Cognitive Neuroscience & Philosophy of Mind

Evenings on the deepest question in science: why there is something it is like to be you.

Booking now

Each session1 hr 30 min a session

How oftenOnce a week

Cohort10–15 per cohort

SeasonYear-round · a new cohort starts each month

What you leave with

A working position on the hard problem that you can actually defend

Neural correlates, perceptual illusions, AI cognition and the hard problem of consciousness, in a seminar small enough that everybody speaks.

It is discussion rather than lecture. Sensory demos early in the rotation make the argument better than any slide could: your brain is constructing this, and here is it getting caught.

What makes this one worth it

The Hard Problem & Subjective Qualia
Neural Correlates & Predictive Brain Models
Machine Intelligence, Large Models & Synthetic Minds
Altered States, Meditation & Neuro-Phenomenology

What is included

All 4 sessions of the 4-week cohort — 6 hours of instruction
A place held for you for the whole run, in a cohort of 10–15
Every piece of equipment listed below, provided on the day
Your instructor, and their attention in a group this size

What to bring

Water, and something to eat if you want it
Nothing else — the kit is provided

How it runs

Once a week · 1 hr 30 min a session

Frequency: 1x / week — 90 minutes, evenings
Session length: 1 hr 30 min
Each month: 4 sessions, about 6 hours
Cohort size: 10 – 15 participants
Where: Bookshop backroom / community seminar lounge
Level: All Levels
Commitment: Monthly — stay as long as it is worth it

What you cover, in rotation

The group works through these in order and then begins again on fresh ground. Join at whatever stage it is on — nothing here assumes you were there for the last one, and nothing runs out — or drop in for a single session if that is all you can manage.

Stage 1The Hard Problem & Subjective Qualia
- Chalmers' hard problem against the easy problems of neurobiology.
- What is it like to be a bat? Nagel and the subjectivity of experience.
- Sensory illusions showing how the brain constructs subjective reality.
Stage 2Neural Correlates & Predictive Brain Models
- Predictive processing: the brain as a controlled hallucination.
- Split-brain studies and the illusion of a unified self.
- Sensory maps and neuroplasticity.
Stage 3Machine Intelligence, Large Models & Synthetic Minds
- Integrated Information Theory against Global Workspace Theory.
- The Turing Test, the Chinese Room, and consciousness against intelligence.
- Animal consciousness across cephalopods, corvids and cetaceans.
Stage 4Altered States, Meditation & Neuro-Phenomenology
- Default mode network deactivation, and how the ego boundary dissolves.
- Lucid dreaming and hypnagogic states.
- A closing roundtable on the evolutionary function of consciousness.