Consciousness discussion on tap this Friday

Nipissing University’s psychology department is pleased to announce the second presentation in its speaker series, featuring Dr. Matti Saari, set to roll on Friday, October 25 in room A257 at 2 p.m.Dr. Saari’s talk is titled Neuroscience and ConsciousnessHere is the abstract:
The puzzle of consciousness fascinates both philosophers and psychologists alike and is something that we may all have wondered about in our “conscious” moments. I hope to argue that consciousness ought to be viewed as nothing more than a biological phenomenon that is a natural process of neural activity of specific brain regions. The “hard” and “easy” problems of consciousness may best be resolved by recognizing that the problems are essentially semantic, caused by the “language games” which give meaning to such concepts. I will draw from philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Popper, Munz, Churchland, and others to construct the neural monist position. As an example of the utility of the neural monist view of consciousness I may even suggest that the idea of life after death, a critical part of many world mythologies, can be easily understood as a natural consequence of the stability of neural circuitry dedicated to sensory/motor mapping of the body.