The Character of Consciousness

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the "hard problem" of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the "consciousness meter", the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world.

the papers collected here exemplify all the virtues that we have come to expect from Chalmerss work ... Throughout, he is strikingly resourceful in articulating and defending his views.

Autorentext
David J. Chalmers is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is the author of THE CONSCIOUS MIND (OUP 1996), PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: Classic and Contemporary Readings (OUP 2002), and editor of the OUP series PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Klappentext

In this book David Chalmers follows up and extends his thoughts and arguments on the nature of consciousness that he first set forth in his groundbreaking 1996 book, The Conscious Mind.

Inhalt

• Introduction

• Acknowledgments

• I: The Problems of Consciousness

• 1: Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

• Afterword: From "Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness"

• II: The Science of Consciousness

• 2: How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?

• Afterword: First-Person Data and First-Person Science

• 3: What is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness?

• 4: On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness

• III: The Metaphysics of Consciousness

• 5: Consciousness and its Place in Nature

• 6: The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism

• Afterword: Other Anti-Materialist Arguments

• 7: Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation (with Frank Jackson)

• IV: Concepts of Consciousness

• 8: The Content of Phenomenal Concepts

• 9: The Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief

• 10: Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap

• V: The Contents of Consciousness

• 11: The Representational Character of Experience

• Afterword: The Two-Dimensional Contents of Perception

• 12: Perception and the Fall From Eden

• 13: The Matrix as Metaphysics

• Afterword: Philosophical Notes

• VI: The Unity of Consciousness

• 14: What is the Unity of Consciousness (with Tim Bayne)

• Appendix: Two-Dimensional Semantics