Description

Hakwan Lau studied philosophy and cognitive science in Hong Kong, where he was born and grew up. Upon finishing his undergraduate degree, a Rhodes Scholarship supported his doctoral studies at Oxford University. After postdoctoral training at the Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, he taught at Columbia University in New York, as well as University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2022, he left his permanent position at UCLA and started a new research group at the Riken Center for Brain Science in Japan. He is the author of In Consciousness We Trust: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Abstract

Like many concepts throughout the history of science, the term ‘consciousness’ refers to several related but distinct phenomena. Today, biologists who are interested in the nature of life no longer try to look for ‘vital forces’. Instead, they identify specific functions that are essential for living — e.g. reproduction, metabolism, genetics, digestion — and they develop mechanistic explanations for these functions, through careful experimentation and empirically-informed theorizing. Likewise, ‘alchemy’ has been replaced by chemistry. In both examples, the older disciplines were sometimes ridiculed as pseudoscience. And yet, arguably, they provided the historical background by which the new sciences were informed and inspired. The scientific study of consciousness has had a similarly controversial history. In modern times, studies of subjective perception, metacognition, attention, wakefulness, rational control of behavior, and even metaphysical speculations about the mind are all intertwined. The speaker will describe some studies from his laboratories that attempted to isolate the different phenomena, and to shed light on the underlying mechanisms. In the light of some significant recent events, it will be argued that the scientific fate of the archaic concept of ‘consciousness’ might have come to an end. Just like ‘vital forces’, its utility for rigorous theorizing has expired, and the term has accordingly become a liability. As the end begins, a more mature science will hopefully emerge.

This lecture will be streamed on Zoom.