David Chalmers
David Chalmers
David John Chalmersis an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Professor of Philosophy at New York University in the NYU Department of Philosophy. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth20 April 1966
CountryUnited States of America
I never expected this to catch on in the way it did! Of course similar observations have been made by any number of people, and the distinction is obvious to anyone who thinks about the subject a little.
Here, the broader issues are already familiar, and discussion has focused at a more sophisticated and detailed level. Within the philosophy of mind, the problem of consciousness is no big news.
Those are what I call the easy problems, not because they're trivial, but because they fall within the standard methods of the cognitive sciences.
You have a different kind of experience -- a different quality of experience -- when you see red, when you see green, when you hear middle C, when you taste chocolate. Whenever you're conscious, whenever you have a subjective experience, it feels like something.
To do two CDs worth of a very well known composer is a little different, but what isn't different is that one of the things we established when we started recording was that we were going to record things that were not as well known and that I think we've been fairly consistent about, even with famous composers.
Those things in a way didn't need to evolve. They were part of the fundamental furniture of the world all along.
They are dedicating a large part of their lives to this choir. Any gift from God is meant to be shared.
Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness, ... The question is what kind of explanation that will give you. We want more than correlation, we want explanation -- how and why do brain process give rise to consciousness? That's the big mystery.
Any sacred text comes alive in a unique way when it is sung, and composers from Gregorian chant to the present day have known that.
Sacred texts are universal and their truths are eternal. There is not a thing that we sing that doesn't have our personal conviction.
Because the idea of zombies seems to make sense, and seems to, in a certain sense, be possible, I think one can use that to argue against the thesis that everything is purely physical. Now many people, I think, agree that the idea of zombies are conceivable, including people who want to be physicalists.
I think the existence of zombies would contradict certain laws of nature in our world. It seems to be a law of nature, in our world, that when you get a brain of a certain character you get consciousness going along with it.
I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years.
Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia.