Mind and Consciousness: 5 Questions

by David J. Chalmers, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Hilary Putnam

Debates concerning the nature of mind and consciousness are active and ongoing, with implications for philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence and the neurosciences. This book collects interviews with some of the foremost philosophers of mind, focusing on open questions, promising projects, and their own intellectual histories. The result is a rich glimpse of the contemporary debate through some of the people who make it what it is. Interviews with Lynne Rudder Baker, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Fred Dretske, Owen Flanagan, Samuel Guttenplan, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, John Heil, Terence Horgan, Douglas Hofstadter, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, William Lycan, Alva Noë, Hilary Putnam, David Rosenthal, John Searle, Steven Stich, Galen Strawson, Michael Tye.

Genres: Philosophy

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2009

About the author

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He has given the John Locke Lectures and has been awarded the Jean Nicod Prize. He is known for formulating the “hard problem” of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the “extended mind,” which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds.