The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of Mind Series) (Paperback)

~ David J. Chalmers (Author) "Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious..." (more)
Key Phrases: protophenomenal properties, judgments about consciousness, primary intension, David Chalmers, Rolf Harris, Inverted Earth (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Chalmers (philosophy, Univ. of California at Santa Cruz) analyzes the mind-body problem in terms of that elusive relationship between the physical brain and conscious events. Focusing on subjective experience as such, he rejects all reductive (materialist) explanations for conscious experience in favor of a metaphysical framework supporting a strong form of property dualism. His theory is grounded in natural supervenience, the distinction between psychological and phenomenological properties of mind, and a novel view of the ontological status of consciousness itself. Chalmers uses thought experiments (e.g., zombie worlds, silicon chips, a global brain, and inverted spectra) and discusses such issues as causation, intentionality, and epiphenomenalism. Even so, the critical reader is left asking, How can physical facts be relevant to the emergence of consciousness beyond an evolutionary naturalist worldview. Ongoing neuroscience research may provide a sufficient explanation of consciousness within a materialistic framework. Nevertheless, as a scholarly contribution to modern philosophy, this is suitable for all academic and large public libraries.?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Certainly one of the best discussions of consciousness in existence, both as an advanced text and as an introduction to the issues....Chalmers has done about as good a job as could be done on this most intractable of problems." --Colin McGinn, The Times Higher Education Supplement

"Chalmers has done the field of consciousness studies a great service by taking its subject matter so seriously, Doing so has resulted in a work that reads like the swan song of reductionism, yet simultaneously offers a glimpse of its replacement."--J. Scott Jordan, Contemporary Psychology

"Chalmers has written an exciting and fascinating book. I hope that because of it, consciousness in all its paradoxical glory will once more hold center stage in a robust philosophy of mind."--Eric Dietrich, Minds and Machines

"Chalmers shakes up the reductionist world of neurological research by asserting that scientists need to approach the conscious experience as a basic, nonphysical component of the world, similar to time, space, and matter."--Science News

"David Chalmers is widely credited for posing the so-called hard problem of consciousness:...What is the nature of subjective experience? Why do we have vividly felt experiences of the world? Why is there someone home inside our heads?"--The New York Times

"His rich argumentation, considered self-objections, and useful thought-experiments contribute to a fruitful analysis of much of contemporary philosophy of mind/cognitive science. The writing is accessible to the informed general reader while providing sufficient formalization for specialists.... Useful, detailed notes and bibliography contribute to a highly recommended text."--Choice

"Taking as his starting point some very intuitive notions about consciousness, David Chalmers arrives at strange and startling conclusions about what this central knot of human existence really is. This is a grand exploration of the topic, brilliantly argued by someone who knows the territory inside out. Though I personally can't go everywhere Chalmers wants to take me, he's certainly one of the best possible guides."--Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University

"The Conscious Mind is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of consciousness. Chalmers pursues an idea that most other writers on consciousness have ignored, either because they haven't thought clearly enough to notice it or because they were terrified of acknowledging it. Writing The Conscious Mind was an act of courage, and Chalmers was no doubt emboldened by a well-founded confidence that he could state his argument with impeccable clarity and rigor."--Steven Pinker, MIT, author of The Language Instinct

"This book should be widely read by those trying to fathom the physical basis of consciousness."--Christof Koch, Nature

(This quote must be used in FULL! No exceptions. THIS QUOTE MUST BE USED FIRST IN ALL PROMOTIONS!!!) "The Conscious Mind is exceptionally ambitious and exceptionally successful--the best book in philosophy of mind for many years. It flies in the face of fashion, making a formidable case against materialistic orthodoxy. Legions of materialists are no doubt busy writing their rejoinders; but there will be few points left for them to make that Chalmers hasn't made already. We of the materialist opposition cannot go on about how he has overlooked this and misunderstood that--because he hasn't. All we can do is to disagree about which way the balance of considerations tilts."--David Lewis, Princeton University


"Certainly one of the best discussions of consciousness in existence."--The Times Higher Education Supplement
"A startling first book....Offers an outstandingly competent survey of the field."--The Economist
"Chalmers shakes up the reductionist world of neurological research by asserting that scientists need to approach the conscious experience as a basic, nonphysical component of the world, similar to time, space, and matter."--Science News
"David Chalmers is widely credited for posing the so-called hard problem of consciousness:...What is the nature of subjective experience? Why do we have vividly felt experiences of the world? Why is there someone home inside our heads?"--The New York Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (November 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195117891
• ISBN-13: 978-0195117899
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #67,416 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An honest look at the "hard problem" of consciousness, November 30, 1998

