List of David Chalmers Quotes

I Think The Existence Of Zombies Would Contradict Certain Laws Of Nature In Our World. It Seems To Be A Law Of Nature, In Our World, That When You Get A Brain Of A Certain Character You Get Consciousness Going Along With It.

It Probably Helps That My Background Is In The Sciences And I Can Speak The Scientists' Language.

Things Are Still In Early Stages, But One Can Imagine That As We Build Up And Systematize Our Theories Of These Associations, And Try To Boil Them Down To Their Core, The Result Might Point Us Toward The Sort Of Fundamental Principles I Advocate.

Although I'm Australian, I Find Myself Much More In Sympathy With The Austrian Version!

My Interests Started About In Science And In Mathematics, I Always Thought I Was Going To Be A Mathematician.

I Think That Consciousness Has Always Been The Most Important Topic In The Philosophy Of Mind, And One Of The Most Important Topics In Cognitive Science As A Whole, But It Had Been Surprisingly Neglected In Recent Years.

I Had The Idea That It Would Be Wonderful To Be A Physicist Or A Mathematician Maybe 500 Years Ago Around The Time Of Newton When There Were Really Fundamental Things Just Lying Around To Be Discovered.

Anyway, There Is A Lot Of Really Interesting Work Going On In The Neuroscience And Psychology Of Consciousness, And I Would Love To See Philosophers Become More Closely Involved With This.

Within Psychology And Neuroscience, Some New And Rigorous Experimental Paradigms For Studying Consciousness Have Helped It Begin To Overcome The Stigma That Has Been Attached To The Topic For Most Of This Century.

Because The Idea Of Zombies Seems To Make Sense, And Seems To, In A Certain Sense, Be Possible, I Think One Can Use That To Argue Against The Thesis That Everything Is Purely Physical. Now Many People, I Think, Agree That The Idea Of Zombies Are Conceivable, Including People Who Want To Be Physicalists.

A Philosopher Might Find The General Work Unsophisticated, And Scientists Are Often Bemused By Esoteric Talk Of Zombies, Supervenience, And Possible Worlds.

Sense Data Are Much More Controversial Than Qualia, Because They Are Associated With A Controversial Theory Of Perception - That One Perceives The World By Perceiving One's Sense-data, Or Something Like That.