Scientist loses 25-year consciousness bet — to a philosopher - Big Think

Twenty-five years ago, two academics made a bet about consciousness. Christof Koch, a neuroscientist, wagered David Chalmers, a philosopher, that the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness would be known by 2023. Chalmers thought otherwise. When they made the bet, many scientists were busy using newly developed neuroimaging technology to search for what they called the neural correlates of consciousness, defined by Koch, in a recent interview with the Swedish science magazine Forskning & Framsteg, as “the footprints of consciousness in the organ of consciousness, which is the brain.” Koch and Chalmers agreed to set up a series of studies by rival consciousness researchers, who would collaborate on experiments designed to test each others’ ideas about how the brain generates consciousness. The preliminary results of some of these experiments were presented at the 26th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC), held recently at New York Univers

Twenty-five years ago, two academics made a bet about consciousness. Christof Koch, a neuroscientist, wagered David Chalmers, a philosopher, that the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness would be known by 2023. Chalmers thought otherwise. When they made the bet, many scientists were busy using newly developed neuroimaging technology to search for what they called the neural correlates of consciousness, defined by Koch, in a recent interview with the Swedish science magazine Forskning & Framsteg, as “the footprints of consciousness in the organ of consciousness, which is the brain.” Koch a