On December 18, 2019, the Einstein Chronoi Center hosted the full-day international workshop “Neurophenomenological approaches to the relationship between objective and subjective time.” Key questions included whether there is a structure-preserving relationship between objective and subjective time, and to what extent neurophenomenological approaches exploring mutual influences and constraints between third-person neural data and first-person subjective descriptive data can contribute to an investigation of that relationship.
The organizer, Musicologist Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim opened the event by posing those questions and introducing the neurophenomenological research program initiated by Francisco Varela. She emphasized that the concept of subjective time and aspects of structural analogies between objective and subjective time deserve thorough discussion. Philosophers Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Detel (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Einstein Center Chronoi, Germany) and Prof. Dr. Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis, USA), Neuroscientist Mr. Christopher Timmermann (Imperial College London, UK), and Philosopher and Physicist Prof. Dr. Dr. Norman Sieroka (Universität Bremen, Germany) actively engaged the audience with compelling hour-long talks. The workshop closed with a fruitful round table discussion led by Prof. Dr. Kim, Psychologist PD Dr. Marc Wittmann (Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene Freiburg, Germany), and Physicist and Musician Dr. Jakub Sawicki (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany). More than forty people from a wide range of disciplines (from humanities to social and natural sciences) and expertise (from students to world-renown experts) participated in the workshop.