After ‘Consciousness’ Workshop
Date: January 27-28, 2026 (Tuesday – Wednesday)
Venue: Rm 10.13, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Co-Organized by: HKU-AIH Lab & Berggruen Institute China
Speaker: Professor Wayne Wu, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
What are the tools we need to make progress on consciousness? The central tool has been introspection, but I raise questions about introspection from an empirical perspective focusing on the empirical argument for unconscious vision. I then propose that the central notions we need are access, action, and attention. I provide a philosophical framework for action and use it to define the relevant notion of access and hence of consciousness. This entails that attention is necessary for consciousness—but consciousness of an empirically scrutable form. Where consciousness becomes an important issue, say in AI or in animals, then this framework provides a basis on which we can make enormous progress—and we have.
