Day 1: Thursday, 5 March, 12:00 – 13:30 | Institute for Medical Humanities, Confluence Building
Day 2: Friday, 6 March, 14:30 – 17:00 | D104, Dawson Building
Over two days of hybrid interviews and talks, Emily Troscianko (Cognitive literary studies), Susan Blackmore (Psychology), and Thomas Metzinger (Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science) will discuss both the challenges and the rewards of interdisciplinary approaches to consciousness.
On Day 1, the speakers will be interviewed by Marco Bernini about their most recent books on consciousness: Consciousness: An Introduction (4th edition, Routledge 2024) by Troscianko and Blackmore, and Metzinger’s The Elephant and the Blind (MIT Press 2023). We will also briefly touch on more recent publications that engage with consciousness alongside academic research, including Troscianko’s The Very Hungry Anorexic (Tamarisks Books 2024), Blackmore’s Jinny Jana’s Giant Journeys (Tamarisks Books 2025), and Metzinger’s Bewusstseinskultur: Towards a Culture of Consciousness—Spirituality, Intellectual Honesty, and the Planetary Crisis: How to Protect Your Self-Respect and Fail Gracefully (Berlin Verlag 2025).
On Day 2, each speaker will deliver a talk addressing their most recent perspectives or concerns related to consciousness studies.
Thomas Meztzinger: “What is Bewusstseinskultur?”
Susan Blackmore: “Being a Mental Model?”
Emily Troscianko: “Egos, Illusions, and Metaphors for the Unknown”
This hybrid event is brought to you by the Narrative and Cognition Lab in the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
