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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 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.
about consciousness and the external world.
624 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
David J. Chalmers
35 books540 followersDavid Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He has given the John Locke Lectures and has been awarded the Jean Nicod Prize. He is known for formulating the “hard problem” of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the “extended mind,” which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 14 reviews
October 11, 2010
David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind was a hard act to follow, even for David Chalmers himself. Thus for those who know Chalmers work already there are no new bombshells in this new collection of essays. Here he responds to critiques of his "Two Dimensional" semantic framework and the zombie argument of the previous book.
The zombie argument goes as follows: It's conceivable in a sense that a life awake human body could be atom for atom identical with mine and yet lack consciousness, perception, sensation, and thought. If it's conceivable, it's metaphysically possible. So materialism is false if materialism is the view that my physical body is completely constitutive of all my mental properties. Of course what sense of conceivable? Well the idea is that if seeming to have sensations like pain comes to the same as having them, and if the activity of c-fibers in the brain exhaust the physical nature of the brain state, then any identity between these two must be a necessary one. It should not be possible certainly for the referents to be different and since the senses and references are the same in these cases, it should not be possible for the senses to differ either. But the senses do differ and do mean different things, pain does not mean the firing of c-fibers nor can their identity be "worked out on paper" the way potentially you could work out other identities like heat=molecular motion or Kepler's laws are a consequence of Newton's laws so the identity is not a necessary one after all.
Chalmers had said in previous work that Russelian monism (neutral monism) was one way out of the zombie argument and that it was a position he favored but would not defend directly. (The other way, of course, is to deny that the appearance of sensations are what they are; they might be eliminable illusions as Dennett has urged in "Quining Qualia".) Russelian monism is an enhanced physicalism where so called intrinsic properties of matter are required to ground the outward causal relations described by physics and accessible through indirect physical measurement by means of those causal relations. Thus every physical event has both an outward relation structurally and causally to other physical events and an inward nature (or quality) accessible only to itself. Clearly if that is true, then the physical zombie is not a genuine physical possibility since any collection of material atoms will possess necessarily an "inward nature" too, on enhanced physicalism. The identity now becomes a so called a posteriori necessity, since one of the terms "c-fibers" is actually non-rigid and does not pin down the internal nature of the physical process. If it did, you would find that indeed the interior of the physical brain process is pain, just as Russellian monism predicts.
Chalmers suggested taking Russellian monism seriously in the philosophy of mind when others simply dismissed the position as crazy (as they still do). This book should bring a lot more attention to the position and those of us who work on it--so who could be against that? As one who thinks the idea is far from crazy, I'm glad to see him stand up for the idea more strongly than he did in the Conscious Mind. He includes it now as an explicit disjunct for those who would like to avoid his zombie argument and the conceivability of zombies. One big yay for Russell!
Just a comment or two: I sometimes feel that although Chalmers has done more than anyone to enliven the discussion of physicalism and the mind body problem, he also hasn't done enough to remove us from the "bad old days" of thought experiments using linguistic arguments from modal logic to decide what is or is not possible in the real world. See his colleague Daniel Stoljar for a critique of a priori argumentation under conditions of ignorance. Modal arguments can tell us about our concepts perhaps but not about whether those concepts represent reality in any metaphysically necessary sense. For that you need science.
The zombie argument goes as follows: It's conceivable in a sense that a life awake human body could be atom for atom identical with mine and yet lack consciousness, perception, sensation, and thought. If it's conceivable, it's metaphysically possible. So materialism is false if materialism is the view that my physical body is completely constitutive of all my mental properties. Of course what sense of conceivable? Well the idea is that if seeming to have sensations like pain comes to the same as having them, and if the activity of c-fibers in the brain exhaust the physical nature of the brain state, then any identity between these two must be a necessary one. It should not be possible certainly for the referents to be different and since the senses and references are the same in these cases, it should not be possible for the senses to differ either. But the senses do differ and do mean different things, pain does not mean the firing of c-fibers nor can their identity be "worked out on paper" the way potentially you could work out other identities like heat=molecular motion or Kepler's laws are a consequence of Newton's laws so the identity is not a necessary one after all.
