David Chalmers
For the oil company owner involved in the Oil for food scandal, see David B. ChalmersDavid John Chalmers (
April 20,
1966 -) is a leading
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.
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 (
Andy Clark, Director) at
Washington University in St. Louis (1993-1995).
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".
He is best known for his articulation 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 mental experience (known as
qualia). He argues that there is an explanatory gap between these two systems, and criticizes
physical explanations of mental experience, making him one of the few remaining
dualists left in the philosophy world.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, but is missing
qualia or
sentience. After the publication of this paper, about 25 papers were published in the
Journal of Consciousness Studies in response to the hard problem. These papers (by
Daniel Dennett,
Colin McGinn,
Francisco Varela,
Francis Crick, and
Roger Penrose amongst others) were collected and published in the book
Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem.
Chalmers along with
Andy Clark wrote a popular article about the borders of the mind called the
Extended Mind.
He is also one of the best known philosophers today advocating a viewpoint that is sympathetic with
panpsychism (although he does not actively defend it).
David Chalmers has compiled what could be the largest bibliography on the
philosophy of mind and related fields with close to 8000 annotated entries topically organized.
Chalmers has given talks on
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
Consciousness and Cognition, the
Journal of Consciousness Studies, and
Psyche.
*
David Chalmers homepage*
David Chalmers bibliography*
Chalmers' blog*
Interview with Chalmers in
Philosophy Now
