1.
Philosophy of mind
–
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind. The mind–body problem is an issue in philosophy of mind, although other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness. Dualism and monism are the two schools of thought on the mind–body problem, although nuanced views have arisen that do not fit one or the other category neatly. Dualism is seen even in the Eastern tradition, in the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, and Plato, monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza. Physicalists argue that only entities postulated by physical theory exist, physicalists maintain various positions on the prospects of reducing mental properties to physical properties, and the ontological status of such mental properties remains unclear. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the world is either mental itself. The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism, these positions include behaviorism, most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been influential in the sciences, especially in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology. Reductive physicalists assert that all states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states. Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to some of these issues, however. Modern philosophers of mind continue to ask how the subjective qualities, the mind–body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing, a related problem is how someones propositional attitudes cause that individuals neurons to fire and his muscles to contract. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter. It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, One of the earliest known formulations of mind–body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, which divided the world into purusha and prakriti. Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an approach to the nature of the mind
2.
Baruch Spinoza
–
Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin. Spinozas magnum opus, Ethics, was published posthumously in 1677, the work opposed René Descartes philosophy on mind–body dualism, and earned Spinoza recognition as one of Western philosophys most important thinkers. In the Ethics, Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, hegel said, You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him the prince of philosophers, Spinozas given name, which means Blessed, varies among different languages. In Hebrew, it is written ברוך שפינוזה, in Portuguese, hes called Benedito Bento de Espinosa and in Latin, Benedictus de Spinoza. Spinoza was raised in a Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam and he developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. Jewish religious authorities issued a herem against him, causing him to be shunned by Jewish society at age 23. His books were later put on the Catholic Churchs Index of Forbidden Books. Spinoza lived a simple life as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honours throughout his life. He died at the age of 44 allegedly of a lung illness and he is buried in the churchyard of the Christian Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. The Spinoza family probably had its origins in Espinosa de los Monteros, near Burgos, or in Espinosa de Cerrato, near Palencia, the family was expelled from Spain in 1492 and fled to Portugal. Portugal compelled them to convert to Catholicism in 1498, attracted by the Decree of Toleration issued in 1579 by the Union of Utrecht, Portuguese conversos first sailed to Amsterdam in 1593 and promptly reconverted to Judaism. In 1598 permission was granted to build a synagogue, and in 1615 an ordinance for the admission, as a community of exiles, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam were highly proud of their identity. Spinozas father was born roughly a century after this conversion in the small Portuguese city of Vidigueira. When Spinozas father was still a child, Spinozas grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza and they were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627. Spinozas father, Miguel, and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they resumed the practice of Judaism, Miguel was a successful merchant and became a warden of the synagogue and of the Amsterdam Jewish school. He buried three wives and three of his six children died before reaching adulthood, Amsterdam and Rotterdam operated as important cosmopolitan centres where merchant ships from many parts of the world brought people of various customs and beliefs. This flourishing commercial activity encouraged a relatively tolerant of the play of new ideas
3.
David Hume
–
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Humes empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, Francis Bacon, beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Humes compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom, Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Arthur Schopenhauer once declared there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart. Hume is thus regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought. David Hume was the second of two born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, and his wife The Hon. Katherine. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Humes father died when Hume was a child, just after his birthday, and he was raised by his mother. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. His finances as a man were very slender. His family was not rich and, as a younger son and he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. Aged around 18, he made a discovery that opened up to him a new Scene of Thought. He did not recount what this scene was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations, due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the Disease of the Learned. Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a Laziness of Temper, later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Humes physician to make his diagnosis, Hume wrote that he went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills, taken along with a pint of claret every day
4.
