Dr. Noel Boyle, associate professor of philosophy, gave a presentation titled “A Friendly Critique of Subjective Physicalism” at the 20th Anniversary Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference on April 23 in Tucson, Arizona. The conference is the world’s premier international conference on the topic of consciousness, drawing a wide range of scholars including philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, physicists, computer scientists, artists and Eastern meditation experts. The keynote speech was given by esteemed theoretical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose. Other pre-eminent speakers included some philosophers (including David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, John Searle and Ned Block), some neuroscientists (including Christof Koch, Bernard Baars and Michael Graziano) and novelist Rebecca Goldstein. Boyle’s presentation offered a defense and expansion of Robert Howell’s attempts to reconcile robust phenomenal realism with supervenience based accounts of physicalism.
