Table of Contents for The Conscious Mind                 

by David J. Chalmers. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Introduction: Taking Consciousness Seriously

PART I: FOUNDATIONS

• Chapter 1: Two Concepts of Mind
• What is consciousness?
• The phenomenal and the psychological concepts of mind
• The double life of mental terms
• The two mind-body problems
• Two concepts of consciousness
  
• Chapter 2: Supervenience and Explanation
• Supervenience
• Reductive explanation
• Logical supervenience and reductive explanation
• Conceptual truth and necessary truth
• Almost everything is logically supervenient on the physical

PART II: THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

• Chapter 3: Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained?
• Is consciousness logically supervenient on the physical?
• The failure of reductive explanation
• Cognitive modeling
• Neurophysiological explanation
• The appeal to new physics
• Evolutionary explanations
• Whither reductive explanation?
  
• Chapter 4: Naturalistic Dualism
• An argument against materialism
• Objection from a posteriori necessity
• Other arguments for dualism
• Is this epiphenomenalism?
• The logical geography of the issues
• Reflections on naturalistic dualism
  
• Chapter 5: The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment
• Consciousness and cognition
• The paradox of phenomenal judgment
• On explaining phenomenal judgments
• Arguments against explanatory irrelevance
• The argument from self-knowledge
• The argument from memory
• The argument from reference

PART III: TOWARD A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

• Chapter 6: On the Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition
• Toward a nonreductive theory
• Principles of coherence
• More on the notion of awareness
• The explanatory role of coherence principles
• Coherence as a psychophysical law
  
• Chapter 7: Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia
• The principle of organizational invariance
• Absent qualia
• Fading qualia
• Inverted qualia
• Dancing qualia
• Nonreductive functionalism
  
• Chapter 8: Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation
• Toward a fundamental theory
• Aspects of information
• Some supporting arguments
• Is experience ubiquitous?
• The metaphysics of information
• Open question

PART IV: APPLICATIONS

• Chapter 9: Strong Artificial Intelligence
• Machine consciousness
• On implementing a computation
• In defense of strong AI
• The Chinese room and other objections
• External objections
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 10: The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
• Two mysteries
• The framework of quantum mechanics
• Interpreting quantum mechanics
• The Everett interpretation
• Objections to the Everett interpretation
• Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Go to:

• David Chalmers' home page
• The Conscious Mind web page