Ernst Mach
–
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as study of shock waves. The ratio of speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor. Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was born in Brno-Chrlice, Moravia and his father, who had graduated from Charles University in Prague, acted as tutor to the noble Brethon family in Zlín, eastern Moravia. His grandfather, Wenzl Lanhaus, an administrator of the estate Chirlitz, was master builder of the streets there. His activities in that later influenced the theoretical work of Ernst Mach. Some sources give Machs birthplace as Turas/Tuřany, the site of the Chirlitz registry-office, peregrin Weiss baptized Ernst Mach into the Roman Catholic Church in Turas/Tuřany. Despite his Catholic background, he became an atheist and his theory. Up to the age of 14, Mach received his education at home from his parents and he then entered a Gymnasium in Kroměříž, where he studied for three years. In 1855 he became a student at the University of Vienna and his early work focused on the Doppler effect in optics and acoustics. During that period, Mach continued his work in psycho-physics and in sensory perception, in 1867, he took the chair of Experimental Physics at the Charles University, Prague, where he stayed for 28 years before returning to Vienna. Machs main contribution to physics involved his description and photographs of spark shock-waves and he described how when a bullet or shell moved faster than the speed of sound, it created a compression of air in front of it. Using schlieren photography, he and his son Ludwig were able to photograph the shadows of the shock waves. During the early 1890s Ludwig was able to invent an interferometer which allowed for much clearer photographs, one of the best-known of Machs ideas is the so-called Mach principle, concerning the physical origin of inertia. This was never written down by Mach, but was given a verbal form, attributed by Philipp Frank to Mach himself, as, When the subway jerks. Mach also became known for his philosophy developed in close interplay with his science. Mach defended a type of phenomenalism recognizing only sensations as real and this position seemed incompatible with the view of atoms and molecules as external, mind-independent things. He famously declared, after an 1897 lecture by Ludwig Boltzmann at the Imperial Academy of Science in Vienna, from about 1908 to 1911 Machs reluctance to acknowledge the reality of atoms was criticized by Max Planck as being incompatible with physics. In 1898 Mach suffered from cardiac arrest and in 1901 retired from the University of Vienna and was appointed to the chamber of the Austrian parliament
5.
William James
–
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most cited psychologist of the 20th century and he also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B, du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter. Born into a family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. James wrote widely on topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion. William James was born at the Astor House in New York City and he was the son of Henry James Sr. a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French, education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, fought in the Civil War, the other three siblings all suffered from periods of invalidism. He took up studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867 and he traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868, at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish, reviews of his works appeared in periodicals such as the North American Review. James finally earned his M. D. degree in June 1869, what he called his soul-sickness would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878, in 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society. Jamess time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy. Later, in 1902 he would write, I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave. In 1875–1876, James, Henry Pickering Bowditch, Charles Pickering Putnam, G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud
6.
Bertrand Russell
–
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist and he was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British revolt against idealism and he is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th centurys premier logicians, with A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay On Denoting has been considered a paradigm of philosophy, Russell mostly was a prominent anti-war activist, he championed anti-imperialism. Occasionally, he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the monopoly is gone. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, in 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire and his parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wifes affair with their childrens tutor, both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was an atheist and his atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russells secular godfather, Mill died the year after Russells birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russells life. His paternal grandfather, the Earl Russell, had asked twice by Queen Victoria to form a government. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power, Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. Russell had two siblings, brother Frank, and sister Rachel, in June 1874 Russells mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachels death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents and his grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell, was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russells childhood, the countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberleys will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Her favourite Bible verse, Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, the atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality, Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings
7.
Noam Chomsky
–
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as the father of modern linguistics, Chomsky is also a figure in analytic philosophy. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, born to middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard Universitys Society of Fellows and he is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a role in the decline of behaviorism. Associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism, while expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the Linguistics Wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later co-wrote an analysis articulating the propaganda model of media criticism, however, his defense of unconditional freedom of speech—including for Holocaust deniers—generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the early 1980s. Following his retirement from teaching, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the War on Terror. One of the most cited scholars in history, Chomsky has influenced an array of academic fields. Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7,1928, in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and his father was William Zev Chomsky, an Ashkenazi Jew originally from Ukraine who had fled to the United States in 1913. Chomskys mother was the Belarusian-born Elsie Simonofsky, a teacher and activist whom William had met while working at Mikveh Israel, Noam was the Chomsky familys first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was five years later. The brothers were close, although David was more easygoing while Noam could be very competitive, as a Jew, Chomsky faced anti-semitism as a child, particularly from the Irish and German communities living in Philadelphia. He was substantially influenced by his uncle who owned a newspaper stand in New York City, whenever visiting his uncle, Chomsky frequented left-wing and anarchist bookstores in the city, voraciously reading political literature. He later described his discovery of anarchism as an accident, because it allowed him to become critical of other far-left ideologies, namely Stalinism. Chomskys primary education was at Oak Lane Country Day School, an independent Deweyite institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere. It was here, at age 10, that he wrote his first article, on the spread of fascism, from the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics
8.
