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Ideas of David J.Chalmers, by Text

[Australian, b.1966, Taught at the University of Indiana. Professor at Australian National University.]

1996 The Conscious Mind
p.7 Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Kriegel/Williford]
p.21 Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Schroeter]
Intro p.-7 Hard Problem: why brains experience things
1.1.3 p.17 Sometimes we don't notice our pains
1.1.3 p.19 We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour
1.1.5 p.28 Can we be aware but not conscious?
1.2.1 p.33 Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other
1.2.1 p.35 Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set
1.2.1 p.36 Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set
1.2.1 p.38 Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience
1.2.2 p.43 Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation
1.2.2 p.45 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state
1.2.3 p.48 Reduction requires logical supervenience
1.2.4 p.56 Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity
1.2.4 p.57 The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference
1.2.4 p.59 Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O")
1.2.4 p.59 The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world
1.2.4 p.60 Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning
1.2.4 p.62 In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning
1.2.4 p.63 We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds
1.2.4 p.63 Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement
1.2.4 p.68 Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind
1.2.5 p.82 Is intentionality just causal connections?
1.2.5 p.85 Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it
1.2.5 p.87 All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me
2.1 p.31 Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Bennett,K]
2.3.1.2 p.100 It seems possible to invert qualia
2.3.1.3 p.101 Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness
2.3.1.4 p.103 Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious
2.4.1 p.125 Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base
2.4.1 p.130 One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star)
2.4.1 p.130 H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that
2.4.2 p.137 Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities
2.4.2 p.137 Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity
2.4.2 p.137 How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world
2.4.2 p.138 Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible
2.4.4 p.156 Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level?
2.4.6 p.170 Supervenience makes interaction laws possible
2.5.2 p.177 Can we explain behaviour without consciousness?
2.5.2 p.180 If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness
2.5.5 p.197 When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences
3.6.3 p.227 In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing
3.6.5 p.244 What turns awareness into consciousness?
3.7.1 p.248 Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation?
3.7.2 p.251 The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside
3.7.3 p.259 Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement?
3.8.3 p.289 The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it
3.8.4 p.295 Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish?
3.8.4 p.297 It is odd if experience is a very recent development
3.8.5 p.306 Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained?
4.9.4 p.323 Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't
n 2.20 p.364 Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable
2002 Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?
p.129 Modal Rationalism: conceivability gives a priori access to modal truths [Stalnaker]
p.813 Evaluate primary possibility from some world, and secondary possibility from this world [Vaidya]
2004 Epistemic Two-Dimensional Semantics
p.165 p.24 A sentence is a priori if no possible way the world might actually be could make it false
p.180-4 p.25 Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent
2006 Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics
p.108 'Water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, with different intensions in different worlds [Sider]