David Chalmers on Emergence

David Chalmers is a leading thinker in contemporary philosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Consciousness at Australian National University.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers

Chalmers is known for being an avid critic of physicalism, believing that reductive approaches to the mind fail to appreciate the fundamental nature of consciousness. He is most widely known for sparking a revival of interest in property dualism, philosophical zombies, and for his formulation of the "Hard Problem of Consciousness."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

In this clip, Chalmers distinguishes between "strong" and "weak" emergence and explains the important differences between non-physical qualia and vitalism.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• David Chalmers
• Emergence
• Philosophy of Mind
• Emergent Property
• Property Dualism
• Consciousness
• Vitalism
• Qualia
• Nonreductive Physicalism
• Materialism
• Logical Supervenience

[mphello]

I am curious about the problem of the unbounded accumulation of a conscious mind, or of a collection of conscious minds. Where do we store all this information about the past as the interval of time of the past stretches into infinity in the future? I mean store both physically in atoms in the form of libraries on earth and in the memories of conscious minds.

[mphello]

Excellent distinction between weak vs strong emergence by Chalmers!

[mphello]

A necessary (but not sufficient) experiment that would go a significant way towards answering some of these questions about consciousness is if we could somehow cause a (brave) individual to temporarily 'die' (like in the movie 'Flatliners') and move into another body (like in the movie 'Avatar') or simply return to the original body and report back information locked in a box somewhere. Get enough researchers to do that to confirm the results.

[mphello]

A necessary (but not sufficient) experiment that would go a significant way towards answering some of these questions about consciousness is if we could somehow cause a (brave) individual to temporarily 'die' (like in the movie 'Flatliners') and move into another body (like in the movie 'Avatar') or simply return to the original body and report back information locked in a box somewhere. Get enough researchers to do that to confirm the results.

[mphello]

A necessary (but not sufficient) experiment that would go a significant way towards answering some of these questions about consciousness is if we could somehow cause a (brave) individual to temporarily "die" (like in the movie "Flatliners") and move into another body (like in the movie "Avatar") or simply return to the original body and report back information locked in a box somewhere. Get enough researchers to do that to confirm the results.

[Sssn777]

Interesting stuff. He looks kindda like Mike Portnoy!