This week is the annual “The Science of Consciousness” conference, in Tucson, Arizona. In odd-numbered years, the meeting is held abroad, even-numbered years in Tucson. I’ve been attending it on and off since the mid-1990’s. In the early years,  I presented several posters and even a few full papers. This week I’m an anonymous attendee, one of many hundreds.

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/

Exploring consciousness is at the core of psi-fi, the intersection of human psychology and science-technology.

I’ll report some of what I learn, with an eye toward what might seed a good psi-fi story.  There are more ideas happening here than anyone could develop in a lifetime.

Topics considered at this year’s conference include:

Are We Living in a Matrix-like Simulation?
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Consciousness
Consciousness, Pain and Addiction
Gene Editing and Consciousness
Integration and Synthesis of Consciousness
Brain Mapping and the Connectome
Anesthetic and Psychoactive Drugs
Language and Consciousness
Non-Invasive Brain Modulation
Origin and Evolution of Life and Consciousness
Panpsychism, Idealism and Spacetime Geometry
Quantum Brain Biology
Time, Free Will and Consciousness

And many, many more.  In one hour, I have a session on Consciousness and Embodiment, which I hope will address the question of whether consciousness is necessarily embodied. Could there be an unembodied consciousness, free-floating somehow, without any physical form?

I have a novel (still in edit) about a person who uploads her consciousness onto the internet, which I thought would make her about as unembodied as I could imagine. Except I couldn’t do it and I had to pretend there was “something it is like” to be a software bot.  Her body was her instantiation as a software object and she “attached” to hardware ports with the correct device ID.

What would consciousness be like if it wasn’t enclosed in any kind of body?  I couldn’t conceive of it for my novel and had to compromise. Maybe I’ll get new ideas in the next session.