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Seminar Abstract

Brain Imaging, the Vegetative State, and Cryptic Consciousness

Speaker : A/Prof. Colin Klein, Philosophy Department, University of Illinois at Chicago .
Date : 12th of March 2013, 4:00PM until 5:30PM
Location : Australian Hearing Hub, 3.610, Macquarie University.

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In a 2006 Science article, Adrian Owen and colleagues claimed to detect residual awareness in a patient previously diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. The brain imaging methods they used, and other methods inspired by them, have provided similar demonstrations in a number of cases since. But what has been shown---and what, if any, conscious states such patients might actually have---remains obscure. I critically discuss both technical and philosophical aspects of these experiments. I argue that any residual conscious awareness in such patients is likely to be radically, and interestingly, different from our own. This in turn shows that that the common methodological assumption of a