Thinker · TH-0116
David Chalmers
David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist who works at New York University. In the mid-1990s he named the 'hard problem' of…
Also known as David John Chalmers
b. 1966 · Sydney; Adelaide; Indiana; Arizona; Canberra; New York
Traditions: Analytic
David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist who works at New York University. In the mid-1990s he named the 'hard problem' of consciousness, why physical processing is accompanied by subjective experience at all, and distinguished it from the 'easy' problems of explaining cognitive functions. He has applied the question to artificial systems and has written on the extended mind, two-dimensional semantics and virtual reality.
Key ideas
- Explaining cognitive functions leaves open why they are accompanied by experience.
- The conceivability of zombies is used to argue that consciousness is not logically supervenient on the physical.
- The mind can extend beyond the skull into tools and environment (with Andy Clark).
- Whether artificial systems could be conscious is a serious open question.
Major works
- "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (1995)
- The Conscious Mind (1996)
- Constructing the World (2012)
- Reality+ (2022)
In the conversation
- Debate We will never have a test for machine consciousness, and we should say so plainly
- Debate The statue-and-clay puzzle is a verbal dispute, and metaphysicians should admit it
- Question Does general anaesthesia switch experience off, or only the memory of it?
- Debate Nishida’s pure experience dissolves the hard problem rather than solving it
- Debate Illusionism is the only view of consciousness that takes neuroscience seriously
- Reading group Reading group: Nagel’s bat, Chalmers’s hard problem and Dennett’s case against qualia