David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a philosopher in the area of philosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. For the philosopher, see David Chalmers. ... Western philosophy is a modern claim that there is a line of related philosophical thinking, beginning in ancient Greece (Greek philosophy) and the ancient Near East (the Abrahamic religions), that continues to this day. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Image File history File links Sea8. ... is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... Analytic philosophy (sometimes, analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century. ... A phrenological mapping of the brain. ... This article is about the philosophical movement. ... Unsolved problems in cognitive science: How is it possible to resolve the Hard Problem? The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers[1][2], refers to the hard problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. ... Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic. ... Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. ... is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... A phrenological mapping of the brain. ... The Australian National University, or ANU, is a public university located in Canberra, Australia. ...

Background

Before he moved to the Australian National University in 2004, Chalmers was Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona and prior to Arizona he taught at UC Santa Cruz. He was educated at the University of Adelaide and then briefly at Lincoln College in the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before studying for his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program (directed by Andy Clark) at Washington University in St. Louis (1993-1995). The Australian National University, or ANU, is a public university located in Canberra, Australia. ... The University of Arizona (UA or U of A) is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. ... The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC or UC Santa Cruz) is a coeducational public university located in Santa Cruz, California. ... The University of Adelaide (colloquially Adelaide University or Adelaide Uni) is a public university located in Adelaide. ... and of the Lincoln College College name Lincoln College Named after Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln Established 1427 Sister college Downing College, Cambridge Rector Prof. ... The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University), located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Rhodes House in Oxford Rhodes Scholarships were created by Cecil John Rhodes. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... Indiana University is the principal campus of the Indiana University system. ... Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic. ... Andy Clark was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. ... Washington University redirects here. ...

He is the author of the book The Conscious Mind (1996), which discusses consciousness, arguing that reductive explanations describing consciousness in terms of physical processes do not hold. The book was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year". Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... Reduction is the process by which one object, property, concept, theory, etc. ... The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper distributed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International which is in turn owned by News Corporation. ...

Work

He is best known for his support for the notion of the hard problem of consciousness in both his book and in the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (originally published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995). He makes the distinction between easy problems of consciousness (which are, amongst others, things like finding neural correlates of sensation) and the hard problem, which could be stated "why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?" A main focus of his study is the distinction between brain biology and behavior as distinct from mental experience taken as independent of behavior (known as qualia). He argues that there is an explanatory gap between these two systems, and criticizes physical explanations of mental experience, making him a dualist in an era that some have seen as being dominated by monist views. Unsolved problems in cognitive science: How is it possible to resolve the Hard Problem? The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers[1][2], refers to the hard problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. ... The Journal of Consciousness Studies (JCS) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated entirely to the field of consciousness studies. ... Redness is the canonical quale. ... The term physicalism was coined by Otto Neurath, in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical... The term dualism is the state of being dual, or having a twofold division. ... For other uses, see Monist (disambiguation). ...

In his argument (as it appears in his book The Conscious Mind) he creates a hypothetical philosophical zombie, which is the same as a normal person, except lacking qualia or sentience. He argues that since this zombie is logically possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone. In philosophy, a philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical person that, despite a strong likeness to normal human beings, lacks conscious experience or (in other words) has no qualia at all. ... Redness is the canonical quale. ... Not to be confused with sapience. ...

Instead, Chalmers argues that consciousness arises from any information-bearing system (in the sense of information theory), leading him to adopt a form of panpsychism, believing that even thermostats are somewhat conscious. Chalmers has elsewhere said ("Consciousness and the Philosophers: an Exchange") that he is agnostic on the issue of panpsychism, but that it is not nearly as indefensible an idea as some think. Not to be confused with information technology, information science, or informatics. ... Panpsychism, in philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind, or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind. ...

After the publication of this paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. These papers (by Daniel Dennett, Colin McGinn, Francisco Varela, Francis Crick, and Roger Penrose among others) were collected and published in the book Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem. John Searle fiercely critiqued Chalmers's views in The New York Review of Books.^[1] Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. ... Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. ... Francisco Varela (Santiago, September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001, Paris) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology. ... Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004), (Ph. ... Sir Roger Penrose, OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. ... John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ... This article is about the literary magazine. ...

Chalmers, with Andy Clark, has written The Extended Mind, a popular article about the borders of the mind [1]. Andy Clark was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. ... A morphogenetic field, according to biologist Rupert Sheldrake, is a biological (and potentially social) equivalent to an electromagnetic field that operates to shape the exact form of a living thing, as part of its epigenetics, and may also shape its behaviour and coordination with other beings. ...

Miscellaneous

On his web site, David Chalmers has compiled what could be the largest bibliography on the philosophy of mind and related fields with close to 18000 annotated entries topically organized. A phrenological mapping of the brain. ...

Chalmers appears in The Matrix video documentary "The Roots of the Matrix" and presents a novel take on a large part of the traditionally skeptical "brain in a vat" hypothesis. He maintains that this hypothesis is not, contrary to common philosophical opinion, a skeptical hypothesis. This article is about the 1999 film. ... In philosophy, the brain-in-a-vat is any of a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. ... Philosophical scepticism (UK spelling, scepticism) is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. ...

He serves on the editorial board of the journals Philo, Consciousness and Cognition, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Psyche. Philo is a professional philosophy journal that is the official publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers. ... Consciousness and Cognition (ISSN: 1053-8100) provides a forum for a natural-science approach to the issues of consciousness, voluntary control, and self. ... The Journal of Consciousness Studies (JCS) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated entirely to the field of consciousness studies. ... Psyche (ISSN: 1039-723X) is a refereed electronic journal dedicated to supporting the interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of consciousness and its relation to the brain. ...

Notes

is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ...

Bibliography

A partial list of publications by Chalmers:

• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996). Oxford University Press. hardcover: ISBN 0-19-511789-1, paperback: ISBN 0-19-510553-2
• Toward a Science of Consciousness III: The Third Tucson Discussions and Debates (1999). Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak and David J. Chalmers (Editors). The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58181-7
• Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2002). (Editor). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514581-X or ISBN 0-19-514580-1

External links

• David Chalmers's web site
• David Chalmers's bibliography
• Fragments of Consciousness - Chalmers's blog.
• Interview with Chalmers - in Philosophy Now.
• Radio Interview on Philosophy Talk
• Video Interview on BloggingHeads.tv by science writer John Horgan.