Robert Arp

Consciousness and Awareness

Switched-On Rheostats:
A Response to de Quincey1

I question whether it is completely accurate to think of the philosophi-

cal meaning of consciousness as being switched-on or switched-off.
It may be that, once consciousness is switched-on, it is then found in
degrees in animals we deem conscious. In which case, consciousness
is more like a switched-on rheostat, rather than a simple on–off
switch. Christian de Quincey (2006) gives a list of what would be con-
sidered the marks of consciousness, including ‘experience, subjectiv-
ity, sentience, feeling, or mentality of any kind’. He also seems to
conflate awareness with experience when speaking about the light of
consciousness being on. In keeping with de Quincey’s desire to get
clear about the meaning of consciousness, I will put forward an idea of
consciousness as the experience of oneself as a being subject to past,
present, and future events, and contrast this idea with a state of aware-
ness. De Quincey claims that ‘any entity that is a subject — that feels
its own being — possesses consciousness’. I want to add to this mean-
ing of consciousness by noting the subject’s sense of temporality, so
as to further qualify the meaning of consciousness and show how
awareness is distinct from consciousness.
Further, for me, the psychological dimension is also an ontological
category that includes all of what de Quincey means by consciousness,
with the qualification that awareness, cognition, sentience, percep-
tion, and feeling are psychological states, though not states of
consciousness. Nonetheless, these psychological states may be
Correspondence: Robert Arp — Southwest Minnesota State University
Email: Arpr@southwestmsu.edu

[1] See Christian de Quincey (2006), ‘Switched-on consciousness: Clarifying what it means’,
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (4), pp. 7–12.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 3, 2007, pp. 101–106
102 R. ARP

accompanied by consciousness. Another way to say this is that entities

with consciousness also have psychological awareness, cognition,
sentience, perception, and feeling (like humans and, possibly, primates);
however, entities with psychological awareness, cognition, sentience,
perception, and feeling need not be conscious (like animals such as
worms, fish, and cats). Also, it is probably the case that awareness
comprises various states and degrees such that it, too, should be
thought of more like a switched-on rheostat, rather than an on–off
switch. The end result of my investigation will be to amend de
Quincey’s notions of consciousness by drawing an important distinc-
tion between non-conscious awareness and conscious experience, as
well as to show that de Quincey is partly correct about consciousness:
consciousness is ‘on’ in certain animals; but it also seems to come in
degrees when we consider the developing mind of a human being and
different species of conscious animals.
My wife the first-grade teacher, our two-year old daughter, our cat,
our fish, and mealworms for the fish live in the Arp household (the
mealworms live in a container in the fridge awaiting their fate as a meal
for the fish). Common sense tells me that there is a hierarchy of mental
capacities ranging from the more fully conscious to the less fully
conscious — or not conscious at all — when I move from my wife to the
worm. In his paper, because ‘sentience, awareness, subjectivity, and
experience’ are all marks of the philosophical meaning of conscious-
ness, de Quincey intimates that worms have the light of consciousness
turned on just like my wife, although not to the same psychological
degree. This strikes me as inaccurate for two reasons. First, using some
of de Quincey’s own terminology, we can distinguish non-conscious
awareness from conscious experience in order to show that worms
might be aware, but not conscious. Second, even if the worm were
conscious in the philosophical sense — along with my cat, daughter,
and wife — it would seem that, again, in the philosophical sense, there
are degrees of consciousness from the less conscious (worm, cat), to the
more conscious (my daughter), to the most conscious (my wife).
As I understand the meaning of the term, awareness refers to the
processing that occurs as a result of the interaction of an animal’s
nervous system (including sensory apparatuses) and its environment,
whereby this processing results in a basic ability of the animal to react
to stimuli from the environment (cf. Kandell et al., 2000; Bear et al.,
2001; Brefczynski and DeYoe, 1999; Farah, 1997). Here, awareness is
associated with terms like sentience, perception, feeling, and cogni-
tion. On the other hand, consciousness — again, as I am understand-
ing the term — results from the complex interaction of the multimodal
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS 103

