Occupy Your Waking Moments: David Chalmers on Consciousness

Another example of why mind-body dualism illustrates why I studied science and not philosophy. I sometimes think that some philosophers belong in caves, gazing at the flickering shadows of unfettered imagination on the wall. Joking aside, neurosurgeons and neurologists would be very unlikely to subscribe to the notion that the soul, mind, or consciousness exist independent of the processes of the physical mind. Evidence suggests that these are all experiential manifestations of brain activity.

David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind.

In "The Conscious Mind" (1996), "Chalmers argues that all forms of physicalism (whether reductive or non-reductive) that have dominated modern philosophy and science fail to account for the existence (that is, presence in reality) of consciousness itself. He proposes an alternative dualistic view he calls naturalistic dualism (but which might also be characterized by more traditional formulations such as property dualism, neutral monism, or double-aspect theory)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory

"If I understand the basic idea, naturalistic dualism holds that consciousness:
- Is not a reducible phenomenon
- Cannot be explained in terms of function
- Is fundamentally different from anything physical or any function of anything physical, and is therefore a qualitatively different entity from anything else in the known universe

source: http://thinkingasaprofession.blogspot.com/2008/07/naturalistic-dualism.html

The term "hard problem of consciousness", coined by David Chalmers, refers to the difficult problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he assumes that the problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Online papers on consciousness
http://consc.net/online

Closer to Truth PBS
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/#
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/resources/index.html

Blue Brain Project:
The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.

The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland, is to study the brain's architectural and functional principles ... Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running Michael Hines's NEURON software, the simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network, but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons. It is hoped that it will eventually shed light on the nature of consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

This is a mirror of a video that was originally uploaded by LennyBound. Because his channel has two strikes, he has suggested that his videos be mirrored because he is concerned that his videos might be lost if his channel suffers another hit.
http://www.youtube.com/user/LennyBound

Neuroscience Neurophilosophy playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F625403703FA718A
Philosophy Mind playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6ECC9241093D7099