David Chalmers Quotes (22 Quotes)

Here, the broader issues are already familiar, and discussion has focused at a more sophisticated and detailed level. Within the philosophy of mind, the problem of consciousness is no big news.

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best.

Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia.

Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

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.

Sacred texts are universal and their truths are eternal. There is not a thing that we sing that doesn't have our personal conviction.

Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness,

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.

I think it's a stupendous piece. I'm frankly a little surprised that it's not done more often because the music is so wonderful. The writing, especially for wind instruments, is extraordinary. He was just very expressive of the text and very inventive. So there's a wonderful sort of genius use of different styles and an ingenious use of the orchestra. I'm excited that we're doing it because I think people need to hear this piece.

To do two CDs worth of a very well known composer is a little different, but what isn't different is that one of the things we established when we started recording was that we were going to record things that were not as well known and that I think we've been fairly consistent about, even with famous composers.

You have a different kind of experience -- a different quality of experience -- when you see red, when you see green, when you hear middle C, when you taste chocolate. Whenever you're conscious, whenever you have a subjective experience, it feels like something.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a "neural correlate of consciousness"?

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.

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

I argue that neuroscience alone isn't enough to explain consciousness, but I think it will be a major part of an eventual theory.

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.

There's certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem.

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.

I never expected this to catch on in the way it did! Of course similar observations have been made by any number of people, and the distinction is obvious to anyone who thinks about the subject a little.

Those things in a way didn't need to evolve. They were part of the fundamental furniture of the world all along.