association areas of, at least, the parietotemporal and limbic cortices

in an animal’s brain, and refers to the capacity to experience oneself as
a being subject to the past, present, and future, including the reflection
on oneself as a being that is aware of its surrounding environment (cf.
Roth, 2000; Lycan, 1995; Humphrey, 1998). I say capacity because a
conscious being need not be engaged in such an experience at all
moments of its life. Here, consciousness is associated with terms like
experience, subjectivity, and reflection on awareness. Further — and
this is the important point that connects up with my analogy of
consciousness acting as a rheostat — the extent that a being can incor-
porate recognition of the self as seen in light of the past, present, and
future precisely is the extent to which a being can be considered more
partially or more fully conscious. The more an animal is able to expe-
rience the self in complex relationships with other selves and objects
concerning past, present, and future events, situations, and scenarios,
the more conscious the animal is.
Awareness need not be accompanied by consciousness. So worms
may be aware, but they are not conscious; whereas my wife is both
aware and conscious. I think that there is something to the idea of an
animal having consciousness switched-on, so to speak, but a worm
does not seem to have a conscious switch activated. Rather, it has an
awareness switch activated. Because they have nervous systems
which are functioning normally, our fish, cat, and daughter also are
aware. Further, it seems to me that, depending upon the number of
sensory apparatuses it has as well as the sophistication of its
neurobiology, an entity will be more or less aware, perceiving, and/or
cognizant. Worms appear to be less aware than cats and, so, the rheo-
stat might be a better descriptive analogy to use for the psychology of
these animals, rather than the on-off analogy.
Given my meaning of consciousness, it would seem that the worms,
fish, and cat living in the Arp household are aware, but not conscious.
But it would also seem that my two-year old daughter is aware, but not
conscious. I would say that she is not fully conscious, but she has a
limited form of consciousness at her stage of human development. In
other words, her switch is on, but the light is very dim. I think that she
has a limited form of consciousness because she seems to be able to
make present connections between past events and future events as
they affect her life. When certain words are mentioned like Christina,
playground, and grandmommy, she responds with an apparent knowl-
edge of her self as having had an experience with that word: with
Christina, she says friend and play probably because she has played
with or wants to play with her friend, Christina; with playground, she
104 R. ARP

says slide and outside probably because she recalls playing outside on
the slide, or she wants to play outside on the playground; and with
grandmommy, she says dog and house probably because her grand-
parents have dogs, and we have gone to visit them at their much bigger
house. The association seems to indicate some knowledge of her self
as either having had an experience with what the word represents, or
as anticipating having an experience with what the word represents.
So, I would say she has a very limited, or ‘dim,’ sense of her self as a
subject in these temporal relationships.
Similar reactions concerning a kind of self-experience can be wit-
nessed in studies performed on chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans
where these animals seem to associate themselves with a past event,
anticipate events, cheat one another, and fashion tools for future use
(cf. Byrne, 1995; 2001; Whiten et al., 1996; Griffin, 1992; Parker,
1996). Further, I think there is a continuum of less and more conscious
beings depending upon the extent to which that being is able to experi-
ence the self in complex relationships with other selves and objects
concerning past, present, and future events, situations, and scenarios.
So, the college students I teach likely are more conscious than my
daughter, but are not as conscious as, say, the Dalai Lama or a
Maslowian self-actualized person. Of course, de Quincey is correct to
note that ‘only consciousness can study consciousness’, so any proba-
ble inferences about awareness or consciousness we draw from my
daughter’s behaviours or the behaviours of other primates — or any
animal, for that matter — are just that: probable inferences!
It is important to note that what I mean by a psychological state
entails any mental activity resulting from a basic central/peripheral
nervous system ranging from awareness to full conscious experience.
So, like de Quincey, I am willing to admit that worms, along with cats,
primates, humans, and many other species of animals, have varying
psychological states of awareness. De Quincey, however, inappropri-
ately conflates awareness and consciousness when giving his psycho-
logical meaning of consciousness. For him, all entities having
awareness also have consciousness, and vice versa. More accurately,
the psychological dimension should be viewed more like a genus that
includes awareness and consciousness as two distinct species, much
like the genus mammal includes cats and humans as distinct species.
Again, worms, cats, primates, my daughter, and my wife all have
awareness in varying degrees of psychological states; but my daugh-
ter, primates, and my wife have both awareness and consciousness in
varying degrees of psychological states.
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS 105

Having said all of this, it may be helpful to summarize, in chart

form, a comparison of de Quincey’s philosophical and psychological
categorizations with mine, which the reader will find below.

