Kriegeskorte (Columbia University), Brenden Lake (New York University / Meta AI), Grace Lindsay (New York University), Tal Linzen (New York University / Google AI), Robert Long (Center for AI Safety), Fintan Mallory (University of Oslo), Raphaël Millière (Columbia University), Ida Momennejad (Microsoft Research), Nicholas Shea (Institute of Philosophy, University of London), Anders Søgaard (University of Copenhagen), Philippe Verreault-Julien (Eindhoven University of Technology), Atoosa Kasirzadeh (University of Edinburgh), Wai Keen Vong (New York University), Sreejan Kumar (Princeton University), Will Merrill (New York University), Julia Minarik (University of Toronto), Jared Moore (University of Washington), Emin Orhan (New York University), Stephan Pohl (New York University), Hokyung Sung (MIT), Justin Tiehen (Puget Sound)

December 5th 2022: Talk, Investigating Nonhuman Consciousness

Organized by the Mind, Ethics, and Policy program, and co-sponsored by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, the Animal Studies Department, and the Center for Bioethics. 

12.00pm-1.30pm

Online event

Speakers: Jonathan Birch and Susan Schneider

More details here.

Watch the recording online here.

October 13th 2022: Talk, Are Large Language Models Sentient?

Organized by the Mind, Ethics, and Policy program, and co-sponsored by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, the Minds, Brains, and Machines initiative, and the Center for Bioethics. 

5.00pm-6.30pm

Hybrid event: in-person venue Jurow Hall, Silver Center, 31 Washington Place 

Speaker: David Chalmers

More details here.

Watch the recording online here.

May 9th: Debate, “Is Memory Continuous with Imagination?”

October 24th, 2019: Debate, “Is Activity in Prefrontal Cortex Important for Conscious Perception?”
Deutsches Haus
42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

Speakers:
Biyu Jade He (NYU Medical Centre)
Hakwan Lau (UCLA)
Victor Lamme (University of Amsterdam)
Johannes Fahrenfort (University of Amsterdam)

May 3, 2019: Debate, “Is Psychoanalysis Relevant to Neuroscience?”
Cantor Film Center
36 E 8th St. New York, NY 10003

Speakers:
Cristina Alberini (NYU, Neural Science)
Heather Berlin (Mt. Sinai, Psychiatry)
Mark Solms (Cape Town, Neuropsychology)
Robert Stickgold (Harvard, Psychiatry)

September 18, 2018: Debate, “Do Split Brain Patients Have Two Minds?”
Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center
31 Washington Place

 

Speakers:
Joseph LeDoux (Center for Neural Science, NYU)
Yaïr Pinto (Psychology, University of Amsterdam)
Elizabeth Schechter (Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis)
 
 

 

 

May 8, 2018: Debate, “Does Hierarchical Predictive Coding Explain Perception?”
Cantor Film Center
Room 101