The Science of Consciousness conference, which ran in Tucson under University of Arizona hosting for nearly three decades, will reconstitute itself as Consciousness Science 2026 (CS26) at the Paradise Point Resort in San Diego from October 11 to 16. The event's official site lists 600 to 700 expected participants, with Roger Penrose, Susan Schneider, and a broad interdisciplinary programme spanning neuroscience, philosophy, quantum biology, bioelectricity, and machine consciousness among the confirmed content tracks. The conference is being run without a host university, a structural departure whose consequences for the field's credibility and continuity are still being weighed.
The original event never took place. "We regret to inform you that the 2026 The Science of Consciousness conference, scheduled for April 6 to 11, at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson, has been cancelled," an announcement from the university read. Conference director Stuart Hameroff confirmed the decision on social media: "The University of Arizona and conference organizers have determined this was necessary due to several speakers and organizers including myself being mentioned in the Epstein files." Hameroff disclosed that in 2017 he had obtained one-time funding for a TSC conference in San Diego from Jeffrey Epstein. Email records from the Epstein document release show that in March 2017, Hameroff was in contact with Epstein about the Science of Consciousness Conference, and that Epstein pledged "at least 50k before knowing any[t]hing."
CS26 retains the interdisciplinary scope of the original TSC, covering consciousness from every angle including quantum biology, plant cognition, and neurophenomenology alongside the mainstream neuroscience and philosophy tracks, but operates under independent governance without university hosting; the implications of that structural change are not yet fully visible. TSC's institutional home at Arizona provided infrastructure and academic legitimacy at the cost of being tethered to the institutional relationships that ultimately caused its cancellation. Independent governance offers more operational flexibility and less exposure to that kind of reputational contagion; it also removes a layer of peer accountability. A separate machine consciousness conference at Lighthaven, Berkeley, held May 29 to 31, had already proceeded as planned and became the primary 2026 event for that subfield, meaning CS26 enters a landscape where specialist gatherings have multiplied even as the flagship event was absent.
Sir Roger Penrose (University of Oxford) brings to the programme the quantum consciousness framework he developed with Stuart Hameroff: Orchestrated Objective Reduction, or Orch-OR, which holds that quantum computations in neuronal microtubules are the physical basis of conscious experience. If Penrose's framework requires specific quantum mechanical processes in biological microtubules, it carries the direct implication that silicon-based AI systems cannot be conscious regardless of their functional complexity; that position is contested but serious, and CS26 is one of the few venues where it is developed by its original proponent in dialogue with the broader field. Susan Schneider of Florida Atlantic University, also confirmed for the programme, has been a persistent critic of strong AI consciousness claims, distinguishing consciousness as a property that biological evolution produces from consciousness as a property that functional organization alone suffices for. Skeptics note that without university oversight, there is no formal mechanism to prevent the kind of peripheral associations that damaged TSC, and that the field's credibility depends not only on the quality of its science but on the governance structures that stand behind it.
A field that spent thirty years building its flagship conference now has to rebuild trust in the institution itself, not just the ideas it hosts.