DE QUINCEY’S CATEGORIZATION
I. Philosophical/Ontological Dimension of Consciousness
— either OFF or ON
· Qualities Include:
sentience, awareness, feeling, subjectivity, experience
· Non-Conscious Entities (consciousness switched-off) Include:
tables, rocks, chairs
· Conscious Entities (consciousness switched-on) Include:
worms, the Dalai Lama, George W. (my fish, cat, and daughter too)
II. Psychological Dimension of Consciousness
— on a DIMMER SWITCH
· Qualities Include:
any mental activity whatsoever ranging from psychological sleep
to full spiritual awakening

ARP’S CATEGORIZATION
I. Philosophical/Ontological Dimension of Awareness as One Kind of
Psychological State: either OFF (non-awareness), or ON and DIM to
BRIGHT (various degrees of awareness)
(A) Non-Awareness Entails:
cognition, perception, sentience, and/or feeling in the OFF position
· Examples of Non-Aware Entities Include:
tables, rocks, chairs
(B) Awareness Entails:
cognition, perception, sentience, and/or feeling in the ON and
DIM to BRIGHT positions
· Examples of Aware Entities Include:
DIM > worms, fish, cats, two-year old humans, primates,
humans of all ages < BRIGHT
II. Philosophical/Ontological Dimension of Consciousness as Another Kind
of Psychological State: either OFF (non-conscious), or ON and DIM to
BRIGHT (various degrees of consciousness)
(A) Limited Conscious Awareness Entails:
Experience of Subject’s Temporality ON and DIM
· Examples Include:
my two-year old daughter and primates
106 R. ARP

(B) Fuller Conscious Awareness Entails:

Experience of Subject’s Temporality ON and BRIGHTER
· Examples Include:
normal seven-year olds
(C) Still Fuller Conscious Awareness Entails:
Experience ON and EVEN BRIGHTER
· Examples Include:
normal 26-year olds
(D) Full Conscious Awareness Entails:
Experience ON and as BRIGHT as possible
· Examples Include:
the Dalai Lama and a Maslowian self-actualized person
When all is said and done, it may be that both de Quincey and I are
wrong about consciousness or awareness as switches that are either
turned on or turned off. It may be that there is a mental continuum rang-
ing from something like partial awareness, to awareness, to full aware-
ness, to partial conscious awareness, to conscious awareness, to full
conscious awareness. In which case, a kind of ‘switch,’ or something
less definitive, gets ‘turned on’ very early in the animal hierarchy, and
then all of mental reality is on some kind of rheostat-like system.
References
Bear, M., Connors, B. & Pardiso, M. (2001), Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain
(New York: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins).
Brefczynski, J. & DeYoe, E. (1999), ‘A physiological correlate of the “spotlight”
of visual attention’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, pp. 370–4.
Byrne, R. (1995), The Thinking Ape: Evolutionary Origins of Intelligence
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Byrne, R. (2001), ‘Social and technical forms of primate intelligence’, in Tree of
Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About Human Social Evolution, ed.
F. DeWaal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Farah, M. (1997), ‘Visual perception and visual awareness after brain damage: A
tutorial overview’, in The Nature of Consciousness, ed. N. Block et al. (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press).
Griffin, D. (1992), Animal Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Humphrey, N. (1998), ‘The privatization of sensation’, in Toward a Science of
Consciousness: The second Tucson discussions and debates, ed. S. Hameroff,
A. Kaszniak & A. Scott (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Lycan, W. (1995), Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Parker, S. (1996), ‘Apprenticeship in tool-mediated extractive foraging: The ori-
gins of imitation, teaching and self-awareness in great apes’, Journal of Com-
parative Psychology, 106, pp. 18–34.
de Quincey, C. (2006), ‘Switched-on consciousness: Clarifying what it means’,
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (4), pp. 7–12.
Roth, G. (2000), ‘The evolution and ontogeny of consciousness’, in Neural corre-
lates of consciousness, ed. T. Metzinger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Whiten, A. et al. (1999), ‘Cultures in chimpanzees’, Nature, 399, pp. 682–5.
 Gilberto Gomes

