Name: Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.
Price range: $

Accelerating Research on Consciousness

Our Structured Adversarial Collaboration Projects

The Accelerating Research on Consciousness Initiative is a $30,000,000 commitment that aims to advance the scientific study of consciousness. The cornerstone of this initiative involves supporting up to five large projects using Structured Adversarial Collaboration, which is our signature approach to grantmaking.

The list below shows the Structured Adversarial Collaboration projects that we have supported.

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Project 1

Name of the host institution

 Allen Institute for
 Brain Science

Month & year it was hosted: March 2018
Names of host and participants: Christof Koch (host), Cyriel M. A. Pennartz, David Chalmers, Dawid Potgieter, Francis Fallon, Giulio Tononi, Hakwan Lau, Hal Blumenfeld, Heather Berlin, Liad Mudrik, Lucia Melloni, Michael Pitts, Stanislas Dehaene, William Jaworski
Names of theories discussed: Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Higher-Order Theory
The outcome of the workshop: A successful proposal was funded in May 2019 (see project details here). The resulting study is an adversarial collaboration between Integrated Information Theory and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory

Project 2

Name of the host institution

Allen Institute for
 Brain Science

Month & year it was hosted: October 2019
Names of host and participants: Anne Churchland, Christof Koch (Host), Dawid Potgieter, Fanis Panagiotaropoulos, Giulio Tononi, Lionel Naccache, Lucia Melloni, Maria Geffen, Mark Schnitzer, Masanori Murayama, Massimo Scanziani, Michael Pitts, Pieter Roelfsema, Shawn Olsen, Yuri Saalmann, Yuval Nir, Zachary Mainen
Names of theories discussed: Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (in animal models)
The outcome of the workshop: A successful proposal was funded in December 2021 (see project details here). The resulting study is an adversarial collaboration between Integrated Information Theory and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory in Animal Models.

Project 3

Name of the host institution

New York
University

Month & year it was hosted: October 2019
Names of host and participants: Adriana Renero, Biyu Jade He, Claudia Passos Ferreira, Dave Chalmers (Host), David Rosenthal, Dawid Potgieter, Hakwan Lau, Jan Brascamp, Joseph LeDoux, Johannes Fahrenfort, Jorge Morales, Kristin Eldon Whylly, Lucia Melloni, Luke Roelofs, Matthias Michel, Megan Peters, Michael McCullough, Ned Block (Host), Rachel Denison, Richard Brown, Victor Lamme
Names of theories discussed: First-Order Theories vs Higher-Order Theories, including Recurrent Processing VS Higher-Order Thought
The outcome of the workshop: A successful proposal was funded in November 2020 (see project details here). The resulting study is an adversarial collaboration between First-Order Theories and Higher-Order Theories.

Project 4

Name of the host institution

University of
Arizona

Month & year it was hosted: January 2020
Names of host and participants: Aarat Kalra, Alexander Bystritsky, Alvin J. Clark, Alysson Muotri, Andrew Serazin, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Anita Goel, Bruce MacIver, Christof Koch, Dawid Potgieter, Giulio Tononi, Hartmut Neven, Horacio Cantiello, Jack Tuszynski, James Tagg, Jay Sanguinetti, Masashi Aono, Nicco Reggente, Paavo Pylkkänen, Sir Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff (Host), Thomas G. Bever, Travis Craddock
Names of theories discussed: Orchestrated objective reduction vs Integrated Information Theory
The outcome of the workshop: The group did not identify an experiment suitable for structured adversarial collaboration

Project 5

Name of the host institution

University of
Amsterdam

Month & year it was hosted: May 2020
Names of host and participants: Andy Clark, Anil Seth, Cyriel M. A. Pennartz (Host), Dawid Potgieter, Giulio Tononi, Jakob Hohwy, Karl Friston, Lars Muckli, Lucia Melloni, Nao Tsuchiya, Pieter Roelfsema, Umberto Olcese, Wolf Singer
Names of theories discussed: Integrated Information Theory vs Predictive Processing (Active Inference and Neurorepresentationalist Account)
The outcome of the workshop: A successful proposal was funded in March 2021 (see project details here). The resulting study is an adversarial collaboration between Integrated Information Theory and Predictive Processing.

Project 6

Name of the host institution

University College
London

Month & year it was hosted: May 2021 / August 2021
Names of host and participants: Axel Cleeremans & Steve Fleming (hosts), David Rosenthal, Dawid Potgieter, Hakwan Lau, Joe LeDoux, Joëlle Proust, Jorge Morales, Kristian Sandberg, Lucie Charles, Matthias Michel, Megan Peters, Nadine Dijkstra, Rachel Denison, Richard Brown, Virginia Cooper, Zoltan Dienes
Names of theories discussed: Higher-Order Thought Theory (HOT), Higher-Order State Space Theory (HOSS), Perceptual Reality Monitoring Theory (PRM), Self-Organizing Metarepresentational Account (SOMA)
The outcome of the workshop: A successful proposal was funded in December 2023 (see project details here). The resulting study is an adversarial collaboration between various Higher-Order Theories.