David John Chalmers is an
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n philosopher specializing in the area of
philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
and
philosophy of languagePhilosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the
Australian National UniversityThe Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
. He is also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Background
Chalmers was born and raised in Australia, and since 2004 has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the
Australian National UniversityThe Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
. From an early age, he excelled at mathematics, eventually completing his undergraduate education at the
University of AdelaideThe University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...
with a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. He then briefly studied at
Lincoln CollegeLincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...
at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
as a Rhodes Scholar before studying for his
PhDDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
at
Indiana University BloomingtonIndiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
under
Douglas HofstadterDouglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by
Andy ClarkAndy Clark is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Before this he was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Previously, he taught at Washington University at St. Louis and the University...
at
Washington University in St. LouisWashington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
from 1993 to 1995, and his first professorship was at UC Santa Cruz, from August 1995 to December 1998. Chalmers was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy (1999–2004) and, later, Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies (2002–2004) at the
University of ArizonaThe University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, sponsor of the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference where he made his legendary "debut" in 1994.
Chalmers's book,
The Conscious Mind (1996), is widely considered (by both advocates and opponents) to be an essential work on
consciousnessConsciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
and its relation to the mind-body problem in
philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
. In the book, Chalmers argues that all forms of
physicalismPhysicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...
(whether
reductiveReductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
or
non-reductiveFunctionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
) that have dominated modern philosophy and science fail to account for the existence (that is, presence in reality) of consciousness itself. He proposes an alternative
dualisticDualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
view he calls
naturalisticNaturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
dualism (but which might also be characterized by more traditional formulations such as
property dualismProperty dualism describes a category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance - the physical kind - there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties...
,
neutral monismNeutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally...
, or
double-aspect theoryIn the philosophy of mind, double-aspect theory is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of the same substance. The theory's relationship to neutral monism is ill-defined, but one proffered distinction says that whereas neutral monism allows the context of a given group of...
). The book was described by
The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
as "one of the best science books of the year".
Philosophy of mind
Chalmers is best known for his formulation of the notion of a
hard problem of consciousnessThe hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. David Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc...
in both his book and in the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (originally published in
The Journal of Consciousness StudiesThe Journal of Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated entirely to the field of consciousness studies. It was previously edited by Joseph Goguen. It has been co-edited by the philosopher of mysticism, Robert K.C...
, 1995). He makes the distinction between "easy" problems of consciousness, such as explaining object discrimination or verbal reports, and the single hard problem, which could be stated "why does the
feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?" He expressed this distinction at the first Tucson Conference in 1994. The essential difference between the (
cognitiveIn science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
) easy problems and the (
phenomenalPhenomenology is an approach to psychological subject matter that has its roots in the philosophical work of Edmund Husserl. Early phenomenologists such as Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty conducted their own psychological investigations in the early 20th century...
) hard problem is that the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in philosophy of mind:
functionalismFunctionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
. Chalmers argues for an "explanatory gap" from the objective to the subjective, and criticizes
physicalIn philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
explanations of mental experience, making him a dualist.
In support of this, Chalmers is famous for his commitment to the logical (though, importantly, not natural) possibility of
philosophical zombieA philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience...
s, although he was not the first to propose the
thought experimentA thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...
. These zombies, unlike the
zombieZombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
of popular fiction, are complete physical duplicates of human beings, lacking only qualitative experience. Chalmers argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are logically possible, then
qualiaQualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...
and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone. Instead, Chalmers argues that consciousness is a fundamental property
ontologicallyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties, and that there may be lawlike rules which he terms "psychophysical laws" that determine which physical systems are associated with which types of qualia. However, he rejects
CartesianRené Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
-style interactive dualism in which the mind has the power to alter the behavior of the brain, suggesting instead that the physical world is "causally closed" so that physical events only have physical causes, so that for example human behavior could be explained entirely in terms of the functions of the physical brain. He further speculates that all
informationInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
-bearing systems may be conscious, leading him to entertain the possibility of conscious thermostats and a qualified
panpsychismIn philosophy, panpsychism is the view that all matter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects have a unified center of experience or point of view...
he calls panprotopsychism. Chalmers maintains a formal agnosticism on the issue, even conceding that the viability of panpsychism places him at odds with the majority of his contemporaries.
