The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory [Book Review]

Abstract

The most famous twentieth-century philosophical treatise ends with the enigmatic invocation "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muβ man schweigen" ("Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"). David Chalmers has obviously considered these words as a challenge and has written a 400-page book (essentially a lengthy version of his PhD thesis) dealing with a topic that the young Ludwig Wittgenstein felt should be left unspoken. As I suspect that Chalmers will be remembered by many as the one who put the so-called 'hard' problem of consciousness on the map (both in the introduction to this book and even more so in his Scientific American article in December 1995), let me start here.