Consciousness and its Contents

A Response to de Quincey1

The word ‘consciousness’ is used in different ways, but not all of these
uses reflect clear concepts or should be retained in technical discus-
sions. In his target article Christian de Quincey (2006) notes that
confusion about consciousness is widespread and sets out to distin-
guish two main meanings of the word. To my mind, however, his
treatment of the subject is itself confused and the proposed distinction
misses the point.
The author states that ‘consciousness’ in its ‘philosophical meaning
… means the basic, raw capacity for sentience, feeling, experience,
subjectivity, self-agency, intention, or knowing of any kind whatso-
ever’. This does not seem to be one capacity — as he puts it — but
rather several different ones. He opposes this kind of consciousness to
‘non-consciousness’ which is ‘the total absence of any experience,
subjectivity, sentience, feeling, or mentality of any kind’. This seems
to imply that the presence of mentality of any kind is enough for
consciousness in this sense. However, this is a sheer identification of
consciousness with mental life in general and thereby consciousness
loses its specific character.
The ‘psychological meaning’ of consciousness is illustrated by the
author by the contrast between ‘being awake and alert’ and ‘being
asleep and dreaming’. However, one may be awake and alert and yet
unconscious of information that is being processed in one’s mental
activity, as recent cognitive psychology and neuroscience have
Correspondence:
Gilberto Gomes, Laboratory of Cognition and Language, Universidade Estadual
Norte Fluminense, 28013-602 Campos, RJ, Brazil.

[1] See Christian de Quincey (2006), ‘Switched-on consciousness: Clarifying what it means’,
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (4), pp. 7–12.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 3, 2007, pp. 107–12
 108 G. GOMES

extensively demonstrated.2 On the other hand, when one is dreaming

one is conscious of what one is dreaming of. So the proposed distinc-
tion misses the relevant difference between conscious and uncon-
scious mental activity.
The author claims that any being that has a mental life is conscious
in the ‘philosophical meaning’. Those that are non-conscious ‘lack all
psychic or sentient capacity’. It is sure that the adjective ‘conscious’
may be used either in reference to an animal that has the capacity of
being conscious (even if it is not conscious at present) or in reference
to an animal that is in the state of being conscious — the latter obvi-
ously being the most fundamental sense. But I claim that conscious-
ness should not be identified with ‘all psychic or sentient’ capacity or
states.
I think that the effort to clarify the meaning of consciousness should
proceed in a different direction. We could first try to agree on some
empirical criterion that allows one to distinguish between being con-
scious and being unconscious of something in some typical cases.
Then we may try to envisage other cases in which a person or animal
may be conscious or unconscious of something. Finally, we should try
to understand what the difference is between these states, that is, to
propose theoretical explanations of it. The latter is of course the most
difficult part.
The most obvious empirical criterion consists in asking a person
about whether s/he was conscious of something. The case more easily
amenable to experimental control is that of perception. The experi-
menter presents a stimulus and asks the subject whether s/he per-
ceived it. If the answer is affirmative — granting that it is sincere3 — I
guess no one would question that the subject consciously perceived
the stimulus. There is a point of controversy concerning the negative
answer. Some philosophers claim that a person may have been con-
scious of a stimulus for a very short moment and have kept no memory
of this at the moment of reporting.4
There are conditions that may obviously lead to such a situation: a
relatively long delay between the stimulus and the report, the occur-
rence of simultaneous or subsequent distracting stimuli, inattention,
and so on. Suppose, however, that the subject was told to pay atten-
tion, knew beforehand that s/he would have to report, there was no

[2] See, for example, Bornstein & Pittman (1992); Mack & Rock (1998).
[3] Or if a correct answer is extremely improbable, so that guessing is excluded.
[4] For example, Block (1995), concerning alleged cases of phenomenal consciousness
without access consciousness.
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS CONTENTS 109

