International Center for Consciousness Studies Unveils Global Mission to Connect Minds Worldwide
Due to the quick rise of powerful artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, one of humanity’s oldest philosophical concerns has risen to the center of technological and corporate conversation: Are machines capable of consciousness? This is an issue with significant ethical, legal, and strategic ramifications rather than just being an academic conundrum. We need to transcend disciplinary silos in order to traverse this terrain. It is now essential to combine rigorous philosophy with empirical neuroscience in order to define the objectives, evaluate the results, and set up the governance of next-generation AI. The International Center for Consciousness Studies (ICCS) is a community of philosophers dedicated to exploring the nature of consciousness and mind through philosophical and interdisciplinary research. It is a non-profit organization founded in 2024 by Dmitry Volkov, Pietro Perconti and Alessio Plebe, in collaboration with the University of Messina.
The ICCS fosters intellectual dialogue through its annual ICCS Conference, connecting thinkers, researchers, and students worldwide.
Dmitry Volkov’s ICCS: Bridging the Divide Between Philosophy and Neuroscience
Historically, the study of consciousness has been divided. Philosophy of mind operates from the “first-person” perspective, dealing with qualitative experience, intentionality, and the hard problem: why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience. Neuroscience, in contrast, operates from the “third-person” perspective, mapping Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCCs) – the minimal neuronal mechanisms sufficient for any specific conscious perception.
As artificial intelligence systems become more sophisticated, the long-standing divide between philosophy and neuroscience is increasingly seen as untenable. Assessing whether an AI system is “conscious” based solely on observable behavior is widely criticized as conceptually weak. At the same time, debates about machine consciousness that ignore the physical realities of information processing – whether in biological brains or silicon-based systems – risk remaining purely speculative.
In response, a growing body of research is converging around an interdisciplinary approach. This framework applies philosophical analysis to refine the questions posed by neuroscience, while using empirical data to place concrete limits on theoretical claims.
Lively Debates, Contrasting Views – ICCS Hosts Them All
In September 2025, a 3-day ICCS Conference titled “The Question of Consciousness: What Are We Talking About?” was held in Salina, Italy. A series of in-depth discussions were held on one of the most controversial issues in contemporary thought: “What do we mean when we talk about consciousness?” Scholars spoke about philosophical theories of mind and consciousness, its philosophical assumptions, implications for cognitive sciences, and the role of social practices in shaping subjective experience.
Two contrasting views were offered by Riccardo Manzotti and Michael Pauen. Manzotti is a Member of the Advisory Board at the International Center for Consciousness Studies and a Full Professor in Theoretical Philosophy, IULM University, Milan, Italy, while Pauen is a Member of the Academic Council at the ICCS and the Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
Michael Pauen challenges the idea that consciousness is in principle inexplicable, arguing that the classic defenses of the “explanatory gap” rely on philosophical intuitions that are unreliable and often incoherent: if subjective experience and physical processes were truly separable, we could not even justify certainty about our own consciousness. Drawing on the history of science, he notes that concepts change in response to empirical findings, and therefore it is not legitimate to set the limits of neuroscientific explanation a priori on the basis of current conceptual categories. He thus proposes a gradual, empirically guided approach, explaining specific aspects of experience — as in the case of affective pain, whose phenomenal component proves to be functional, neurobiologically localizable, and clinically testable. From this follows the conclusion that the problem of consciousness should not be treated as an impenetrable metaphysical mystery, but as a complex scientific task that requires progressive integration between theory and data and can advance step by step.
Productively challenging this perspective was Riccardo Manzotti’s Mind-Object Identity theory, according to which experience is not found inside the head but in the world, in the physical relation between organism and object. In this view, “correlates” are not internal traces to be mapped but external conditions to be lived. The debate highlighted the contrast between a neuro-centric model and an ontological-relational one: consciousness as an endogenous neural process versus consciousness as identity with what is perceived. Much of the discussion unfolded around this conceptual tension. For more details, see the ICCS website.
Over the past two years, ICCS has come a long way, indeed; for it has expanded the debate on consciousness research, hosted conferences in which renowned scholars from around the world took part, and promoted talent by awarding the prestigious Dennett Prize. It can be safely said that Dmitry Volkov’s dream of turning the ICCS into a pivotal force in advancing the discourse on consciousness is bound to get fulfilled, sooner than later.