Chalmers had said in previous work that Russelian monism (neutral monism) was one way out of the zombie argument and that it was a position he favored but would not defend directly. (The other way, of course, is to deny that the appearance of sensations are what they are; they might be eliminable illusions as Dennett has urged in "Quining Qualia".) Russelian monism is an enhanced physicalism where so called intrinsic properties of matter are required to ground the outward causal relations described by physics and accessible through indirect physical measurement by means of those causal relations. Thus every physical event has both an outward relation structurally and causally to other physical events and an inward nature (or quality) accessible only to itself. Clearly if that is true, then the physical zombie is not a genuine physical possibility since any collection of material atoms will possess necessarily an "inward nature" too, on enhanced physicalism. The identity now becomes a so called a posteriori necessity, since one of the terms "c-fibers" is actually non-rigid and does not pin down the internal nature of the physical process. If it did, you would find that indeed the interior of the physical brain process is pain, just as Russellian monism predicts.
Chalmers suggested taking Russellian monism seriously in the philosophy of mind when others simply dismissed the position as crazy (as they still do). This book should bring a lot more attention to the position and those of us who work on it--so who could be against that? As one who thinks the idea is far from crazy, I'm glad to see him stand up for the idea more strongly than he did in the Conscious Mind. He includes it now as an explicit disjunct for those who would like to avoid his zombie argument and the conceivability of zombies. One big yay for Russell!
Just a comment or two: I sometimes feel that although Chalmers has done more than anyone to enliven the discussion of physicalism and the mind body problem, he also hasn't done enough to remove us from the "bad old days" of thought experiments using linguistic arguments from modal logic to decide what is or is not possible in the real world. See his colleague Daniel Stoljar for a critique of a priori argumentation under conditions of ignorance. Modal arguments can tell us about our concepts perhaps but not about whether those concepts represent reality in any metaphysically necessary sense. For that you need science.
June 30, 2017
Essentially, David Chalmers lays out the best arguments against materialism, which is the belief that only matter exists, and that everything in the universe (including consciousness) can be explained in terms of physical processes. It's definitely not a 'popular philosophy' book. Large parts of it are very detailed indeed, and I found myself skipping whole sections. Nonetheless it is interesting, and Chalmers comes across as a very balanced and objective thinker.
March 21, 2011
The only book in Anglo-American philosophy that attempts to give an honest and complete account of consciousness. Very thorough and rigorous. Very compelling arguments concerning the metaphysics of consciousness that undermine the conventional materialist accounts. Chalmers is the most important thinker in the field of consciousness studies and this book is the most important book.
January 30, 2018
Some portions of the book I did read through carefully and others (The Matrix essay) I skipped entirely.
If you have read the conscious mind (1995) by Chalmers, then I would maybe suggest reading this book as it goes through the same issues brought up in the conscious mind and he does differ in opinion on certain aspects of consciousness.
Good read.
If you have read the conscious mind (1995) by Chalmers, then I would maybe suggest reading this book as it goes through the same issues brought up in the conscious mind and he does differ in opinion on certain aspects of consciousness.
Good read.
February 5, 2022
Exceptionally clear writing. Paradigmatic way of writing philosophy.
