|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
eighteenth in a series of articles advising on how to build your
own home philosophy library.
No.
18 David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind
David
Chalmers' The Conscious Mind resurrects the notion of dualism
to account for consciousness. Given the thorough beating dualism
has received in recent years you could be forgiven for wondering
what could possibly motivate this position. Chalmer's argues that
if we take consciousness seriously then we can see that there is
an irreducibly mental aspect. Material accounts of consciousness
will always leave this out.
Although
many have felt uncomfortable with this 'explanatory gap' between
mental experience and the material sciences they have felt that
the alternative, dualism, was even worse. The strength of The
Conscious Mind is it manages to make dualism a viable position.
Chalmer's is well aware of the status of dualism and argues that
to accept this position is not to fall to the 'forces of darkness'.
He sees the mental as a naturally occurring phenomenon subject to
laws.
Like
Dennett, Chalmer's considers the classic thought experiments associated
with qualia. Central to Chalmer's dualism is the logical possibility
of zombies. Zombies should not conjure up images of The Night
of the Living Dead, but beings indistinguishable from us except
that there is nothing it is like to be them. Chalmers argues that
the logical possibility of zombies means there is a distinction
between the mental and physical.
The
Conscious Mind brings dualism back from the wilderness and suggests
a naturalistic framework in which to conduct further research.
It
seems that very few ideas in philosophy remain dead and buried.
We leave the reader to make their own comparisons with zombies.
The
Conscious Mind by David Chalmers (Oxford University Press)
A
new book will be featured early July 2002.
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