We all know what consciousness is: it’s our direct experience of the present moment, our window into the external world, the feeling of what it is like to see, smell, taste, touch, hear, think, emote, and more. Yet it also seems to be the case that we have no idea what consciousness is.

Consciousness has baffled neuroscientists and philosophers alike for centuries; indeed, for many people, there seems to be a fundamental, perhaps even unbridgeable, gap between the subjective, felt sensation of, for example, pain and the electrochemical activity of our brains. How, then, could consciousness arise from the brain?

In this event, three extraordinary experts on consciousness will debate each other about their answers to this question.

Christof Koch is a legendary neuroscientist who has collaborated with Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, to uncover the “neural correlates” of consciousness. Since Dr. Crick’s death, he has continued in this line of research and developed, along with another neuroscientist, Integrated Information Theory, which is arguably the leading scientific account of consciousness.

Bernardo Kastrup is a philosopher who also boasts an impressive background in science; he worked at the high-energy particle collider in CERN before pursuing a career in analytical philosophy of mind, where he argued for the idea that reality itself is an extended form of consciousness.

Finally, Rupert Spira is a spiritual teacher who belongs to the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, a “non-dual” school of Hindu philosophy that believes that an infinite, pure, divine consciousness underlies the apparent duality between the perceiving self and the perceived universe.