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

The most honest philosophy of mind book 2010-04-28

Reviewer: Jonathan Nacionales

Chalmers is by for the most objective philosopher of mind out there. He does not claim to have all the answers but tries his best to create a framework that he believes can be used to solve the "problem of consciousness". This is a must read for any serious student of the philosophy of mind.

The books main position is that an entirely materialistic view of the world could not possibly account for the existence of consciousness. I believe that for the most part he succeeds in proving this assertion. Throughout the book Chalmers mostly makes rationalistic a priori arguments, so those people who are hard-core empiricists (i.e Daniel Dennet) would most likely disregard his line of reasoning. In particular, many people have attacked his knowledge argument and zombie argument.

Was this seriously 1996 so ? 2009-08-04

Reviewer: Jitka N. Ligwo

I am really no philosopher. For everyone interested in consciousness /far away from the border between science and philosophy/ The Emerging Physics of Consciousness (The Frontiers Collection).
David Chalmers attempt equals an underestimation of nature.

A Major Disappointment 2007-04-20

Reviewer: Daniel Dickson-LaPrade

Because of its popularity and its subject matter, I was very excited to read Chalmers' The Conscious Mind. I was horribly disappointed.

First, Chalmers' discussion of supervenience and intension in chapter two is horribly convoluted. Of course, Chalmers asterisked some of the more technical parts of this chapter so that the lay reader could skip them, but here's the problem: if you skip these sections, you are no longer able to critique the most crucial parts of Chalmers's argument!

Second, Chalmers engages in bizarre and fallacious reasoning. One of his central arguments runs like this: It is possible to imagine a zombie---that is, a being who is molecule-by-molecule identical to me, but who lacks phenomenal conscious experiences (i.e., qualia). Since imagining this involves no obvious logical contradiction, zombies must be logically possible. Since zombies are logically possible, qualia must not supervene on physical facts--that is, qualia are not logically dependent upon the physical. Since this is true, there can be no possible reductive, materialistic explanation of consciousness.

This argument is preposterous on its face, as many reviewers have noted, and it is only the hocus-pocus about supervenience and intension in chapter two which lends it even a little credibility. For example, let's assume that reductive explanation X can fully explain consciousness in terms of brain functioning. Even if this is true, it is STILL possible for us to imagine zombies right NOW---purely because of our ignorance of X. Since the zombie argument is a central pillar of Chalmers's text, its failure is a failure of the book as a whole.

Third, Chalmers has not done his homework when it comes to the arguments of other philosophers. For example (leaving aside the technical details), I would suggest reading Quine's essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point of View. Then, read Chalmer's discussion of Quine's arguments in chapter two of this book. Then reread Quine's essay (it's a tough essay). Chalmers utterly fails to refute Quine's arguments, and these arguments are absolutely fatal to Chalmers's entire enterprise--especially his ridiculous zombie argument.

Finally, Chalmers does not address previous attempts to explain qualia (phenomenal conscious experiences) reductively. Daniel Dennett, for example, spends an entire chapter of Consciousness Explained trying to provide just such a reductive explanation. Since Chalmers's whole point is to argue that the existence of qualia specifically makes reductive explanations of consciousness impossible, his failure to spend even two pages on Dennett's explanation is ridiculous. (Briefly, Dennett argues that qualia just are the sum total of all a person's visceral, cognitive, emotional, etc. repsonses to a particular object of perception.)

In its foundations, its approach, and its failure to address important arguments by Quine, Dennnett, and others, this book is an abject failure. Instead, I would strongly suggest purchasing the wonderful and varied essay collection Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem.

Team Consciousness 2007-03-26

Reviewer: Owen Flanagan

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.

The author set out for seeking 2007-03-05

Reviewer: Masayoshi Ishida

The young philosopher could be praised for his making a negative conclusion that "Consciousness could not be reductively explained," but where to go next? So he set out to search for "a final theory of consciousness." which will be, in his words, basically a set of "psychophysical laws." The book includes no reference to Bergson, maybe because of his "vitalism & mysticism." Henri Bergson once talked in his lecture (in 1913) for the audience at the Society for Psychical Research in London to the effect that he imagined from time to time had Kepler, Galilei, and Newton been psychologists, we would have a psychology of today to be beyond our imaginations. Bergson imagined that fundamental laws of "mind" might have been found by them, just like ones of "dynamics" were found by them. So Chalmers might be a psychologist Newton of our days. He made a jump to physicist John Wheeler's "physical universe based on information theory" for the search of a proto-theory of consciousness in this book.
In his later paper in 2002 on "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature," Chalmers expressed his preference to a "Type-F Monism" to explain the origin of consciousness, saying "For my part, I give some credence to each of them [type-D dualism, type-E dualism, and type-F monism], I think that in some ways the type-F view is the most appealing, but this sense is largely grounded in aesthetic considerations whose force is unclear." Let me quote the related part from his paper:
"Type-F monism is the view that consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities: that is, by the categorical bases of fundamental physical dispositions. On this view, phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality, and in a certain sense, underlie physical reality itself (Chalmers' "philosophy of mind", p.265)."

So, basically what is in his "conscious outer ego" seems that "Consciousness" transcends physical reality not any more than physical reality transcends consciousness, if "the physical is derivative on the informational, and the ontology of this view could be worked out very neatly (ibid, p.287)."

Sir Oliver Lodge suggested about 100 years ago that we could cooperate with intelligent minds on the other side for us to get wiser, and I believe that we already had such cooperation in the case of Jane Roberts with Seth & Seth's big brother. What they are telling us is too intelligent to dismiss. Even Carl Jung could not understand "the enigmatic self" in his whole life, but Seth is telling what it is, also the meaning of "the Collective Unconscious."

Scientists as well as philosophers including Chalmers are now seeking for the origin of our "Consciousness," but if the "Consciousness" per se is the origin as Seth is telling us, they will never reach to the answer. [...]