The Science of Consciousness (TSC; formerlyToward a Science of Consciousness) is an internationalacademic conference that has been heldbiannually since 1994. It is organized by theCenter for Consciousness Studies of theUniversity of Arizona. Alternate conferences are held in Arizona (either Tucson or Phoenix), and the others in locations worldwide. The conference is devoted exclusively to the investigation ofconsciousness.^[1]

The main organizer isStuart Hameroff, an anestheologist and the director of the center that hosts the conference. One of the speakers at the first conference,David Chalmers, had co-organized some of the following ones, until the event became too far away from the scientific mainstream.^[2]

Three books published byMIT Press have resulted from the conference.^[3][4][5]

John Benjamins published a book containing selected proceedings from TSC 1999.^[6]

• An essay reviewToward a science of consciousness:Tucson I and II by J. Gray was printed inISR Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Volume 24 Issue 4 (1 April 1999), pp. 255–260.^[7]
• Michael Punt reviewed TSC 2002 in the journalLeonardo.^[8]
• In theJournal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Christopher Holvenstot reviewed TSC 2011, likening it toThe Greatest Show on Earth.^[9]
• A review of TSC 2012 may be found in theJournal of Consciousness Studies.^[10]
• A commentary on dropping the word "Toward" was published in theJournal of Consciousness Studies in 2016.^[11]

Chapter 8 ofJohn Horgan's bookThe Undiscovered Mind is entirely devoted to his experiences at the first (1994) TSC conference.^[12]

InThe New York Times,George Johnson wrote about the 2016 conference that "wild speculations and carnivalesque pseudoscience were juxtaposed with sober sessions".^[13]

The conference and its main organizers were the subject of a long feature in June 2018, first in theChronicle of Higher Education, and re-published inThe Guardian. Tom Bartlett concluded that the conference was "more or less the Stuart [Hameroff] Show. He decides who will and who will not present. [...] Some consciousness researchers believe that the whole shindig has gone off the rails, that it’s seriously damaging the field of consciousness studies, and that it should be shut down."^[14]

• Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which puts on a similar series of conferences aboutconsciousness.^[1]

• TSC webpage

• Academic conferences
• Consciousness

• CS1 maint: publisher location
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata