The Science of Consciousness


The Science of Consciousness is an international academic conference that has been held since 1994. It is organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies of the University of Arizona. Alternate conferences are held in Arizona, and the others in locations worldwide. Each conference attracts hundreds of attendees. The conference is devoted exclusively to the investigation of consciousness.

Associated people

The main organizer is Stuart Hameroff, an anestheologist and the director of the center that hosts the conference. One of the speakers at the first conference, David Chalmers, co-organized some of the following ones, until the event became too far away from the scientific mainstream. Plenary or keynote speakers have included Daniel Dennett and Roger Penrose.

Conference books

Three books published by MIT Press have resulted from the conference.
John Benjamins published a book containing selected proceedings from TSC 1999.

Academic coverage

An essay review Toward a science of consciousness:Tucson I and II by J. Gray was printed in ISR Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Volume 24 Issue 4, pp. 255–260.
A review of TSC 2012 may be found in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
In the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Christopher Holvenstot reviewed TSC 2011, likening it to The Greatest Show on Earth.
Michael Punt reviewed TSC 2002 in the journal Leonardo.

Media coverage

Chapter 8 of John Horgan's book The Undiscovered Mind is entirely devoted to his experiences at the first TSC conference.
The conference and its main organizers were the subject of a long feature in June 2018, first in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and re-published in The Guardian. Tom Bartlett concluded that the conference was "more or less the Stuart Show. He decides who will and who will not present. Some consciousness researchers believe that the whole shindig has gone off the rails, that it’s seriously damaging the field of consciousness studies, and that it should be shut down."