Lecturer: Herbert Jaeger Fields: all IK disciplines and some more
Content
In this talk I want to explain my love affair with a scientific field that has no name – yet. Or rather, it has too many names. The current most popular branding is ‘neuromorphic computing’. However, when you hear ‘natural computing’, ‘in-materio-computing’, ‘physical computing’, ‘unconventional computing’, ‘non-digital computing’, ‘fluent computing’ (I have a list of twenty more), it might mean the same thing – or something else. The idea behind all of this is to engineer novel kinds of microchips to get novel kinds of ‘computing’ directly out of nanoscale physics, just like real brains pull their cognition magic from neuronal biophysics, without the detour of digital simulation of neural dynamics. Current big-scale funding for this sort of research thrives on the hope to replace Gigawatt AI server farms with artificial microbrains that burn only 20 Watts, like our brains. And as a bonus, to get implantable neuro-implants that need no batteries, or principally un-hackable computing machines, or robustly self-adapting edge computing. Super fascinating. Alas, nobody seems to have a clue how to do it – yet.
Literature
H. Jaeger, B. Noheda, W.G. van der Wiel (2023): Toward a formal theory for computing machines made out of whatever physics offers. Nature Communications 14, 4911 (or the long version, 70 pages: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15408)
Lecturer
Herbert Jaeger studied mathematics and psychology in Freiburg (Germany), got his PhD in Computer Science / AI in Bielefeld (Germany) and then did a postdoc fellowship at the (then) German National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (GMD) in Sankt Augustin (Germany), where he subsequently founded the research unit on modeling intelligent dynamical sytsems (MINDS); then from 2001 to 2019 he served as professor of Computing Science at Jacobs University Bremen (Germany). Since 2019 he has been Professor for Computing in Cognitive Materials at the University of Groningen. Current research focus: mathematical foundations for computing in non-digital physical substrates. Jaeger retired 2025 and now has almost enough time for thinking. With only one exception (stupid flu), he attended all IKs, and served on various functions for the IK community since the beginning in 1997.
Lecturer: Timothy Drysdale Fields: Artificial intelligence, education, practical work
Content
This evening talk will reflect on the challenge facing educators, particularly younger educators with many years of teaching ahead of them. The joint pressure of readily-available artificial intelligence affecting the validity of traditional processes, and massification of education reducing the resources available per student, pose a difficult pinch point that is generating demand for authentic, interactive activities but placing a lot of pressure on the available time and space for students to experiment with real equipment in a traditional manner. I\’ll introduce a solution in the form of laboratories in a box, which we have been doing doing at the University of Edinburgh for a number of years, and describe the elements that make these successful for us, how you can adopt a similar approach, the pitfalls to avoid and some fruitful future directions for our communities of educators to explore, in particular in expanding what we do with the data streams to support better learning and in taking our concept of experiments beyond what we are used to doing in traditional laboratories.
Literature
Reid, D., & Drysdale, T. (2024). Student-facing learning analytics dashboard for remote lab practical work. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 17, 1037-1050. https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2024.3354128
D.Reid, J. Burridge, D. Lowe, T. Drysdale “Open-source remote laboratory experiments for controls engineering education,” International Journal of Mechanical Engineering Education. February 2022. doi:10.1177/03064190221081451
T. D. Drysdale, S. Kelley, A.-M. Scott, V. Dishon, A. Weightman, R. J. Lewis & S. Watts “Opinion piece: non-traditional practical work for traditional campuses,” Higher Education Pedagogies, 5:1, 210-222, 2020, DOI: 10.1080/23752696.2020.1816845
G. L. Knight & T. D. Drysdale The future of higher education (HE) hangs on innovating our assessment – but are we ready, willing and able?, Higher Education Pedagogies, 5:1, 57-60, 2020, DOI: 10.1080/23752696.2020.1771610
Lecturer
Prof Timothy Drysdale is the Chair of Technology Enhanced Science Education and Director of Strategic Digital Education in the School of Engineering. His main research activity is in Engineering Education, where he leads the Remote Laboratories group. He and his team have developed an entirely new infrastructure and approach for operating online remote laboratories on traditional campuses (practable.io), winning international awards from the Global Online Laboratories Consortium (Remote Experiment Award 2024) and the Association for Learning Technology / Jisc Award for Digital Transformation in 2023. His prior research activities were in the area of terahertz component design and testing, microwave antennas, and optical plasmonics. He has a long-standing involvement with public outreach in science and engineering, including the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, Science Day at Buckingham Palace, and giving the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Award Lecture at the British Science Festival.
