Bernard Baars

Life and work

Baars was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and moved to California with his family in 1958, aged around 12.

Before moving into consciousness studies he trained as a language psychologist. He served as a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University, where he conducted research into the causation of human errors and the Freudian slip, and as a faculty member at the Wright Institute. He was a senior fellow in theoretical neurobiology at the former Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California. Baars co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Academic Press journal Consciousness and Cognition, which he also edited, with William P. Banks, for "more than fifteen years".

In addition to research on global workspace theory with Stan Franklin and others, Baars has done work to reintroduce the topic of the conscious brain into the standard college and graduate school curriculum, by writing college textbooks and general-audience books, web teaching, advanced seminars, and course videos.