The Conscious Mind at 30

In 1996, David Chalmers’ book The Conscious Mind. In search of a fundamental theory (OUP) shook the Philosophy of Mind by presenting rigorous philosophical arguments and ingenious thought experiments against the physicalistic mainstream. With the aim of laying the philosophical foundation for a scientific study of consciousness, Chalmers introduced the hard problem of consciousness and offered a range of non-reductive approaches to consciousness.

30 years later, the scientific study of consciousness is thriving with its cornerstone of searching the neural correlates of consciousness, adversarial collaborations testing and comparing major theories of consciousness, and complex considerations of markers and tests for consciousness in infants, non-human animals and artificial systems. 

In this workshop, we want to look back by celebrating the massive influence of The Conscious Mind on philosophers and scientists and look forward to the future of the science of consciousness. We are excited to welcome David Chalmers, Axel Cleeremans, Keith Frankish, François Kammerer, Johannes Kleiner, Christian List, Lucia Melloni, Hedda Hassel Mørch, Liad Mudrik, Martine Nida-Rümelin and Anil Seth to Bochum.

We also invite early career researchers to submit abstracts for poster presentation at the workshop. Please submit an abstract of max. 700 words on scientific and philosophical themes from the book by email to [email protected] by April 1st, 2026.