After the publication of Chalmers's landmark paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the
Journal of Consciousness Studies. These papers (by
Daniel DennettDaniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
,
Colin McGinnColin McGinn is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, though he has written on topics across the breadth of modern...
,
Francisco VarelaFrancisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
,
Francis CrickFrancis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...
, and
Roger PenroseSir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College...
, among others) were collected and published in the book
Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem.
John SearleJohn Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
critiqued Chalmers's views in
The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
.
With
Andy ClarkAndy Clark is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Before this he was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Previously, he taught at Washington University at St. Louis and the University...
Chalmers has written
The Extended MindThe Extended Mind is a book in the field of philosophy of mind edited by Richard Menary. It contains several papers by different philosophers....
, an article about the borders of the mind.
Philosophy of language
Chalmers is also an important contributor to the philosophy of language. In this area, his contribution mainly focuses on the theory of reference, being concerned with how words secure their referents. He, together with others such as
Frank JacksonFrank Jackson is the name of:* John Jackson , full name Frank John Jackson, British Conservative Member of Parliament 1959–1964...
, proposes a kind of theory called
two dimensionalismTwo-dimensionalism is an approach to semantics in analytic philosophy. It is a theory of how to determine the sense and reference of a word and the truth-value of a sentence...
arguing against
Saul KripkeSaul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
. Before Kripke delivered the famous lecture series
Naming and NecessityNaming and Necessity is a book by the philosopher Saul Kripke that was first published in 1980 and deals with the debates of proper nouns in the philosophy of language. The book is based on a transcript of three lectures given at Princeton University in 1970...
in 1970, the
descriptivismDescriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell...
advocated by
Gottlob FregeFriedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
and
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
was the orthodoxy. Descriptivism suggests that a name is indeed an abbreviation of a description, which is a set of properties or, as later modified by
John SearleJohn Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
, a disjunction of properties. This name secures its reference by a process of properties fitting: whichever object fits the description most, then it is the referent of the name. Therefore, the description is seen as the connotation, or, in Fregean term, the sense of the name, and it is via which the denotation of the name is determined.
However, as Kripke argued in Naming and Necessity, a name does not secure its reference via any process of description fitting. Rather, a name determines its reference via a historical-causal link tracing back to the process of naming. And thus, Kripke thinks that name does not have sense, or, at least, does not have sense which is rich enough to play the reference-determining role. Moreover, name, in Kripke's view, is a
rigid designatorIn modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator when it designates the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists and does not designate anything else in those possible worlds in which that thing does not exist...
, which refers to the same object in all
possible worldsPossible Worlds may refer to:* Possible worlds, a concept in philosophy* Possible Worlds , by John Mighton** Possible Worlds , by Robert Lepage, based on the Mighton play* Possible Worlds , by Peter Porter...
. Following this line of thought, Kripke suggests that all the scientific identity statement like "Water is H
2O" is also a necessary statement, i.e. true in all possible worlds. Kripke thinks that this is a phenomenon that the descriptivist cannot explain.
And, as also proposed by
Hilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
and Kripke himself, Kripke's view on name can also be applied to the reference of
natural kind termIn philosophy, a natural kind is a "natural" grouping, not an artificial one. Or, it is something that a set of things has in common which distinguishes it from other things as a real set rather than as a group of things arbitrarily lumped together by a person or group of people.If any natural...
. The kind of theory of reference that is advocated by Kripke and Putnam is called the
direct reference theoryA direct reference theory is a theory of meaning that claims that the meaning of an expression lies in what it points out in the world. It stands in contrast to mediated reference theories.- John Stuart Mill :...
.
However, Chalmers disagree with Kripke, and all the direct reference theorists in general. He thinks that there are two kind of intension of a natural kind term, a stance which is now called
two dimensionalismTwo-dimensionalism is an approach to semantics in analytic philosophy. It is a theory of how to determine the sense and reference of a word and the truth-value of a sentence...
