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Price: $32.95

Format:
Paperback 624 pp.
3 mm x 3 mm

ISBN-10:
0195311116

ISBN-13:
9780195311112

Publication date:
October 2010

Imprint: OUP US

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The Character of Consciousness

David J. Chalmers, D.J.

Series : Philosophy of Mind Series

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the "hard problem" of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the "consciousness meter", the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the problems of mind, brain, consciousness, and reality.

Readership : The book will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, scientists, and general readers. The book will be appropriate for courses on the philosophy of mind, consciousness, and cognitive science.

Introduction
Acknowledgments
I. The Problems of Consciousness
1. Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
Afterword: From "Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness"
II. The Science of Consciousness
2. How Can We Construct a Science of Consciousness?
Afterword: First-Person Data and First-Person Science
3. What is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness?
4. On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness
III. The Metaphysics of Consciousness
5. Consciousness and its Place in Nature
6. The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism
Afterword: Other Anti-Materialist Arguments
7. Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation (with Frank Jackson)
IV. Concepts of Consciousness
8. The Content of Phenomenal Concepts
9. The Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief
10. Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap
V. The Contents of Consciousness
11. The Representational Character of Experience
Afterword: The Two-Dimensional Contents of Perception
12. Perception and the Fall From Eden
13. The Matrix as Metaphysics
Afterword: Philosophical Notes
VI. The Unity of Consciousness
14. What is the Unity of Consciousness (with Tim Bayne)
Appendix: Two-Dimensional Semantics

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David J. Chalmers is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is the author of THE CONSCIOUS MIND (OUP 1996), PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: Classic and Contemporary Readings (OUP 2002), and editor of the OUP series PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

The Conscious Mind - David J. Chalmers
Philosophy of Mind - Edited by David J. Chalmers
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind - Edited by Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann and Sven Walter
Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion - William Fish
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin

Special Features

  • Selling point: David Chalmers is one of the most famous and respected scholars working in the philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. His book, The Conscious Mind, has defined much of the recent debate on the problem of consciousness.