Lecturer: Jutta Kretzberg, Katja Hellekes Fields: Personal / professional development
Content
Are you a student? Have you ever considered doing a PhD? Or a career in academia? Does the idea of doing a PhD appeal to you? Or does it seem like hard work, or even a painful experience? Many Master’s students struggle with the decision of whether a PhD would be the right choice for their career. In fact, a significant proportion of PhD students continue to question their decision until they graduate, and sometimes even afterwards. There is no general advice on who should pursue a PhD. Whether to pursue a PhD is a personal decision that depends on factors such as your personality, personal situation, and the job opportunities available. The aim of this workshop is to help you develop a clearer personal perspective on this decision.
This workshop is primarily aimed at Master’s and advanced Bachelor’s students. However, the method of developing your personal perspective can also be applied to future career steps. PhD students, PhD holders and non-PhDs who are willing to share their perspectives are highly welcome!
Session 1: Background information In the first session, we will begin by providing some background information on undertaking a PhD in Germany or Austria. What are the motivations for pursuing a PhD? What skills are gained through a PhD? How can a PhD be structured and funded? How do PhDs differ between disciplines and countries?
Session 2: External perspectives In the second session, we will explore the different stakeholders’ perspectives interactively. What do Master’s students expect from a PhD? What do PhD supervisors expect from their students? What do employers expect from PhD versus Master’s degree applicants? What about the perspective of family and friends? And which personality traits might be useful for pursuing a PhD?
Session 3: Your personal perspective During the third session, you will write down your hopes, neutral expectations and fears relating to a PhD. Working with a fellow participant, categorize these into the groups: ‘tasks/skills’, ‘topics/scientific questions’, ‘working environment’ and ‘personal factors’. Sharing your thoughts and listening to those of your teammate can help you gain a clearer perspective on your career decisions.
Session 4: How to become a PhD candidate? After sharing our conclusions from the previous sessions, we will discuss the practical steps involved in becoming a PhD candidate, such as: How do you choose a topic? How do you find a project and a supervisor? How can you finance the PhD? We will also consider how to balance the demands of your PhD with your personal life – bridging realities of your live and a PhD.
Literature
The European Competence Framework for Researchers: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/document/download/7da29338-37bf-4d51-b5eb-a1571b84c7ad_en?filename=ec_rtd_research-competence-presentation.pdf
General information on PhD scholarships (by German Government): https://www.bmbf.de/EN/Research/ScienceSystem/AcademicCareers/DoctoralScholarships/doctoralscholarships_node.html
General information on German academic system & funding for international exchange (DAAD): https://www.daad.de/en/
Largest scholarship organisation in Germany: https://www.studienstiftung.de/en/doctoral-scholarships/doctoral-scholarships
Chris Woolston: “Graduate survey: A love-hurt relationship” Nature 550, 549-552 (2017)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nj7677-549a https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7677-549a (Nature’s survey of more than 5,700 doctoral students worldwide)
Lars Kiewidt, PhD: “To PhD or not to PhD?” (2019) https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/to-phd-or-not-to-phd-4312cdb862c5 (Evaluation of this survey data set concerning PhD student’s motivation, skills and satisfaction across fields in natural sciences.)
Chris Woolston: ‘I don’t want this kind of life’: graduate students question career options
Nature 611, 413-416 (2022) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03586-8 (Newest version of nature’s PhD survey, but not open access)
Katie Mitzelfelt, PhD: “To Be or Not To Be a PhD Candidate, That Is the Question” (Association for Women in Science Magazine, 2021): https://awis.org/to-phd-or-not-phd/ (Individual perspectives of 6 persons on their own decision to be or not to be a PhD.)
