David Chalmers
Australian-American philosopher known for the 'hard problem' of consciousness.
Most quoted
"No matter how much information we have about the brain's physical processes, there will always be a further question: Why is all this processing accompanied by an inner feel?"
— from The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, 1996
"Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous property of the universe, is a serious contender in the search for a theory of consciousness."
— from Panpsychism and the Hard Problem, 2013
"The easy problems of consciousness are those that can be explained by computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problem is the problem of experience itself."
— from Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, 1995
All quotes by David Chalmers (100)
The idea of 'virtual reality' raises interesting questions about the nature of consciousness and reality.
The hard problem is a challenge to our anthropocentric view of the universe.
We are all conscious beings, and yet we don't fully understand what that means.
The hard problem is a call for intellectual humility.
The idea of 'philosophical zombies' is not meant to be taken literally, but as a tool for understanding the nature of consciousness.
The hard problem is a fundamental question about the nature of existence.
The search for consciousness is a journey into the depths of the mind.
The hard problem is a testament to the richness and complexity of reality.
The idea of 'consciousness as information' is a promising avenue, but it needs to address the 'what it's like' aspect.
The hard problem is a challenge to our most basic assumptions about the universe.
The search for consciousness is a quest for self-understanding.
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience.
Consciousness poses the most baffling problem in the natural sciences.
Zombies are physically identical to normal humans but lack conscious experience.
It is not that we will get around to solving the problem of consciousness someday; the problem is here now, and it will stay with us.
Physicalism is false because there are possible worlds where everything is physically identical but consciousness is absent.
The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science.
Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?
Consciousness is both the most familiar and the most mysterious aspect of our lives.
Naturalistic dualism holds that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the world, on a par with space, time, and matter.
Contemporaries of David Chalmers
Other Cognitive Sciences born within 50 years of David Chalmers (1966).