COGS 50.02 The Philosophy and Cognitive Science of Consciousness

Conscious experience is at once both completely familiar and utterly mysterious: how is it that electrical activity in a lump of grey matter – the brain – gives rise to the Technicolor phenomenology of our conscious experience? If human beings are just biological machines, then how is it possible that we have a subjective point of view on the world? Why are we not just mindless robots, that produce behavior in light of stimulations from the environment, but lack any inner awareness or consciousness? In this class we will read, and bring together in conversation, cutting edge work from philosophy, psychology, and the neurosciences on the nature of consciousness.

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