Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies

History

The Center was founded in 2009 at the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, on the initiative of Professor Vadim Vasiliev and Dmitry Volkov.

Many leading scientists and scholars have visited Moscow State University and other educational institutions of Russia since 2009 at the invitation of the Center for Consciousness Studies: Scott Soames (University of Southern California), a philosopher of language and scholar of analytic philosophy, visitor in 2009; Timothy Williamson (Oxford University), an expert on epistemology, analytic philosophy, and philosophy of language, 2011; John Searle (University of California, Berkeley), deviser of the Chinese Room thought experiment and defender of biological naturalism about the mental, 2011; Daniel Dennett (co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University), philosopher and cognitive scientist, 2012; Jesse Prinz (distinguished professor at the City University of New York), author of works on consciousness, free will, and experimental philosophy, 2014; Patricia Churchland (University of California at San Diego), the US-Canadian neurophilosopher, 2015; Nicholas Humphrey (Cambridge University), psychologist, theorist of consciousness, and discoverer of blindsight in monkeys, 2015; and Derk Pereboom (Cornell University), the author of works on consciousness and free will, 2016.

An International Conference on 'Problems of consciousness and free will' was held in June 2014 in Greenland under the auspices of the Center for Consciousness Studies. Evaluating the results of this conference, The Guardian pointed out that among the participants were several dozens of the world's most famous thinkers involved in research in the field of consciousness and collaborating with the Center. The author of the Guardian article highlighted David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland.

In August 2014 the Center organized a summer school 'Free will and moral responsibility' at Moscow State University which was led by Professor John Fischer, a leading expert about the problems of free will and moral responsibility. The Center is planning to hold a second summer school, to be led by Derk Pereboom, on 'Free will and consciousness', in July 2016 in Riga.

The Center also maintains an active website, which contains links to videos of many of the talks by visitors and of other programs sponsored by the Center, including a full set of videos of the Greenland conference. In addition, the website posts topical articles by Russian and other philosophers on questions and events relevant to its intellectual focus.

The Center for Consciousness Studies has, in addition, carried out an extensive activity of publication, including a series of books, Philosophy of Mind. The series contains works by Russian authors and Russian translations of some Western authors:

2012 – Volkov D. The Boston Zombie. The theory of consciousness of Daniel Dennett;

2013 – Ivanov D. The Nature of Phenomenal Consciousness;

2013 – Pinker S. The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature (Russian Edition);

2014 – Vasiliev V. Consciousness and Things;

2014 – Chalmers D. The Conscious Mind. (Russian edition).

Management structure

The organization is managed by an academic council and a board of trustees. As of this tade, the council and board consist of:

Summer School

Summer School is an international academic project hosted by Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies in the city of Riga. Graduate students and recent PhDs are invited to submit applications to participate in the summer school.