interference distracting her/him from the task and the report was given
immediately. In such a situation, I think there is no reason to consider
that the subject may have been conscious of the stimulus when the
answer is negative. There is no point in speaking of consciousness of
something if the subject her/himself does not at any time identify
having had it, in spite of being able and willing to do so.
There are other contents of consciousness in addition to perceived
objects or events. Note that I am using ‘content’ in a phenomeno-
logical sense here. If a person with delirium tremens hallucinates a
spider, I will say that the spider is the content of her/his visual experi-
ence, even though there is no real spider present. It is important to
make this clear because some philosophers prefer to use the terms
‘content’ and ‘object’ only in reference to real objects. When we
dream, we are conscious of many things, either visually or otherwise.
Some of these objects exist in reality and are brought to the dreamer’s
consciousness by memory; others are imaginary and result from a
recombination of features of objects perceived in the past.
Thoughts, feelings and intentions are among the other possible con-
tents of consciousness, but I do not have space to examine them here.
Some are difficult for the subject to express in words. Others may be
such that the subject is unwilling to report or even to recall them.
Some stay accessible to the subject’s recollection, others very quickly
become inaccessible.
Though the criterion of reportability serves to identify some cases
in which the subject is or is not conscious of something, there is no
reason to suppose that the actual capacity to report is an indispensable
feature of consciousness. An animal may be conscious of something it
sees, for instance, without being able to tell you so. An aphasic may
lose her/his capacity to report what s/he is conscious of, but s/he cer-
tainly continues to be conscious. In such cases it is difficult to decide
whether the subject was conscious of something or not. We know that
brain activity is indispensable for consciousness, but we do not yet
have a definite neural index of consciousness (though there are
already many hypotheses concerning the neural correlates of con-
sciousness), let alone of specific conscious contents.
The question of animal consciousness is certainly a challenging
one. Few thinkers nowadays would agree with Descartes in refusing
to grant non-human animals with any form of consciousness. But then
the question is: Which living beings are conscious? Few think there is
reason to suppose that plants or unicellular organisms are. By con-
trast, most cognitive scientists admit that higher animals have at least
some form of consciousness. Where in the animal scale does
 110 G. GOMES

consciousness make its debut? This is certainly a very difficult ques-

tion to answer.5
An important point is not to identify conscious activity with mental
activity in general. Cognitive science has proven beyond any doubt
that many processes that are instrumental in shaping conscious expe-
rience and behaviour occur unconsciously. Baars (1988) has argued
for what he calls a ‘contrastive analysis’, which compares instances of
a certain performance done with and without consciousness. If ‘con-
scious’ were just a synonym for ‘mental’, it could be discarded from
the technical vocabulary. It certainly cannot and thus should not be
used in this general sense in technical language.
What was said above about animal consciousness leads to the
question of the different forms of consciousness. We may admit that at
least all mammals have sensory consciousness. On the other hand, it
seems clear that no other currently living species have all kinds of
consciousness that Homo sapiens has. Humans seem to have at least
one distinctive form of consciousness, but it is not so easy to specify
which form this is. Besides, there seems to be gradations in the con-
scious capacities of different non-human animals. Primatology has
shown that chimpanzees and bonobos seem to be conscious in a
higher degree than monkeys and other mammals (de Waal and
Lanting, 1997; de Waal, 1998).
Self-consciousness is often cited as a specifically human form of
consciousness. However, the reference of this term seems not to be
clearly circumscribed. Many non-human animals are probably
conscious of their own bodily sensations and of their own movements,
and in this sense can be said to be conscious of themselves. Another
level of self-consciousness involves the ability to recognize oneself in
a mirror. This capacity has been demonstrated to be absent in most
animals and often present in great apes. It emerges in chimpanzees at
4.5 to 8 years of age (Povinelli et al., 1993) while in humans it appears
at 15 to 24 months (Anderson, 1984). It also seems to be present in
dolphins (Reiss and Marino, 2001).
I would like to point out two higher levels of self-consciousness
that may be specifically human. One is consciousness of being con-
scious of something. Suppose you see someone picking someone
else’s wallet. It is one thing to perceive what is happening and to think
about the thief, the victim and the act. It is another to be conscious that
you are seeing this and to think about what may be expected of you in
that situation, what you yourself think you should do, whether you

[5] See Seth et al. (2005); Edelman et al. (2005).

 CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS CONTENTS 111

will be in risk if the robber perceives you have seen the theft and your
possibility of serving as a witness.
Another aspect of self-consciousness that seems important (and is
closely linked to the previous one) is consciousness of decision mak-
ing. An unconscious process may be responsible for the choice among
different courses of action. However, a new dimension emerges when
one becomes conscious of such an internal process of choice. When
one is conscious of an intention to act before starting the action, one
may not only anticipate consequences of the latter but also confront
different possible courses of action (Gomes, 1999). One may check
whether the envisaged action accords with other desires, objectives
and values that one may have. It is this kind of consciousness that lead
people to attribute a free will to humans that seems to be lacking in
other animals.
We see that in relation to consciousness it is of paramount impor-
tance what one is conscious of. People may give different meanings to
the word when they are thinking about different kinds of content of
consciousness. This is related to the third meaning of consciousness
that is mentioned in the target article (de Quincey, 2006), namely the
‘spiritual’ meaning, characterized by the author as referring to ‘a
heightened state of self-awareness that involves increased ethical dis-
cernment’. When one says that X is ‘more conscious’ than Y, in this
sense, one means that X is able to include more relevant and important
aspects and considerations in the contents of X’s consciousness when
forming an opinion or deciding about what to do.

References
Anderson, J.R. (1984), ‘The development of self-recognition: A review’, Develop-
mental Psychobiology, 17 (1), pp. 35–49.
Block, N. (1995), ‘On a confusion about a function of consciousness’, Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 18, pp. 227–87.
Baars, B.J. (1988), A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Bornstein, R.F. & Pittman, T.S. (ed. 1992), Perception without Awareness (New
York: Guilford).
Edelman, D.B., Baars B.J. & Seth, A.K. (2005), ‘Identifying hallmarks of con-
sciousness in non-mammalian species’, Consciousness and Cognition, 14 (1),
pp. 169–87.
Gomes, G. (1999), ‘Volition and the readiness potential’, Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 6 (8–9), pp. 59–76.
Mack, A. & Rock, I. (1998), Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Povinelli, D.J., Rulf, A.B., Landau, K.R. & Bierschwale, D.T. (1993), ‘Self-recog-
nition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Distribution, ontogeny, and patterns of
emergence’, Journal of Comparative Psychology, 107 (4), pp. 347–72.
112 G. GOMES

de Quincey, C. (2006), ‘Switched-on consciousness: Clarifying what it means’,

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (4), pp. 7–12.
Reiss, D. & Marino, L. (2001), ‘Mirror self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin:
A case of cognitive convergence’, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 98 (10), pp. 5937–42.
Seth, A.K., Baars, B.J. & Edelman, D.B. (2005), ‘Criteria for consciousness in
humans and other mammals’, Consciousness and Cognition, 14 (1), pp. 119–39.
de Waal, F. (1998) Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, Revised edi-
tion (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press).
de Waal, F. & Lanting, F. (1997), Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press).

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
26th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE)
will be held in East Lansing, Michigan, May 31–June 2, 2007
with an opening reception at 6.00 pm, May 30.
The conference venue will be the Kellog Hotel and Conference Center
at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. A large block of rooms
has been reserved for the SSE at a special conference rate: $89/night.
Local arrangements are coordinated by Mark Urban-Lurain.
Roger Nelson chairs the Program Committee.
For details, please see the announcement and call for papers at
www.scientificexploration.org/meetings/annual meeting2007.php
For inquiries, email:
AnnualMeeting2007@ScientificExploration.org
The overall theme of the 2007 meeting is ‘Pushing Scientific Bound-
aries: Interactions, Intersections, Interventions’. Invited speakers will
help define themes to be developed further by contributed papers.
Special focus will be given to research and theory on Consciousness,
Alternative Medicine, the Physics of Time, and UFO research. Invited
speakers include Peter Bancel, John Hagelin, Barbara Marx Hubbard,
Dieter Reinstorff, Glen Rein, Mark Rodeghier, and Daniel Sheehan.
The SSE provides a professional forum for presentations, criticism, and
debate concerning topics which are for various reasons ignored or stud-
ied inadequately within mainstream science. SSE member interests
cover a wide spectrum, ranging from apparent anomalies in well estab-
lished disciplines to paradoxical phenomena that belong to no estab-
lished discipline and yet may offer potential for scientific advance and
the expansion of human knowledge. The Society publishes a peer
reviewed journal, the Journal of Scientific Exploration, holds annual
scientific meetings in the USA and periodic meetings in Europe.