Bill Faw Consciousness

The International Union of Psychological Science (‘Union’) co-hosted, with the Chinese Psychological Society its 28th International Congress of Psychology (‘Congress’). The first Congress was held with the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889. In recent decades, they have been held every four years in different parts of the world. The Union has member organizations from 67 nations, representing one half million psychologists. Pretty scary stuff! With close to 6000 participants from some 80 countries, involved in 5,500 presentations over 6 days, this was the largest scientific conference yet held on mainland China. As such, the Chinese media featured it and the government issued five postage stamps and a postcard honouring it, suggesting an international ‘coming of age’ for Chinese psychology, with its pledge to observe and actively uphold the ‘Principle of the Universality of Science and the Principle of Free Circulation of Scientists’ as set out by the International Council for Science. Needless to say, this conference seemed very different from the minuscule consciousness meetings (ASSC and Tucson) from which I have filed reviews for JCS over the past three years. I will therefore give something of the context and feel of this conference before turning to issues at the heart of consciousness studies. Those who prefer ‘mainlining’ pure consciousness-science findings can skip over the next few ‘embedded’ paragraphs. Compared to other big-tent events I have attended, this conference had some intriguing weaknesses and strengths. Communication prior to the Congress had holes in it, probably due to the size of the conference, the inexperience of the local hosts, and the language barrier. My many attempts to find out how to submit my abstract for a presentation were never answered. Evidently 5,499 people were smarter than me! Responses to my pre-registration and hotel selections