Charlotte King_: “To PhD or not to PhD, that is the question…” https://www.postgrad.com/blog/to-phd-or-not-to-phd/ (Rather old, but still helpful blog post)
Lecturer
Jutta Kretzberg is professor for Computational Neuroscience and head of the MSc program Neuroscience at University of Oldenburg. She studied applied computer science and biology at University of Bielefeld, where she also did her PhD in Biology. After being a postdoc (and having a baby) in San Diego, California, she came back to Germany to be a junior professor and became a professor some years (and another baby) later. Nowadays, while juggling her family, teaching, research and administration duties, her favorite task is mentoring.
Katja Hellekes, is an experienced academic professional and Coordinator of the Vienna Doctoral School Cognition, Behavior and Neuroscience. She completed her diploma and doctorate at the University of Cologne, specializing in Neurobiology, followed by postdoctoral research at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and the University of Freiburg. Alongside her role as Coordinator of the Doctoral Program, Katja Hellekes lectures in cognitive science. With a passion for fostering the growth of early-career researchers, she provides dedicated support to PhD candidates, guiding them through their doctoral journey and helping them transition into independent research roles.
Lecturer: Jennifer Fewell Fields: Biology; Collective Behavior
Content
This course will explore the social organization and collective behavior of social insects from a biological perspective. The social insects are models for coordination and cooperation across small to large scales. Their distributed communication systems have been used extensively as inspiration for applied questions in coordination and collective behavior, from supply chains to robotics and beyond. Is a social insect colony the original collective “AI”? – well probably not, but it will be a fun question to explore!
Lecturer
Jennifer Fewell is a President’s Professor at Arizona State University, where she served as the founding Director of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity. She has served also as President of the Animal Behavior Society and the International Union for the Study of Social Insects. She studies social organization and division of labor in social insects, and mechanisms and evolution of social cooperation across a range of species. She received her MS and PhD from the University of Colorado.
This course examines the growing field of Human-Building Interaction (HBI), in which architectural design and human-centred computing are increasingly converging to reshape living and working spaces. Through the integration of robotic and AI technologies, architectural space can now adapt physically and proactively to support occupant needs, and in some cases even nudge their behaviours towards health and wellbeing benefits. The course discusses how knowledge of spatial experience, long central to architectural design, is now also informing interactive systems and robotic prototypes. Across three sessions, participants will build a conceptual understanding of this highly interdisciplinary field, covering its foundations, design and evaluation principles, as well as open challenges and future directions.
Session 1: Activating spatial experience. This lecture introduces the foundations of the course. It discusses the phenomenological concept of spatial experience and how it has informed the design of architectural spaces and interactive systems. It then examines how spatial affordances can be purposefully designed to activate human experience.
Session 2: Designing, prototyping, and evaluating Human-Building Interaction. This lecture provides an overview of the conceptual, technical, and methodological approaches used to implement and evaluate HBI systems. It compares HBI deployments across different spatial, temporal, and social scales, and discusses their impact.
Session 3: Challenges and future directions. This lecture discusses current challenges for HBI in both practice and research, ranging from technical requirements and occupant adoption to the need for a cohesive scientific framework. It also outlines emerging opportunities and research directions in light of generative AI and cross-reality spatial interaction.
Literature
Alavi, H. S., Churchill, E. F., Wiberg, M., Lalanne, D., Dalsgaard, P., Fatah Gen Schieck, A., & Rogers, Y. (2019). Introduction to Human-Building Interaction (HBI): Interfacing HCI with Architecture and Urban Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26(2), 1–10.
Becerik-Gerber, B., Lucas, G., Aryal, A., Awada, M., Bergés, M., Billington, S. L., Boric-Lubecke, O., Ghahramani, A., Heydarian, A., Jazizadeh, F., Liu, R., Zhu, R., Marks, F., Roll, S., Seyedrezaei, M., Taylor, J. E., Höelscher, C., Khan, A., Langevin, J., … Zhao, J. (2022). Ten Questions Concerning Human-Building Interaction Research for Improving the Quality of Life. Building and Environment, 226, 109681.
Johansen, S. S., Kjeldskov, J., & Skov, M. B. (2019). Temporal Constraints in Human—Building Interaction. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26(2), 1–29.
Ju, W. (2015). The Design of Implicit Interactions. Springer International Publishing.
Nguyen, A. B. V. D., Leusmann, J., Mayer, S., & Moere, A. V. (2025). Eliciting Understandable Architectonic Gestures for Robotic Furniture Through Co-Design Improvisation. 2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 569–579.
