The Conscious Mind (Philosophy of Mind)

Writing in a rigorous, thought-provoking style, the author takes us on a far-reaching tour through the philosophical ramifications of consci ousness. Chalmers convincingly establishes that contemporary cognitive science and neuroscience do not begin to explain how subjective exper ience emerges from neural processes in the brain. He proposes that con scious experience must instead be understood in a new light--as an irr educible entity (like such physical properties as time, mass, and spac e) that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the sum of simpler physical parts. In the second half of the book, he sets out on a quest for a "fundamental theory"--a theory of the basic laws governing the structure and character of conscious experience--and sh ows how this reconception of the mind could lead us to a new science o f consciousness.