April 20, 2026
A ‘SORT OF SEQUEL’ TO HIS PREVIOUS BOOK
David J. Chalmers (b. 1966) is an Australian philosopher who is Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University; he also taught philosophy at the Australian National University. He has written other books, such as ‘The Conscious Mind,’ ‘Constructing the World,’ 'Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy,’ etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, “What is consciousness? … Can there be a science of consciousness? What is the neural basis of consciousness?… Is consciousness physical or nonphysical?… We can think of these questions as limning a few dimensions of the character of consciousness. Consciousness is an extraordinary and multi-faceted phenomenon whose character can be approached from many directions. It has a phenomenological and a neurobiological character. It has a metaphysical and an epistemological character. It has a perceptual and a cognitive character… And it has many further sorts of character. We will not understand consciousness by studying its character on just one of these dimensions… In this book, I will address all of these issues about the character of consciousness and a number of others.” (Pg. xi)
He continues, “The chapters in this book were first written as separate articles, so one might think that the book is bound to be fragmented. I have tried to structure and rework it in such a way that it works as a whole, however… This book could be considered a sort of sequel to my earlier book on consciousness, ‘The Conscious Mind.’ That book received far more attention that I could reasonably have expected… In this book, I aim to flesh out a picture of consciousness that is clearer, fuller, and more adequate than the picture in ‘The Conscious Mind.’ The picture in this book is largely consistent with the picture in ‘The Conscious Mind.’ I have not had an enormous change of mind since then, though there are some medium-sized changes: for example, I am somewhat less sympathetic to epiphenomenalism than I was then… One regret concerning ‘The Conscious Mind’ is that the book has become known especially for a negative thesis… that consciousness is not physical…” (Pg. xi-xiii)
In Chapter 1, he presents his best-known position: “There is not just one problem of consciousness. ‘Consciousness’ is an ambiguous term that refers to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems into ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.” (Pg. 3-4)
He goes on, “The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of EXPERIENCE. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As [Thomas] Nagel has put it, there is SOMETHING IT IS LIKE to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience… Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as ‘the’ problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of ‘consciousness,’ an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.” (Pg. 5)
He states, “I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of SOMETHING fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness… If we take experience as fundamental, when we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.” (Pg. 17)
He notes, “[J.A.] Wheeler has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe… We are led to a conception of the world in which information is truly fundamental and in which it has two basic aspects, one that corresponds to the physical and one that corresponds to the phenomenal features of the world. Of course, the double-aspect principle is extremely speculative and also undetermined, leaving a number of key questions unanswered. An obvious question is whether ALL information has a phenomenal aspect.… Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world.” (Pg. 26-27)
He explains, “[Daniel] Dennett challenges me to provide ‘independent’ evidence (presumably behavioral or functional evidence) for the ‘postulation’ of experience. But this is to miss the point. Conscious experience is not ‘postulated’ to explain other phenomena in turn; rather, it is a phenomenon to be explained in its own right. And if it turns out that it cannot be explained in terms of more basic entities, then it must be taken as irreducible, just as happens with categories such as space and time.” (Pg. 33)
He states, “This leads us to … the core project of current scientific research on consciousness: the search for neural correlates of consciousness [NCC]… The NCC project aims to isolate relatively limited parts of the brain … that correlate directly with subjective experience.” (Pg. 44)
He emphasizes, “The hard problem of consciousness … is that of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to phenomenal consciousness… A ‘reductive explanation’ of consciousness will explain this wholly on the basis of physical principles that do not themselves make any appeal to consciousness. A ‘materialist’ (or physicalist) solution is a solution on which consciousness is itself seen as a physical process… a ‘nonreductive’ solution is one on which consciousness … is admitted as a basic part of the explanation… But we have seen that consciousness seems to resist materialist explanation in a way that other phenomena do not.” (Pg. 105)
He asserts, “If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world… If the arguments against materialism are correct, these features from physics do not exhaust the fundamental features of the world. We need to expand our catalog of the world’s basic features. There are two possibilities here. First, it could be that consciousness is itself a fundamental feature of the world, like space-time and mass. In this case, we can say that phenomenal properties are fundamental. Second, it could be that consciousness is not itself fundamental but is necessitated by some more primitive fundamental feature… Either way, consciousness involves something novel and fundamental in the world. The following question then arises: How do these novel fundamental properties relate to the already acknowledged fundamental properties of the world [?]” (Pg. 124-125)
He summarizes, “I have in effect argued for a sort of limited foundationalism within the phenomenal domain. Direct phenomenal beliefs are in a certain sense foundational: they receive justification directly from experience, and their … justification does not rely on other beliefs. I have also argued that direct phenomenal beliefs can justify at least some other phenomenal beliefs in turn, when aided by various sorts of a priori reasoning. Does this give any support to foundationalism about a broader class of empirical beliefs or about empirical knowledge in general? Nothing I have said implies this sort of foundationalism. The gap between phenomenal knowledge and knowledge of the external world remains as wide as ever, and I have done nothing to close it.” (Pg. 303)
He acknowledges, “The Creation Hypothesis says: physical space-time and its contents were created by beings outside physical space-time. This is a familiar hypothesis. A version of it is believed by many people in our society and perhaps by the majority of people in the world. If one believes that God created the world, and if one believes that God is outside physical space-time, then one believes the Creation Hypothesis. One need not believe in God to believe the Creation Hypothesis, though. Perhaps our world was created by a relatively ordinary being in the ‘next universe up,’ using the latest world-making technology in that universe. If so, the Creation Hypothesis is true. I do not know whether the Creation Hypothesis is true, but I do not know for certain that it is false. The hypothesis is clearly coherent, and I cannot conclusively rule it out.” (Pg. 461-462)
This dense and detailed book will be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying the Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness, and related topics.