Nguyen, B. V. D., & Vande Moere, A. (2024). The Adaptive Architectural Layout: How the Control of a Semi-Autonomous Mobile Robotic Partition was Shared to Mediate the Environmental Demands and Resources of an Open-Plan Office. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–20.
Rao, S., Rogers, K., Good, J., & Alavi, H. (2025). What Do We Design for When We Design ‘Smart Buildings’? – A Scoping Review of Human Experience Design Research in Buildings. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–23.
Wiberg, M. (2020). Interaction and Architecture is Dead.: Long Live Architectural Interactivity! Interactions, 27(2), 72–75.
Lecturer
Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen is a guest professor in Digital Architecture at the University of Antwerp and a research project manager in Human-Building Interaction at KU Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on the responsible integration of digital technologies to physically and virtually transform everyday built environments, such as homes, offices, and public spaces, in order to improve occupants’ experience, health, and well-being. In particular, his work spans the design, prototyping, and evaluation of Human-Building Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, and Human-Centred AI systems that augment buildings throughout their lifecycle, from architectural design and construction to post-occupancy evaluation.
Lecturer: Christian Herff Fields: Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Neural Data
Content
This course will cover the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces that decode speech directly from invasive neural activity.
Session one will introduce different measures of invasive neurophysiology and highlight the state of the art in speech BCIs.
Session two, we will look at intracranial data directly and realize a first decoding system.
Session three is dedicated to open challenges and future directions.
Literature
Silva, A. B., Littlejohn, K. T., Liu, J. R., Moses, D. A., & Chang, E. F. (2024). The speech neuroprosthesis. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 25(7), 473-492.
Lecturer
Christian Herff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, where he leads the research program on invasive brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). With a background in computer science, he bridges technical innovation and clinical application to drive some of Europe’s most advanced work in neural interfaces. His leadership in the field is reflected in his election to the Board of the BCI Society, where he represents invasive BCI research.
Lecturer: Cosima Prahm, Michael Bressler Fields: Computer Science, Biology, Medicine
Content
In this hands-on course, participants will explore how body and brain signals can be used as inputs for immersive interactive applications or games. After a short introduction to physiology and measurement of muscle activity (EMG), brain activity (EEG), heart activity (EKG) as well as user interface design principles and gamification, we will provide a tutorial on the Unity game engine and prefabs for signal processing and interaction design. Using provided hardware, participants will work in a maximum of 5 small teams consisting of 3-4 people to prototype applications using the Unity Game Engine to integrate physiological signals into XR/VR scenarios. Sessions will be structured as hackathon-style workshops, combining brief input lectures, supervised technical guidance, and plenty of time for experimentation. The course will conclude with team presentations in which groups pitch and demo their applications to fellow IK participants and a small jury. The emphasis is on creativity, collaboration, and gaining hands-on experience in turning physiological signals into novel forms of human–computer interaction.
Provided Hardware: – Meta Quest 3/3S (XR/VR Headset with optical hand tracking) – MyoArmband (EMG Bracelet) – Muse S (EEG Headband) – Polar Belt (EKG Chest Belt)
Description for every course Session:
Session 1: Introduction to physiological signals (EMG, EEG, EKG), user interface design and gamification. Overview of measurement devices, introduction to VR/AR/XR, Hardware setup, Unity tutorial, team formation.
Session 2: Prototyping session I – connecting devices, first experiments with devices, developing creative concepts.
Session 3: Prototyping session II – refining signal integration, debugging, testing interaction concepts.
Session 4: Prototyping session III – polishing prototypes, preparing demos and pitches.
Presentation: Final presentation (short PPT as introduction of the team and the project, followed by a demo)
Cosima Prahm graduated from the Medical University Vienna, Austria, in 2019 with a PhD in Medicine – Clinical Neuroscience. During that time, she was a research assistant at the Clinical Laboratory for Bionic Extremity Reconstruction and Rehabilitation lead by Prof. Aszmann at the Medical University in Vienna, at the Clinical Laboratory for Bionic Limb Reconstruction, Austria. At the University of Tuebingen, Germany, she was head of research of the laboratory for Hand, Plastic, Reconstructive and Burn Surgery while actively conducting research herself in both clinical projects and in the field of TechNeuroRehabilitation, where she also established the working group PlayBionic that focuses on digital health applications. She is now working at the Clinic for Hand, Replantation and Microsurgery, Charité University Medicine, and is the director of the Center for Clinical Research at the occupational trauma hospital Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin.