Panpsychism
–
In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that consciousness, mind or soul is a universal and primordial feature of all things. Panpsychists see themselves as minds in a world of mind, Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed to philosophers like Thales, Parmenides, Plato, Averroes, Spinoza, Leibniz and William James. Panpsychism can also be seen in ancient philosophies such as Stoicism, Taoism, Vedanta, during the 19th century, panpsychism was the default theory in philosophy of mind, but it saw a decline during the middle years of the 20th century with the rise of logical positivism. The recent interest in the problem of consciousness has revived interest in panpsychism. The term panpsychism has its origins with the Greek term pan and psyche as the center of the mental life of us humans. Psyche comes from the Greek word ψύχω and can mean life, soul, mind, spirit, heart, early forms of panpsychism can be found in pre-modern animistic beliefs in religions such as Shinto, Taoism, Paganism and shamanism. Panpsychist views are also a theme in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. According to Aristotle, Thales the first Greek philosopher, posited a theory which held that everything is full of gods, Thales believed that this was demonstrated by magnets. This has been interpreted as a panpsychist doctrine, other Greek thinkers that have been associated with Panpsychism include Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and Heraclitus. Plato argues for Panpsychism in his Sophist, in which he writes that all things participate in the form of Being, in the Philebus and Timaeus, Plato argues for the idea of a world soul or anima mundi. According to Plato, This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul, a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related. Stoicism developed a cosmology which held that the world was infused with a divine fiery essence called Pneuma. The relationship of the individual Logos of beings with the universal Logos was a concern of the Roman Stoic Marcus Aurelius. The Metaphysics of Stoicism was based on Hellenistic philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism also made use of the Platonic idea of the Anima mundi, after the closing of Platos Academy by the Emperor Justinian in 529 CE, Neoplatonism declined. Though there were mediaeval Christian thinkers who ventured what might be called panpsychist ideas, cardano argued for the view that soul or anima was a fundamental part of the world and Patrizi introduced the actual term panpsychism into the philosophical vocabulary. According to Giordano Bruno, There is nothing that does not possess a soul, platonist ideas like the anima mundi also resurfaced in the work of esoteric thinkers like Paracelsus, Robert Fludd and Cornelius Agrippa. In the 17th century, two rationalists can be said to be panpsychists, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, in Spinozas monism, the one single infinite and eternal substance was God, or Nature which has the aspects of mind and matter. Leibniz view is there are an infinite number of absolutely simple mental substances called monads which make up the fundamental structure of the universe
9.
Consciousness
–
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. Despite the difficulty in definition, many believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. Western philosophers, since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness, the majority of experimental studies assess consciousness in humans by asking subjects for a verbal report of their experiences. The origin of the concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke defined consciousness as the perception of what passes in a mans own mind and his essay influenced the 18th-century view of consciousness, and his definition appeared in Samuel Johnsons celebrated Dictionary. Consciousness is also defined in the 1753 volume of Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie, the earliest English language uses of conscious and consciousness date back, however, to the 1500s. This phrase had the meaning of knowing that one knows. In its earliest uses in the 1500s, the English word conscious retained the meaning of the Latin conscius. For example, Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan wrote, Where two, or more men, know of one and the fact, they are said to be Conscious of it one to another. The Latin phrase conscius sibi, whose meaning was more related to the current concept of consciousness, was rendered in English as conscious to oneself or conscious unto oneself. For example, Archbishop Ussher wrote in 1613 of being so conscious unto myself of my great weakness, Lockes definition from 1690 illustrates that a gradual shift in meaning had taken place. A related word was conscientia, which primarily means moral conscience, in the literal sense, conscientia means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by such as Cicero. Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else, rené Descartes is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use conscientia in a way that does not fit this traditional meaning. Descartes used conscientia the way modern speakers would use conscience, in Search after Truth he says conscience or internal testimony. The dictionary meaning of the word consciousness extends through several centuries, B. inward awareness of an external object, state, or fact. The philosophy of mind has given rise to many stances regarding consciousness, something within ones mind is introspectively conscious just in case one introspects it. Introspection is often thought to deliver ones primary knowledge of ones mental life, an experience or other mental entity is phenomenally conscious just in case there is something it is like for one to have it
10.
