Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN 13 | 9780199608584 |
ISBN 10 | 019960858X |
Book Description | David J. Chalmers constructs a highly ambitious and original picture of the world, from a few basic elements. He develops and extends Rudolf Carnap's attempt to do the same in Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt (1928). Carnap gave a blueprint for describing the entire world using a limited vocabulary, so that all truths about the world could be derived from that description―but his Aufbau is often seen as a noble failure. In Constructing the World, Chalmers argues that something like the Aufbau project can succeed. With the right vocabulary and the right derivation relation, we can indeed construct the world. |
About the Author | David Chalmers is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University, and Professor of Philosophy at New York University. After studying mathematics at Adelaide and Oxford, he completed a PhD in philosophy and cognitive science at Indiana University in 1993. His 1996 book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory was highly successful with both popular and academic audiences. As director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona from 1999 to 2004, and as a founder of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, he has played a major role in developing the interdisciplinary science of consciousness. He is well known for his formulation of the 'hard problem' of consciousness and his arguments against materialism. He has also written on topics as diverse as the nature of meaning, the foundations of artificial intelligence, and philosophical issues in The Matrix. |
Language | English |
Author | DavidJ Chalmers |
Publication Date | 2014 |
Number of Pages | 520 |
Constructing The World Paperback English by DavidJ Chalmers - 2014