. For example, the words,
- "Water is H2O"
are taken to express two distinct propositions, often referred to as a
primary intension and a
secondary intension, which together compose its meaning.
The primary intension of a word or sentence is its
senseSinn and bedeutung are usually translated, respectively, as sense and reference. Two different aspects of some terms' meanings, a term's reference is the object that the term refers to, while the term's sense is the way that the term refers to that object.Sinn and bedeutung were introduced by...
, i.e., is the idea or method by which we find its referent. The primary intension of "water" might be a description, such as
watery stuff. The thing picked out by the primary intension of "water" could have been otherwise. For example, on some other world where the inhabitants take "water" to mean
watery stuff, but where the chemical make-up of watery stuff is not H
2O, it is not the case that water is H
2O for that world.
The
secondary intension of "water" is whatever thing "water" happens to pick out in
this world, whatever that world happens to be. So if we assign "water" the primary intension
watery stuff then the secondary intension of "water" is H
2O, since H
2O is
watery stuff in this world. The secondary intension of "water" in our world is H
2O, and is H
2O in every world because unlike
watery stuff it is impossible for H
2O to be other than H
2O. When considered according to its secondary intension, water means H
2O in every world. Via this secondary intension, Chalmers proposes a way to explain the necessity of the identity statement on one hand, and reserve the role of intension/sense in determining the reference, in the other hand.
Verbal disputes
In recent important work, Chalmers has concentrated on verbal disputes. He argues that a dispute is best characterized as "verbal" when it concerns some sentence S which contains a term T such that (i) the parties to the dispute disagree over the meaning of T, and (ii) the dispute arises solely because of this disagreement. In the same work, Chalmers describes novel procedures for the resolution of verbal disputes. One of these he calls the "elimination method", which involves eliminating the contentious term and observing whether any dispute remains.
Miscellaneous
On his web site, Chalmers has compiled a large bibliography on the
philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
and related fields with several thousand annotated entries topically organized.
Chalmers appears in the video documentary "The Roots of the Matrix" (a reference to
The MatrixThe Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
) and presents a novel take on a large part of the "
brain in a vatIn philosophy, the brain in a vat is an element used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning...
" hypothesis, maintaining that it is not, contrary to common philosophical opinion, a
skepticalPhilosophical skepticism is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. Many skeptics critically examine the meaning systems of their times, and this examination often results in a position of ambiguity or doubt...
hypothesis.
He serves on the editorial board of the journals
PhiloPhilo is a peer-reviewed academic journal with a focus on the discussion of philosophical issues from an explicitly naturalist perspective. The journal publishes articles, critical discussions, review essays, and book reviews in all fields of philosophy, and welcomes work on the philosophical...
,
Consciousness and CognitionThe journal Consciousness and Cognition provides a forum for scientific approaches to the issues of consciousness, voluntary control, and self. It features empirical research and theoretical articles. Book reviews, integrative theoretical and critical literature reviews, and tutorial reviews are...
, the
Journal of Consciousness StudiesThe Journal of Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated entirely to the field of consciousness studies. It was previously edited by Joseph Goguen. It has been co-edited by the philosopher of mysticism, Robert K.C...
, and
PsychePsyche was a refereed electronic journal dedicated to supporting the interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of consciousness and its relation to the brain...
.
He is also noted for originating the (philosophical) zombie blues and recently performed as part of the New York Consciousness Collective at the Qualia Fest held December 14, 2010 in New York.
External links
- David Chalmers's bibliography
- Fragments of Consciousness - Chalmers's blog.
- Interview with Chalmers - in Philosophy Now.
- Consciousness, an episode of Philosophy Talk
Philosophy Talk is a talk radio program co-hosted by John Perry and Ken Taylor, who are professors at Stanford University. The show is also available as a podcast, available for purchase. The program deals both with fundamental problems of philosophy and with the works of famous philosophers,...
, hosts Chalmers
- Video Interview on BloggingHeads.tv
Bloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers...
by science writer John HorganJohn Horgan is an American science journalist best known for his 1996 book The End of Science. He has written for many publications, including Scientific American, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and IEEE Spectrum...
.
- The Mystery of Consciousness on Bright SBM Production.