“The Formulation of Consciousness”.

In 2002 a mini-conference was held to explore “The Formulation of Consciousness”.

“Consciousness” is an elusive word: it describes our interactive experience of reality. Our ability to formulate our experience is consequential to this.
Our ability to formulate abstractions too is but an aspect of this.
Our ability to formulate “Consciousness” is yet again an aspect of this.

Conferences can be wonderful sites for the exchange ideas between researchers.
They can also be very inefficient: many people speaking, as many people listening, but often there is not much opportunity to expand on the ideas that are presented, nor to elaborate on their implications. Often presenters contribute related ideas, without coming to the implied extended conclusions, if their thoughts could be combined.

The Mini-Conference is set up for precisely that purpose: to bring together people who are exploring the same topic. (In this case: Consciousness.) Because the synergy of the combined ideas makes it possible to transcend the limitations of each separate model, by combining into them the potentials of the others.

Consciousness itself is a transcendental capacity, integrating an internal subjective realisation with an objective external experience.
This requires a form of description that is able to combine these two aspects.
Some forms of Mathematical Physics reflect this: on the one hand they relate to physical phenomena, on the other hand they represent mental noumena (thought structures).

The method of the conference and the topic are attuned to each other.

During this mini-conference a group of researchers was invited, most of which had already been presenting their work on the formulation of consciousness, in separate sessions of the same conference. In gathering them together, it became possible for them to exchange ideas; and to combine their insights in their own formulations.

The disciplines in the gathering were

• Ontology,
• Category Theory,
• Sheaf Theory,
• Quantum Consciousness Theory,
• Discrimination Descriptions,

The gathering was organised from the perspective of MetaThematics.
Each of these domains will be explained in the sequel.