Affiliation: Charité – University Medicine Berlin Homepage:www.playbionic.org
Michael Bressler finished his Master’s degree in Information Technology at the Vienna University of Technology with a focus on human-computer interfaces and user interface design. After several years in the private sector, he returned to research, where he mainly focuses on computer-assisted rehabilitation, virtual and augmented reality, and serious games for health.
Affiliation: BG Klinikum Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin, Zentrum für Klinische Forschung Homepage:www.michaelbressler.at
With a focus on cybernetics and the free energy principle, this course will cover how philosophers and theoretical biologists have attempted to define the unique organisational properties of living systems, the unique difficulties of identifying invariant properties that individuate an organism over time, and how to understand the nature of mathematical models in light of these challenges.
1. Session one will begin with a brief discussion of Aristotle’s philosophy of biology and his account of animal motion, which will provide context for discussion of the cybernetic account of living systems as feedback control systems. 2. Session two will cover the Free Energy Principle as a contemporary revival of the cybernetic picture and explore some of its limitations as a ‘first principle’ for living systems. 3. Session three will introduce an alternative ‘processual’ perspective on the organism and the discuss the limitations this places on our ability to formally describe the essential features of an individual living system.
Literature
Dupré, J. A., & Nicholson, D. J. (2018). A manifesto for a processual philosophy of biology.
Dupuy, J.-P. (2009). On the origins of cognitive science: The mechanization of the mind. MIT Press.
Nave, K. (2025). A drive to survive: The free energy principle and the meaning of life. The MIT Press.
Lecturer
I am a Leverhulme Trust early career research fellow. My research focuses on developing a realist account of autonomy and agency, grounded in the uniquely metabolic existence of living systems, and upon critiquing the machine concept of the organism in light of this distinctive material instability.
Lecturer: Sarah Hayes Fields: Postdigital Inequalities, Artificial Intelligence, Sociology, Bioinformational Philosophy, Human Data Interaction, Ethics,
Content
This course, under the theme: Societies and Blurred Realities, examines postdigital inequalities , as these arise in different contexts, as a result of technologies that merge physical and virtual spaces, bioinformational data and human and artificial intelligence. Beginning with exploring our own postdigital positionalities (Hayes, 2021), where technology, language and our brains merge in our hybrid environments, we question how AI comes to reflect the values and inequities of the world in which it is created. Our changing digital identities, amid data-centric biology, are considered through research that examines the infrastructuring of educational genomics (Williamson, et. al., 2024).. Amid the uncertainty of AI mediation, our human data interactions and skills are explored to seek greater Agency, Legibility and Negotiability for postdigital inclusion of those who are marginalised (Hayes, et. al., 2023). Finally, we consider creative and innovative cross-sector partnerships that build from the ground in communities. A range of recent examples will be discussed, including citizen research and activism, collective articles, community innovation hubs and examining how universities might be centres of postdigital knowledge and collaboration, contributing to local and regional development by aligning their research with real-world policy needs.
Session 1 will cover: Postdigital positionality, where technology, language and our brains merge Session 2 will cover: Digital identity: what exactly do we mean by this in a bioinformational society? Session 3 will cover: Human Data Interaction, disadvantage, skills in the community, towards Ethtech Session 4 will cover: Creative approaches to address postdigital inequalities and regain ourselves
Literature
Costello, E. (2024). Rewild my heart: With pedagogies of love, kindness and the sun and moon. Postdigital Science and Education, 6(2), 610-626.
Hayes, S., Connor, S., Johnson, M. and Jopling, M. (2023). Human Data Interaction, Disadvantageand Skills in the Community: Enabling Cross-Sector Environments for Postdigital Inclusion. Cham: Springer.
Hayes, S. (2021). Postdigital positionality: Developing powerful inclusive narratives for learning, teaching,research and policy in Higher Education. Leiden: Brill.
