Reports of the existence of consciousness are greatly exaggerated, according to visiting professor and Wayne G. Basler Chair George Kampis.
“Consciousness is a household word that we use in everyday language,” he said during a lecture in Brown Hall auditorium Thursday night. “It is very difficult to define and come to an agreement about the very notion of it.”
Kampis, from Budapest, Hungary, is chair holder of ETSU’s Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence in the Arts, Rhetoric and Science this spring semester, according to www.etsu.edu.
The Web site also noted that he is professor and founding chair of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at EÓtvÓs University in Budapest, Hungary’s premier research university.
Titled, “Consciousness in the Body,” Kampis’ fourth Basler lecture focused on the notion of embodiment, or the bodily nature of existence.
“Embodiment is throwing off this notion of the central serve as being detached from the rest of the body,” he said. “Sensorimotor control does everything. Consciousness, (and the mind), does nothing.”
“I thought that his main point was that consciousness wasn’t really real at all, that it might just be our bodies and that we’re kind of egocentrical in thinking we’re above animals because of our minds,” said Frank Sowokinos, a sophomore who is currently taking the semester off. “But we’re really no different, it’s all just motor functions.”
“We don’t like to think of this as a possibility,” Kampis said. “It’s basically saying neuroscience is all there is, don’t even bother with psychology.”
During his talk, Kampis questioned whether or not consciousness was a science. He pointed out that the first thing to notice when studying consciousness is that it covers a broad area of things, such as attention, experience, awareness, memory and perception.
“Perception is the identification of objects,” he said. According to Kampis, however, this is based on personal experience. “Personal experience is personal,” Kampis said. “The inverted qualia argument says that my yellow could be your red. However, two people with similar experiences share the same subjective experience. Even your experience is in your hand, not your head.”
“While arguments against the theory of embodiment include time delay of experience to action, dreams and disassociation of will and experience,” Kampis summarized his lecture by saying that, “You don’t need much brains to be smart, and you need even less to know what’s going on.”
“It was really brief and kind of sketchy,” said senior Jason Mills, a psychology major who attended the lecture. “I kind of got that his main point was that you didn’t have to be smart.”
“A lot of this stuff I remember learning from psychology classes and stuff,” said Larry Fischer, a senior sociology major.
Kampis concluded his lecture by saying “Consciousness is less a big deal then, but perhaps worth studying after all. It’s scary we grasp so little of what’s going on in the world. We’re just saying we’re conscious most of the time.”
Sowokinos said, “His lecture was pretty interesting, although it was a bit above my head.

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