By	Willam Penn (Westbury, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of Mind Series) (Hardcover)

The basic problem with any materialist theory of consciousness is that there is no room for consciousness to *do* anything -- it is caused by certain material processes but does not itself cause anything. The firing of a neuron can always be explained in terms of the firing of other neurons, the impingement of a photon on a photoreceptor, or some other objectively observable cause. At no point is it necessary to say that "this neuron fired because the brain it was part of had such-and-such a subjective experience". Thus consciousness is not logically necessary in our objective description of the material world, so we can at least conceive of a world where David Chalmers' zombie twin writes papers and books about the mind-body problem without ever having any subjective experience itself. This seems absurd but the absurdity is inherent in all the various flavors of functionalism or property dualism. And "new physics" won't change the picture at all -- string theory, quantum gravity, quantum multiverses, and any as yet unconcieved of physical theory are all simply more of the same kind of "ontological stuff" that we already have -- objective procedures for predicting the behavior of objectively measurable things.

Some functionalists attempt to make the problem go away simply by declaring conscious states a matter of definition -- "pain" is some set of states of an information processing system, "pleasure" is some other, etc. Thus whether a robot that makes a convincing whine when you hit it actually experiences pain is a matter of definition. Few would deny that there is indeed a correlation between neural states and subjective experience, but anyone who has actually experienced pain knows that it is more than a matter of definition -- your pain won't go away just because everybody else on the planet has redefined your neural state as pleasure.

Finally, substance dualism, for good reasons not considered seriously by most philosophers, doesn't solve any of the problems but merely hides them behind a black screen.

Chalmers recognizes the absurdities inherent in all theories of consciousness. He refuses to sweep the problems under a rug; he argues for a form of property dualism while being honest enough to point out that it leads to the bizarre conclusion that we puzzle about the nature of consciousness for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that we actually *are* conscious. Like me you probably won't be willing to go as far as Chalmers wants to take you, but his book makes it plain that all the apparent avenues of escape lead to pitfalls at least as bad as the ones on the road he takes. If Chalmers is right, and consciousness must be added as an "extra feature" in our description of reality, it is devilishly hard to see how we will ever have a good theory of it. How will we be able to convincingly determine whether that poor robot really hurts?

The book is very clearly written; you don't need a formal education in philosophy to follow his arguments. Overall this is one of the best books on the mind-body problem I've read.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Team Consciousness, March 26, 2007

By	Owen Flanagan "owen flanagan" (durham nc) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A bunch of us (PS Churchland, PM Churchland, Dan Dennett, Frank Jackson, Colin McGinn, Joe Levine ,Tom Nagel, John Searle, Jaegwon Kim, and many others) have been writing about how to understand how talk of *mind* and talk of *brains* connect and if, and in what sense, mind *is* brain. Dave Chalmers breaks out of the crowd & makes us rethink everything. I am on record as not thinking the *hard problem* is as hard as Dave does; but read Chalmers for the argument that I (& most others underestimate) the difficulty. I think also that the move from conceivability (of zombies) to possibility is a problem. The fact remains that this is the most important work in consciousness studies in recent years.

One small thing: one reviewer of my *Consciousness Reconsidered* complains that I don't respond to Chalmers. This is true. My defense: my book appeared 4 or 5 years before Dave's. It would have been hard to respond to him.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous introduction to analytic philosophy, June 23, 2006

By	Randall McCutcheon (Bexley, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a mathematician trying to get in step with mainstream analytic philosophy, I've found this book more useful than any other. Many of the issues Chalmers has helped me to get clear about have little to do with philosophy of mind. For example, his quick rendition of 2-dimensional semantics, while paying its due respects to Kripke, Putnam et al., quietly makes the dogmatic style of, say, Naming and Necessity or The Meaning of Meaning look pretty silly, things that many of us felt but couldn't clearly express. (I don't actually subscribe to any of this 2-d stuff, but that's beside the point. That Chalmers can so effortlessly demythologize a basically empty doctrine by characterizing it from within a far more cogent system is just wonderful.) Not all of that is his, but some of it is, and his modal judgment is absolutely outstanding...actually, I would prefer to see a book about just this from Chalmers, as therein lies his principal expository strength (more so than mind). His references, meanwhile, manage to be copious without the usual pretension.

Something else to consider--Chalmers was like 28 when he wrote this book, and it's probably fair to say he was something of a prodigy (bit of trivia--he was also a medalist at the International Mathematical Olympiad). At any rate, what's here is brilliant, if a bit on the sterile side. In short, the technique is way ahead of the art. Focus on the technique and reap the rewards.