ANÚNCIO DE CONFERÊNCIA
John Bickle, University of Cincinnati
Título: “Who Says We Can’t Do a Molecular Biology of Consciousness?”
Data e hora: 29 de Janeiro de 2007, às 17h00
Local: Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem – Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Morada: Avenida de Berna, 26-C, Lisboa
Na Sala de Reuniões no 7º piso do edifício principal
RESUMO da conferência:
Virtually every philosopher and cognitive scientist studying consciousness denies that molecular neurobiology will fully explain any of its features. Even physicalists seem to think that we’ll need the more “global” experimental tools and theoretical resources of cognitive and systems-level neuroscience to find the “neural correlates of consciousness.” However, some recent discoveries suggest otherwise. Here I survey in detail experimental results suggesting that agonistic activities at distinct subunits of GABAA receptor proteins are dissociable molecular mechanisms for conscious awareness, arousal state, and anxiety level. These experiments use genetically engineered mice with mutations at single amino acid residues of GABAA receptor subunits, subunit-selective and nonselective anesthetic and anxiolytic drugs, and a variety of behavioral tests commonly used to measure these features of conscious states in rodents. These results fit the “intervene cellularly/molecularly and track behaviorally” account of reduction-in-practice (reviewed briefly here) that I’ve developed in recent publications. The upshot is that “ruthless” psychoneural reductionism’s assault on consciousness has already begun. And a metascientific analysis of these experimental practices and results even calls into question arguments by Levine, Chalmers and other anti-reductionists about consciousness.
Esta conferência insere-se no ciclo «Lógica, Linguagem e Cognição». Mais informações em http://www.ifl.pt
Mais informações sobre John Bickle em http://www.artsci.uc.edu/philosophy/faculty/faculty.htm
e em http://neuroscience.uc.edu/faculty/alpha.cfm
Entrada livre. Todos são bem-vindos.