John Waterworth and Eva Lindh: The Primacy of Consciousness: Art, Science and Information Technology

After being confined to the fringes, the topic of consciousness is making a welcome return to serious scientific consideration. There is a growing realisation that in rejecting conscious experience entirely, disciplines such as psychology, neurology, philosophy, and even physics have thrown the baby out with the bath water. On the other hand, a focus on subjective experience, to the exclusion of all objective facts, tends to produce only vapid sensationalism or misty-eyed spiritualism. Two recent conferences provide a flavour of these developments:

(1) "Science and the Primacy of Consciousness" was held in Lisbon, Portugal in April 1998. The topics presented included "holotropic" all-day heavy-breathing sessions, which apparently result in regression through past life-times; presentations on "morphic resonance" theory from biologist Rupert Sheldrake (who explained, amongst other things, why you know when someone is looking at you from behind), and on psycho-physical parallelism from quantum physicist Amit Goswami. John Waterworth made a presentation called "Technology in Support of Returning: from conscious doing to consciously being".

(2) "Consiousness Reframed II - Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era" was held in Newport, Wales in August 1998, with an extremely diverse programme ranging from the interesting to the frankly ridiculous.

We will report on these events, including a revisit to Eva Lindh's presentation to the Welsh conference: "To be or not to be ........ conscious". This paper discusses the nature of the models behind most current computer applications, and suggests a "model of models" (called CharM) and checklist to redirect attention to the assumptions behind application designs. In the process of rendering unconscious assumptions conscious CharM provides a tool for examining the balance between conscious and unconscious functioning. Opening the door to the unconscious brings the potential for creative insights, but also the threat of nightmarish horror. Technology is now reintroducing us to the angels and devils we thought we had banished with the Enlightenment.

Välkommna!
Per-Olof Ågren