David Chalmers
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| Western Philosophy Contemporary philosophy |
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| Full name | David John Chalmers |
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| School/tradition | Analytic |
| Main interests | Philosophy of mind Phenomenology |
| Notable ideas | Hard problem of consciousness; property dualism |
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David John Chalmers (born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University.
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[edit] Background
Chalmers was born and raised in Australia, and since 2004 has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. From an early age, he excelled at mathematics, eventually completing his undergraduate education at the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. He then briefly studied at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before studying for his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993-1995. After a short stint teaching at UC Santa Cruz, Chalmers was appointed Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, sponsor of the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference where Chalmers made his legendary "debut" in 1994.
Chalmers' book, The Conscious Mind (1996), is widely considered (by both advocates and detractors) to be a landmark work on consciousness and its relation to the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind. In the book, Chalmers forcefully and cogently argues that all forms of physicalism (whether reductive or non-reductive) that have dominated philosophy and the sciences in modern times fail to account for the most essential aspects of consciousness. He proposes an alternative dualistic view that has come to be called property dualism but which Chalmers deemed "naturalistic dualism." The book was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year".
[edit] Work
Chalmers is best known for his formulation of the notion of a 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 the feeling which accompanies 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.
Chalmers main argument against physicalism, and his primary contribution to the ancient debate on the mind-body problem, is based on a thought-experiment in which there are hypothetical philosophical zombies. These zombies are not like the zombies of film and television series, but are exactly the same as ordinary human beings, except that they lack qualia or sentience. He argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are logically possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone.
Instead, Chalmers argues that consciousness is a set of emergent, higher-level properties that arise from, but are ontologically autonomous of, the physical properties of the brains of organisms. This is the essence of his famous thesis of property dualism. He later goes on to speculate that any information-bearing system (in the sense of information theory) may be conscious, leading him to entertain the possibility of panpsychism. In such a view, even thermostats are somewhat conscious. Chalmers has elsewhere said that he is agnostic on the issue of panpsychism, but that it is not nearly as indefensible an idea as some think.
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]
Chalmers, with Andy Clark, has written The Extended Mind, a popular article about the borders of the mind [1].
[edit] 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.
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.
He serves on the editorial board of the journals Philo, Consciousness and Cognition, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Psyche.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Searle's review of The Conscious Mind 6 March 1997 (subscription required)
Chalmers' response to Searle and Searle's reply 15 May 1997 (free access)
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
- David Chalmers's web site
- David Chalmers's bibliography
- Fragments of Consciousness - Chalmers's blog.
- Interview with Chalmers - in Philosophy Now.
- Consciousness, an episode of Philosophy Talk, hosts Chalmers
- Video Interview on BloggingHeads.tv by science writer John Horgan.
- The Mystery of Consciousness on Bright SBM Production.