David J. Chalmers (b. 1966) is an Australian philosopher who is Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University; he also taught philosophy at the Australian National University. He has written other books, such as ‘The Conscious Mind,’ ‘Constructing the World,’ 'Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy,’ etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, “What is consciousness? … Can there be a science of consciousness? What is the neural basis of consciousness?… Is consciousness physical or nonphysical?… We can think of these questions as limning a few dimensions of the character of consciousness. Consciousness is an extraordinary and multi-faceted phenomenon whose character can be approached from many directions. It has a phenomenological and a neurobiological character. It has a metaphysical and an epistemological character. It has a perceptual and a cognitive character… And it has many further sorts of character. We will not understand consciousness by studying its character on just one of these dimensions… In this book, I will address all of these issues about the character of consciousness and a number of others.” (Pg. xi)
He continues, “The chapters in this book were first written as separate articles, so one might think that the book is bound to be fragmented. I have tried to structure and rework it in such a way that it works as a whole, however… This book could be considered a sort of sequel to my earlier book on consciousness, ‘The Conscious Mind.’ That book received far more attention that I could reasonably have expected… In this book, I aim to flesh out a picture of consciousness that is clearer, fuller, and more adequate than the picture in ‘The Conscious Mind.’ The picture in this book is largely consistent with the picture in ‘The Conscious Mind.’ I have not had an enormous change of mind since then, though there are some medium-sized changes: for example, I am somewhat less sympathetic to epiphenomenalism than I was then… One regret concerning ‘The Conscious Mind’ is that the book has become known especially for a negative thesis… that consciousness is not physical…” (Pg. xi-xiii)
In Chapter 1, he presents his best-known position: “There is not just one problem of consciousness. ‘Consciousness’ is an ambiguous term that refers to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems into ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.” (Pg. 3-4)
He goes on, “The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of EXPERIENCE. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As [Thomas] Nagel has put it, there is SOMETHING IT IS LIKE to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience… Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as ‘the’ problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of ‘consciousness,’ an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.” (Pg. 5)
He states, “I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of SOMETHING fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness… If we take experience as fundamental, when we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.” (Pg. 17)
He notes, “[J.A.] Wheeler has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe… We are led to a conception of the world in which information is truly fundamental and in which it has two basic aspects, one that corresponds to the physical and one that corresponds to the phenomenal features of the world. Of course, the double-aspect principle is extremely speculative and also undetermined, leaving a number of key questions unanswered. An obvious question is whether ALL information has a phenomenal aspect.… Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world.” (Pg. 26-27)
He explains, “[Daniel] Dennett challenges me to provide ‘independent’ evidence (presumably behavioral or functional evidence) for the ‘postulation’ of experience. But this is to miss the point. Conscious experience is not ‘postulated’ to explain other phenomena in turn; rather, it is a phenomenon to be explained in its own right. And if it turns out that it cannot be explained in terms of more basic entities, then it must be taken as irreducible, just as happens with categories such as space and time.” (Pg. 33)
He states, “This leads us to … the core project of current scientific research on consciousness: the search for neural correlates of consciousness [NCC]… The NCC project aims to isolate relatively limited parts of the brain … that correlate directly with subjective experience.” (Pg. 44)
He emphasizes, “The hard problem of consciousness … is that of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to phenomenal consciousness… A ‘reductive explanation’ of consciousness will explain this wholly on the basis of physical principles that do not themselves make any appeal to consciousness. A ‘materialist’ (or physicalist) solution is a solution on which consciousness is itself seen as a physical process… a ‘nonreductive’ solution is one on which consciousness … is admitted as a basic part of the explanation… But we have seen that consciousness seems to resist materialist explanation in a way that other phenomena do not.” (Pg. 105)
