What is the main question or set of concerns that inspires you to attend this conference?
My main interest in this workshop concerns the relation between conceptions of consciousness and conceptions of ethics. How do the two interrelate? Can we see any interesting interconnections or parallels? An obvious connection is that questions like ‘What is it like to be in such-and-such a state/situation?’ are relevant not just to first-person phenomenology, but also to making ethical choices. Another concerns questions of ‘constituency’: for example, our concerns about whether prawns are conscious and whether cooking them is cruel. There are two kinds of ‘constituency’ here, the constituency of conscious beings, and the constituency of moral concern: how do respective membership questions interrelate?
How does your current research reflect this concern?
I’ve been working on a paper with Erik Myin (Antwerp) exploring these concerns, and addressing them from an ‘enactive’ point of view (inspired by the work of Varela, Evan Thompson and others). We are exploring parallels between theories concerning brain vs. consciousness and ones concerning fact vs. value. We are exploring a unified framework for resolving the respective issues.
How do you situate these concerns in relation to the methodology of first-person inquiry?
I think that attention to the relation between ethics and consciousness will deepen our conception of the ‘first-person’ nature of consciousness, of its specialness. It should also modify our conception of the other pole of the contrast, the so-called ‘third-person’, or ‘objective’ realms of enquiry; as well as the nature of science itself. (For instance, one issue that may be up for critical scrutiny concerns the supposed ‘value-neutrality’ of science: can a science of consciousness be value-free, if consciousness has certain inherently ethical aspects?)
How do you imagine the conference could be helpful in moving forward on these concerns?
I welcome the opportunity to ask fellow participants what their views are on these issues and to helping to clarify issues in my own mind. How many people have had similar ideas (or radically conflicting ones)?
How are the questions you have described personally significant for you?
I first started writing about these questions a few years ago in the context of a study of the thought of Spinoza, a philosopher whom I’ve had a great respect for since I started seriously studying the subject. But my interest in consciousness has always had an ethical flavour to it, and I’ve always been seeking to refine my ideas on how the two spheres of experience and value interrelate.