SCALDING WATER: CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness
Three questions form a fascinating subject of scholarship: how did the Universe come into existence? What is the origin of life? What is consciousness? Answering the first two questions was already attempted by the first philosophers. Since both Galileo and René Descartes excluded spiritual substances from scientific research – that which could be examined had to be of mathematical character – consciousness was the last to become the subject of attempts at scholarly explaining. Descartes postulated corporeal body and the soul as two distinct substances (res extensa and res cogitans) and left behind the question how the two affect each other. This dualism (substantial) has been contested in modern times.  Scholars, who in the 20th century began to intensively study consciousness, rejected the concept of immaterial soul, or immaterial consciousness, and considered the latter identical with the neuronal activity of the brain (the body), or at the most, the product of such activity.  Materialism professed by modern scholars, mainly psychologists and cognitive scientists, cannot cope with explaining the phenomenal aspect of consciousness, that is, with answering the simple question: what does it mean to experience something – to see red colour, to feel pain, or hear the sound of a trumpet. For is the experience of joy reducible and explainable by the activity of our neurons? Or perhaps, in order to explain what consciousness is, we must step outside the laws of physics and discover new laws – psychophysical. And if that happens, then perhaps a reality will reveal itself to us, in which consciousness is not merely its immanent part, but its foundation. Or perhaps quantum physics, which includes consciousness in the scope of the world describable in physical terms, will give us an answer to the question of the nature of consciousness?


Dr habil. Dariusz Juruś, Professor of Jagiellonian University
 

(t/r AK)

Speakers:

Prof. dr habil. Stanisław Kwiatkowski – leading paediatric neurosurgeon, Director of the Neurosurgery Clinic at the Children’s University Hospital in Kraków-Prokocim.  
Graduate (1984) of the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy of Medicine (now Jagiellonian University Medical College) in Kraków, Poland, in 1988 he obtained a specialisation in neurosurgery and in 1992, in neurosurgery and neurotraumatology. Six years later, he earned a doctorate from the Medical College of the Jagiellonian University. In 2014, he was conferred full professorship by the President of Poland. Among the main scope of his professional interests are: developmental defects of the brain and the spinal canal, neuro-oncology, and arterial surgery. He popularised baclofen pump therapy in the region of Lesser Poland to treat spasticity in children with cerebral palsy, providing considerable easing of muscle contractions, tension, tightness and pain.

Prof. dr hab Michał Wierzchoń – full professor at the Institute of Psychology of Jagiellonian University, neurocognitive and clinical psychologist specialising in the research of consciousness, metacognition and sensory substitution. In his practice, he combines psychological and philosophical approaches and the tools of cognitive neuroscience, as well as medicine. Founder (in 2009) and Head of Consciousness Lab (c-lab), and from 2020, also of the Interdepartmental Centre for Brain Research of Jagiellonian University. He holds the post of the Director of the Institute of Psychology at the same university and also heads the Stefan Szuman Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology there. He is the author of books „Koszty poznawcze uczenia mimowolnego” ("Cognitive costs of involuntary learning") (2009) i „Granice świadomości. W poszukiwaniu poznawczego modelu subiektywności” (Limits of Consciousness. In Search of a Cognitive Model of Subjectivity) (2013), as well as over a hundred scholarly articles published in national and international journals. Recipient of many awards, including the National Centre for Science (NCN) award in 2019, the award of the weekly magazine Polityka (“Politics”) and of a scholarship of the Foundation for Polish Science for young researchers. 

Moderator:

Dr habil. Dariusz Juruś, Professor of Jagiellonian University – graduate of Jagiellonian University (philosophy) and Tadeusz Kościuszko Kraków University of Technology (architecture), recipient of scholarships to universities of Bochum, Heidelberg, and Oxford.  The object of his scholarly interest is political philosophy, as well as ethics and aesthetics. He is the author of over 60 publications, including the monograph “In Search of the Foundations of Libertarianism” and “Philosophical Concepts of Property from Plato to Marx.” Professor at the Institute of Intercultural Studies of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the BWA SOKÓŁ Gallery of Modern Art in Nowy Sącz.