This appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59:473-93, as a response to four papers in a symposium on my book The Conscious Mind . Most of it should be comprehensible without having read the papers in question. This paper is for an audience of philosophers and so is relatively technical. It will probably also help to have read some of the book. The papers I’m responding to are: Chris Hill & Brian McLaughlin, There are fewer things in reality than are (...) dreamt of in Chalmers’ philosophy Brian Loar, David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind Sydney Shoemaker, On David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind Stephen Yablo, Concepts and consciousness Contents. (shrink)

David Chalmers’s book is impressive in many ways. I admire the great skill, incisiveness and breadth of vision with which he conducts his argument. Many of his controversial theses and intuitions I find congenial. Unfortunately I do not believe the book’s central thesis, namely, that facts about consciousness are not physical facts. Much of the book is devoted either to establishing this, or to considering how things stand in the light of it. Let me quote a passage in which Chalmers’s (...) thesis is stated. (shrink)

David Chalmers’s book is impressive in many ways. I admire the great skill, incisiveness and breadth of vision with which he conducts his argument. Many of his controversial theses and intuitions I find congenial. Unfortunately I do not believe the book’s central thesis, namely, that facts about consciousness are not physical facts. Much of the book is devoted either to establishing this, or to considering how things stand in the light of it. Let me quote a passage in which Chalmers’s (...) thesis is stated. (shrink)

In Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience, Schoningh Verlag. 1995. [ online ].