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Planned Position Papers (in progress)
Planned Meetings Meeting of Minds: A Dialogue
with the Dalai Lama
Bridging
Western and Eastern Sciences of the Mind
HESA Institute plans to host a two day conference in 2009 in Madison WI with a panel of distinguished Western and Eastern scientists. The conference will focus on bridging two fundamentally different worldviews, each leading to its own assumptions about what consciousness is and what it may be capable of. It is anticipated that this two day event will include one day of participation by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The goal of the conference is to agree to a series of experiments, directed by participants in their own discipline, and funded by HESA Institute, to address questions such as the limits of consciousness, whether its causal properties may be best considered as "upwards" or "downwards," and in general, its role in the physical world.
Western science’s material monism has provided a rich understanding of the objective, physical world. Based on the demonstrable success of this worldview, many contemporary neuroscientists have concluded that consciousness is a meaningless side-effect of the workings of the brain. By contrast, the contemplative traditions of the East regard strict material monism as an illusion, and consciousness as the more fundamental "substance" of reality. These two worldviews have resulted in radically different assumptions about the capacities of consciousness. Western science views the mind as a dimension of human consciousness contingent upon the human body and thus tightly constrained in space and time. The contemplative traditions go beyond everyday sensory reality to states of consciousness that are not dependent on matter, or inextricably bound to the brain or body, or tightly constrained in space or time.
This meeting will explore the capacities of consciousness with participants who have conducted empirical research in this realm from different perspectives. The goal of the 2009 meeting is for attendees to agree to a series of experiments, and funded by HESA Institute, to empirically explore the limits of consciousness. A unique feature of this effort is that through the encouragement and support of the Dalai Lama, Western scientists will be able to partner with selected practitioners from the contemplative traditions with whom they will conduct joint experiments. Links |