Hayes, S., Jandrić, P., la Velle, L. et al. (2024) Postdigital Citizen Science and Humanities: Dialogue from the Ground. Postdigit Sci Educ 7, 188–223. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00514-z
Jandrić, P., Ryberg, T., Knox, J., Lacković, N., Hayes, S., Suoranta, J., Smith, M., Steketee, A., Peters, M. A., McLaren, P., Ford, D. R., Asher, G., McGregor, C., Stewart, G., Williamson, B., & Gibbons, A. (2019). Postdigital dialogue.Postdigital Science and Education, 1(1), 163-189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-018-0011-x
Kourkoulou, D., Tzirides, A.-O., Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2024). Trust and Inclusion in AI-Mediated Education: Where Human Learning Meets Learning Machines. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64487-0.
Kotouza, D. (2025). Genetics for ‘equality’? The politics of knowledge production in educational genomics. History of the Human Sciences, 09526951251314314.
Matthewman S (2011) Technology and Social Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pangrazio, L., & Sefton-Green, J. (2023). Digital literacies as a ‘soft power’of educational governance. In World Yearbook of Education 2024 (pp. 196-211). Routledge.
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (Eds.). (2022). Bioinformational philosophy and postdigital knowledge ecologies. Cham: Springer.
Raffaghelli, J.E., Ferrarelli, M. & Rodríguez, N.L. (2025) Slowness as Postdigital Positionality in the Era of Generative AI: A Conversation. Postdigital Science and Education
Reardon, J. (2019). The postgenomic condition: Ethics, justice, and knowledge after the genome. University of Chicago Press.
Ritzer, G., Ryan, J. M., Hayes, S., Elliot, M., & Jandrić, P. (2024). Epilogue: McDonaldization and Artifcial Intelligence. In D. Kourkoulou, A.-O. Tzirides, B. Cope, & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Trust and Inclusion in AI-mediated Education: Where Human Learning Meets Learning Machines (pp. 303-321). Cham: Springer.
Williamson, B., Kotouza, D., Pickersgill, M., & Pykett, J. (2024). Infrastructuring educational genomics: Associations, architectures, and apparatuses. Postdigital Science and Education, 6(4), 1143-1172.
Lecturer
Sarah Hayes, PFHEA, is Professor of Education & Research Lead at Bath Spa University. Her PhD was in Sociology, from Aston University, UK, and her research includes linguistic analysis of policy and examining society through a postdigital lens. Sarah wrote: ‘The Labour of Words in Higher Education’ (2019), ‘Postdigital Positionality’ (2021) and co-edited ‘Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies (2022) and the EPSRC funded Human Data Interaction, Disadvantage and Skills in the Community. She has taught Sociology, Education and Computing, and is an Associate Editor for the Springer journal: Postdigital Science and Education.
Lecturer: Charlotte Gauvry Fields: Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of Neuroscience, Ethics of AI
Content
Determining the presence of consciousness can be challenging in some cases. Consider individuals with severe brain injuries, such as comatose patients, or those with mental disorders. The question also extends to non-Human animals and even to emerging entities like brain organoids, isolated hemispheres after hemispherotomy or advanced AI systems. These entites might exhibit minimal, say borderline, consciousness. But how can we certain they are conscious at all? The question matters because, if they are conscious, they may require protection from harm. Session 1 will provide a general introduction to the philosophy of consciousness, in order to define the main concepts involved: phenomenal consciousness (p-consciousness), borderline consciousness and synthetic consciousness Session 2 will address methodological questions concerning the detection of p-consciousness providing an overview of the neuro-philosophical theories of consciousness currently available Session 3 will focus on two concrete cases of synthetic consciousness: the isolated hemisphere after hemispherotomy and brain organoids Session 4 will focus on AI-consciousness
Dr. Charlotte Gauvry received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium). She is currently a Teaching and Research Assistant in Philosophy at the University of Bonn (Germany). Her work focuses on the philosophy of consciousness, particularly its metaphysics (with an emphasis on representationalist and illusionism theories), borderline cases, and ethical dimensions. She has published on mental disorders (e.g. depersonalization and derealization) and brain injuries (e.g. hemispherotomy), and co-edited, with Arnaud Dewalque, Consciousness and Representation: An Introduction to Representational Theories of Mind (in French).