Daniel Dennett
–
As of 2017 he is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, Dennett is referred to as one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Dennett is a member of the board for The Rutherford Journal. Dennett was born on March 28,1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, when he was five, his mother took him back to Massachusetts after his father died in an unexplained plane crash. Dennetts sister is the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett, Dennett says that he was first introduced to the notion of philosophy while attending summer camp at age 11, when a camp counselor said to him, You know what you are, Daniel. Dennett graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1959, and spent one year at Wesleyan University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at Harvard University in 1963, at Harvard University he was a student of W. V. Quine. In 1965, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy at the University of Oxford and he is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and he was named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundations Honorary Board of distinguished achievers, the intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference. Second, I think it installs indeterminism in the place for the libertarian. From the point of view of engineering, it is just more efficient. A fourth observation in favor of the model is that it permits moral education to make a difference, without making all of the difference. Fifth—and I think this is perhaps the most important thing to be said in favor of this provides some account of our important intuition that we are the authors of our moral decisions. They claim that, if chance is the cause of decisions. Kane says, a causal indeterminist view of this kind does not give us everything libertarians have wanted from free will. For does not have control over what chance images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his deliberation. They simply come as they please, does have some control after the chance considerations have occurred. But then there is no more chance involved, what happens from then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he already has
11.
David Chalmers
–
David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University and he is also a University Professor, Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science, and a Director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, since 2004, Chalmers has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. Chalmers received his degree in pure mathematics from the University of Adelaide in Australia and continued his studies at the University of Oxford. Chalmers received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter, after appearing as a plenary speaker at the first meeting, Chalmers has subsequently taken the role of co-organizer, alongside Stuart Hameroff, of this conference. Chalmers 1996 book, The Conscious Mind, was described by The Sunday Times as one of the best science books of the year. In the book, Chalmers argues that all forms of physicalism that have dominated modern philosophy and he proposes an alternative dualistic view he calls naturalistic dualism. He is the singer of the Zombie Blues band which performed at the Qualia Fest in 2012 in New York. Chalmers is an editor on topics in the philosophy of mind for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on 14 June 2016 David Chalmers visited Moscow to hold a lecture at Moscow State University focused on solving the Hard problem of consciousness. He also gave an interview about before holding a lecture at the Moscow State University, Chalmers is best known for his formulation of the notion of a hard problem of consciousness in both his 1996 book and in the 1995 paper Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. The essential difference between the easy problems and the problem is that the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in philosophy of mind. Chalmers argues for a gap from the objective to the subjective. In support of this, Chalmers is famous for his commitment to the possibility of philosophical zombies. These zombies, unlike the zombie of popular fiction, are complete physical duplicates of human beings, Chalmers argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone. He further speculates that all information-bearing systems may be conscious, leading him to entertain the possibility of conscious thermostats, Chalmers maintains a formal agnosticism on the issue, even conceding that the viability of panpsychism places him at odds with the majority of his contemporaries. After the publication of Chalmerss landmark paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies and these papers were collected and published in the book Explaining Consciousness, The Hard Problem. John Searle critiqued Chalmerss views in The New York Review of Books, with Andy Clark, Chalmers has written The Extended Mind, an article about the borders of the mind