He asserts, “If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world… If the arguments against materialism are correct, these features from physics do not exhaust the fundamental features of the world. We need to expand our catalog of the world’s basic features. There are two possibilities here. First, it could be that consciousness is itself a fundamental feature of the world, like space-time and mass. In this case, we can say that phenomenal properties are fundamental. Second, it could be that consciousness is not itself fundamental but is necessitated by some more primitive fundamental feature… Either way, consciousness involves something novel and fundamental in the world. The following question then arises: How do these novel fundamental properties relate to the already acknowledged fundamental properties of the world [?]” (Pg. 124-125)
He summarizes, “I have in effect argued for a sort of limited foundationalism within the phenomenal domain. Direct phenomenal beliefs are in a certain sense foundational: they receive justification directly from experience, and their … justification does not rely on other beliefs. I have also argued that direct phenomenal beliefs can justify at least some other phenomenal beliefs in turn, when aided by various sorts of a priori reasoning. Does this give any support to foundationalism about a broader class of empirical beliefs or about empirical knowledge in general? Nothing I have said implies this sort of foundationalism. The gap between phenomenal knowledge and knowledge of the external world remains as wide as ever, and I have done nothing to close it.” (Pg. 303)
He acknowledges, “The Creation Hypothesis says: physical space-time and its contents were created by beings outside physical space-time. This is a familiar hypothesis. A version of it is believed by many people in our society and perhaps by the majority of people in the world. If one believes that God created the world, and if one believes that God is outside physical space-time, then one believes the Creation Hypothesis. One need not believe in God to believe the Creation Hypothesis, though. Perhaps our world was created by a relatively ordinary being in the ‘next universe up,’ using the latest world-making technology in that universe. If so, the Creation Hypothesis is true. I do not know whether the Creation Hypothesis is true, but I do not know for certain that it is false. The hypothesis is clearly coherent, and I cannot conclusively rule it out.” (Pg. 461-462)
This dense and detailed book will be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying the Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness, and related topics.
June 16, 2020
Huge, boring, philosophical book about consciousness. A good start about consciousness as experience and its irreducibility. Then a deep, long dive into philosophical analysis without easy enough to comprehend synthesis. This makes this book really hard to read.
February 11, 2013
Some of the clearest, most rigorous writing on the metaphysics of consciousness, and philosophy of mind in general - Chalmers is...phenomenal!
March 27, 2021
Still not convinced that philosophical zombies are conceivable. I can't get over the explanatory gap for how such zombies can perfectly reproduce conscious behavior.
June 1, 2020
...the structure and dynamics of physical processes yield only more structure and dynamics, so structures and functions are all we can expect these processes to explain. The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may arise from the physical, but it is not explained by the physical.
I appreciated the first five chapters the most. Chalmers defends the existence of the “hard problem” against unsatisfactory attempts to deflate it, develops a taxonomy of possible solutions, and provides commentary on relevant scientific issues. The penultimate chapter, which uses a discussion of The Matrix to provide thoughts on the problem of skepticism in general, is also quite interesting.
I found many of the other chapters difficult to follow, likely because I lack background in the philosophy of language. The connection of the highly technical discussions to the “big picture” was often unclear to me.
February 17, 2024
Regrettably this book is too heavy on the metaphysics side for casual reading and I took the easy way out as the author suggested. Overall the arguments are well thought out. Where we differ is that where the author believes it’s fundamentally impossible to perform scientific study on what is private and not subject to third person investigation, I have a reductionism conviction, without proof of course, that we can eventually know enough to understand consciousness from elemental physics.
July 23, 2011
Heavy duty reading in some places
See also
http://fragments.consc.net/
There is a link there to a TED talk.
See also
http://fragments.consc.net/
There is a link there to a TED talk.
February 7, 2017
Collection of essays, zombies, The Matrix, ...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 14 reviews