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Thinkers

David Chalmers

Analytic · North America · born 1966

Australian-born philosopher who named the hard problem of consciousness: why brain activity comes with felt experience at all.

What it is

David Chalmers (born 1966) is an Australian philosopher who works on the mind. He studied mathematics at the University of Adelaide, spent a year or so at Oxford, and took his doctorate in philosophy and cognitive science at Indiana University under Douglas Hofstadter. He has taught in the United States and Australia and is now at New York University, where he is professor of philosophy and neural science.

He is best known for naming the hard problem of consciousness, the question of why the workings of a brain are accompanied by experience at all, and for his book The Conscious Mind (1996).

The main ideas

  • Easy and hard problems. Explaining the function, dynamics and structure of consciousness is a matter of explaining how functions get performed. Chalmers called these the easy problems, because they are at least theoretically answerable by physical explanation. The hard problem is why any of this comes with experience, with something it is like to be the subject.
  • Why function is not enough. Even a full account of the functions leaves a question open. He pointed to the idea of zombies, creatures like us in every physical and functional respect but without consciousness. They are a way of asking whether a functional account could ever be the whole story.
  • His own view. He has argued for a position he calls naturalistic dualism, and has written on panpsychism and panprotopsychism.
  • The extended mind. He has also worked on the idea that the tools we use, such as phones and the internet, can literally become part of our minds.
  • Virtual worlds. In Reality+ (2022) he applies his philosophy to virtual reality and to the question of what is real.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine a scientist who has mapped every step between a flash of light and a person saying "I saw red", and who still feels that nothing has yet been said about the seeing. Chalmers would call that unease the hard problem. This is an illustration of his line of thought, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • The Conscious Mind (1996) is his book on the nature of consciousness.
  • The Character of Consciousness (2010) is another of his books.
  • Constructing the World is a further book of his.
  • Reality+ (2022) takes up virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy.

Questions and criticism

  • Are zombies truly conceivable? It is fair to ask whether what we can imagine tells us what is possible.
  • Is dualism the only way out? If the hard problem cannot be solved with physical explanation, it is an open question what should replace or supplement it.
  • Is the problem real? It is an open question whether there is a distinct hard problem at all.

Close neighbours

The pages on Thomas Nagel and John Searle take up the same puzzle of mind and brain from other angles.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Thomas Nagel · Chalmers took up his point that the inner, felt side of experience is left out by physical accounts. (scholars disagree about this link)

Other Analytic thinkers

Sources we used

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