John Thornton's Home Page

Author. Computer Scientist. Phenomenologist.

Upcoming Talks

Totnes Association for the Exploration of Consciousness
and Totnes Consciousness Café present

Taking it Further:
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness


Saturday 19th October / Saturday 26th October / Saturday 2nd November
St Mary’s Church Hall Totnes (Behind 9 High Street)

 
This six session course expands material I presented at the recent Consciousness Café talk: What on Earth does Artificial Intelligence have to do with Consciousness? For those who did not attend, you can watch the talk here: TALK VIDEO and the question and answer session here: Q&A VIDEO.
 
The course runs over three consecutive Saturdays as detailed below. Each session has a provisional theme but there will be space to go in other directions according to how things evolve on the day.
 
Saturday October 19th
Session One: 2:00pm – 3:15pm Science and the Left Brain
Session Two: 3:45pm – 5:00pm AI and the Technological System
 
Saturday October 26th
Session Three: 11:00am – 12:30pm Living Systems and Levels of Being
Session Four: 1:30pm – 3:00pm Consciousness and the Right Brain
 
Saturday November 2nd
Session Five: 2:00pm – 3:15pm What is Intelligence?
Session Six: 3:45 – 5:00pm Summary and Synthesis
 
Booking and Donations
The suggested donation is £5 per session, £10 per day or £30 in total.
You can pay by cash in person on the day or by PayPal below.
Please email us in advance detailing the sessions you would like to attend:
 
taec.inquiry@gmail.com
 
 

About Me

Welcome to John Thornton’s Home page. My professional teaching and research career began in 1994 when I enrolled in an Honours  degree at Griffith University in Australia.   After completing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, I continued at Griffith as full-time academic until returning to the UK in 2015. I continue to work as a PhD supervisor and hold an Adjunct Associate Professor position at Griffith University’s Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems.

Since 2015, I briefly taught Adaptive Systems at the University of Sussex, going on to co-found the Philosophy Group at the Free University Brighton, where I developed and taught courses on the phenomenology of consciousness from 2016 to 2022. I now live in Totnes, where I am a member the organising committee of the Totnes Consciousness Café and co-founder of the Totnes Association for the Exploration of Consciousness.

Up to now (2024), I have published three books, two research theses, and more than 70 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. In addition, I have supervised ten PhD students to completion and have been a chief or principal researcher in eight government-funded research projects.

About This Site

The site contains a digital selection of my life’s work to date. Under Research you can find nearly all my published and unpublished writings, (most of which can be downloaded for free). This material can be divided into two main subject areas: artificial intelligence research and phenomenological philosophical inquiry. Expanding on this, the Books page hones in on two of my most significant publications (The Questioning of Intelligence and The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age).

The Teaching page then provides links to material developed for three philosophy courses I taught at the Free University Brighton (Introduction to Phenomenology, Science, Consciousness and the Brain, and Language and Meaning), and to lecture and tutorial material I developed to support The Foundations of Computing textbook at Griffith University.  I have also recorded several of the Free University philosophy classes, and provide links to these both on the Teaching page and on the Talks page.

If you are new to my work, and want to get a general idea of what I have to say, I suggest you read the beginning of my recent book, The Questioning of Intelligence (see link below), and then listen to one of the introductory lectures on the Talks page. Finally, if you are interested, I provide a more personal biography in the About Me page.

Recent Book: The Questioning of Intelligence

In 2021, I completed my latest book – one I had been meaning to write for more than a decade. It contains a philosophical distillation of my experience of going to university in the late 1970s, dropping out,  joining the commune of an Indian guru, dropping out of that, returning to university, and becoming a full-time academic in the area of artificial intelligence. After that I spent nearly two decades studying phenomenological philosophy.

Despite these autobiographical details, the book is primarily a phenomenological exploration of what it means to be intelligent. As such it is an inquiry by intelligence, of intelligence, and is the culmination of my having studied intelligence, both artificial and natural, for nearly twenty-five years.

Books Questioning of Intelligence, Phenomenology and Philosphy

New Publishing Imprint: FUBText

The publishing of The Questioning of Intelligence is part of the development of a publishing imprint for the Free University Brighton, called FUBText. The Intelligence book is the first volume in the Free University Brighton Philosophy Series. Our plan is to create an alternative low-cost publishing outlet for the free university movement that remains under the collective control of those who create of the material that is published.