What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? David J. Chalmers unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain. Writing in a thought-provoking style, Chalmers proposes that conscious experience must be understood as an irreducible entity similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the sum of its parts. Engaging and penetrating, this book adds a fresh new perspective to the subject that is sure to spark debate about our understanding of the mind for years to come.
David J. Chalmers, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Eloquent, fiendishly clever ... One of the best science books of the year." - Sunday Times
"an outstanding contribution to our understanding of consciousness" - Steven Pinker
"a startling first book"
I. Preliminaries 1: Two Concepts of Mind 2: Supervenience and Explanation II. The Irreducibility of Consciousness 3: Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained? 4: Naturalistic Dualism 5: The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment III. Toward a Theory of Consciousness 6: The Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition 7: Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia 8: Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation IV. Applications 9: Strong Artificial Intelligence 10: The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Notes Bibliography
