CUNY Professor to Discuss “The Nature of Consciousness” at SUNY

NEW PALTZ — David Rosenthal, a faculty member in the philosophy department at The Graduate School of The City University of New York, will speak at the State University of New York at New Paltz on March 8 at 5:00 p.m in Room 1010 of Jacobson Faculty Tower. His topic will be “The Nature of Consciousness.”

Rosenthal is a professor in the doctoral program in philosophy and the coordinator of the concentration in cognitive science. He is the author of numerous articles on consciousness and the philosophy of mind and, most recently, has written Consciousness and Mind, soon to be published by Oxford University Press. He is also the editor of The Nature of Mind (Oxford) as well as the collection, Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem(Hackett).

“Consciousness is often considered to be the most difficult, unyielding aspect of the mind, possibly resisting any sort of informative explanation,” according to Rosenthal. In his lecture at New Paltz, Rosenthal is expected to distinguish among several different things we call consciousness, and to contend that the most problematic question is how thoughts, sensations, feelings, and other mental states are conscious states. He will discuss his theory of the nature of such consciousness, and describe how it can explain the phenomenological appearances of consciousness and do justice to our pretheoretic intuitions.

The lecture, which is open to the public, is sponsored by the Philosophy Club at SUNY New Paltz. Refreshments are served 15 minutes prior to the talk.