David J. Chalmers (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York: Oxford University Press (hardback ISBN 0-19-510553-2; paperback ISBN 0-19-511789-1, 1997; Library of Congress 95036036). It began as the author’s PhD dissertation at Indiana University (1993), according to his book page.
Key takeaways
Registered from the author’s posted contents, introduction and jacket copy, not a reading. What follows is what the book and its author say about it.
- Aim, from the introduction. Three stated constraints: “take consciousness seriously” (no redefining the explanandum as a function), “take science seriously” (physics is causally closed and behaviour is physically explicable), and treat consciousness as “a natural phenomenon, falling under the sway of natural laws”. The book says it does “not solve the problem of consciousness once and for all”, but tries “to rein it in”. It frames the issues in terms of supervenience and its modal strength, “largely eschewing the notion of identity”.
- Parts and chapters, from the table of contents.
- I Foundations: 1 Two Concepts of Mind (the phenomenal and the psychological); 2 Supervenience and Explanation.
- II The Irreducibility of Consciousness: 3 Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained?; 4 Naturalistic Dualism (an argument against materialism, the objection from a posteriori necessity, “Is this epiphenomenalism?”); 5 The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment.
- III Toward a Theory of Consciousness: 6 On the Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition; 7 Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia; 8 Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation (“Is experience ubiquitous?”).
- IV Applications: 9 Strong Artificial Intelligence (“On implementing a computation”, “The Chinese room and other objections”); 10 The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (sections on the Everett interpretation and objections to it; the introduction says the chapter lends support to a “no-collapse” interpretation).
- Claims the introduction makes for the chapters. Ch. 3: standard methods of reductive explanation cannot account for consciousness. Ch. 4: “materialism is false, and … a form of dualism is true”. Ch. 5 is “largely defensive”, about the relation between consciousness and our judgments about it. Ch. 7: consciousness is an “organizational invariant”. Ch. 8 is “by far the most speculative chapter”. Ch. 9: “the implementation of an appropriate computer program will give rise to a conscious mind”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request for David Chalmers in this record. It is the book-length statement of the hard problem and of naturalistic dualism. No anthology topic holds it, and the anthology does not hold it (checked by grep).
Deferred because it was not read. This record files a book from its
publisher’s description and contents when no lawful text can be read, and
does not rebuild a book from what others say about it. Chalmers posts the
contents, introduction and jacket copy but no chapter drafts. The Internet
Archive copies were not opened.
Where it bears on the record. These are my inferences from the contents and the introduction, and from the two papers read alongside it, not claims the book was read to make:
- The hard problem. The papers carry the argument. LIT-406 (read) states the hard problem and naturalistic dualism, and defers to this book for the anti-materialist argument and the reply to a posteriori necessity, which are chapter 4 here. A reading of chapter 4 is what would turn the record’s citations of the hard problem from “stated” to “argued”.
- The society-of-mind bridge (THEORY-043). Chapter 7 is the book version of LIT-392 (read). That reading’s answer, that organizational invariance licenses the replacement cases and not Schwitzgebel’s upward move (LIT-159), is drawn from the paper. Chapter 8’s “Is experience ubiquitous?” is the double-aspect principle that List (LIT-401) rejects as too unrestricted.
- The meta-problem (LIT-425). The later paper says its own first solution to the meta-problem was developed here (pp. 184–8 and 289–92), and that the book said “if I were a materialist, I would be an illusionist” (p. 189). Chapter 5, The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment, is where that problem is first posed at length.
- AI consciousness (THEORY-023). Chapter 9 defends strong AI by way of an account of implementing a computation. Another reader is filing Chalmers’s papers on implementation and AI in this record at the same time. A reading of chapter 9 should be set against theirs.
- Quantum foundations. Chapter 10 applies the theory to the
measurement problem and favours a no-collapse interpretation. Hence the
quantum-foundationstag, which a reader browsing that topic would expect from a contents entry titled “The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”. LIT-406 §5 dismisses consciousness-collapse interpretations as explaining nothing about consciousness.
It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.
Access when seeded:
- The author’s book page and its three linked documents (contents, introduction, jacket copy), read in full.
- Open Library’s search API, for ISBNs, LCCN, OCLC and dates.
- lccn.loc.gov/95036036 redirects to the Library of Congress catalogue search. Its MODS link returned no readable record.
- Crossref: no DOI for the book. Reviews and the 1999 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research symposium (Chalmers’s “Precis”, doi:10.2307/2653680) have DOIs; the précis was not read.
- PhilPapers returned a Cloudflare 403.