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The Solo Talk: The fantasy of reality

Monday 9th October - 07:20 PM BST

The Solo Talk: The fantasy of reality

The new science of consciousness and perception

Consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries of our era. A growing contingent of leading researchers argue that the material reality we perceive is a hallucination, and yet others claim that conciousness is merely an illusion.

Join us as world-leading cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman discusses his cutting-edge reseach about conciousness, perception, and its astonishing implications for the ultimate nature of reality.

Timetable:

17:15 BST - The Opening Interview: The Meaning of Memory The Lounge

18:00 BST - The Debate: The Perception Bias arena

19:20 BST - The Solo Talk: The fantasy of reality arena

19:30 BST - Music: George Cheetham stage

Donald Hoffman

Anti-reality theorist

Donald Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist working at the University of California, Irvine. He is making waves with a new theory suggesting that, instead of presenting reality as it "really is", our perception is like a desktop interface enabling us to use reality effectively.

Hoffman's book, The Case Against Reality, fleshes out the notion that we do not perceive reality objectively, and argues for a mathematical, rather than spatio-temporal, model of reality.

"One of the deepest and most original thinkers of his generation” – Steven Pinker