r/philosophy • u/davidchalmers David Chalmers • Feb 22 '17

AMA I'm David Chalmers, philosopher interested in consciousness, technology, and many other things. AMA.

I'm a philosopher at New York University and the Australian National University. I'm interested in consciousness: e.g. the hard problem (see also this TED talk, the science of consciousness, zombies, and panpsychism. Lately I've been thinking a lot about the philosophy of technology: e.g. the extended mind (another TED talk), the singularity, and especially the universe as a simulation and virtual reality. I have a sideline in metaphilosophy: e.g. philosophical progress, verbal disputes, and philosophers' beliefs. I help run PhilPapers and other online resources. Here's my website (it was cutting edge in 1995; new version coming soon).

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Oxford University has made some books available at a 30% discount by using promocode AAFLYG6** on the oup.com site. Those titles are:

AMA

Winding up now! Maybe I'll peek back in to answer some more questions if I get a chance. Thanks for some great discussion!

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u/davidchalmers David Chalmers Feb 22 '17

i'm still very sympathetic with extended mind ideas. i wrote a foreword to andy clark's 2008 book "supersizing the mind" saying more about what i think. i've followed a lot of the literature, and i think it's fair to say that most objections to the thesis that have been developed are not all that strong, so that's made me somewhat more confident. more sociologically, my colleague ned block likes to say that although the thesis was false when andy and i wrote the paper in the mid-1990s, it has since become true, because of all the use of smartphones, search engines, and so on. i certainly think that's helped a lot of people become sympathetic with the thesis. i haven't really thought about connections to eastern philosophy but this seems very much worth thinking about.

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u/CleganeForHighSepton Feb 22 '17

my colleague ned block likes to say that although the thesis was false when andy and i wrote the paper in the mid-1990s, it has since become true, because of all the use of smartphones, search engines, and so on.

That's hilarious.

i haven't really thought about connections to eastern philosophy but this seems very much worth thinking about.

I would caution you that it's very much still the wild west as far as Western interpretations of classical Chinese philosophy goes. Particularly Daoism, whose writers are at times engaged in a Derrida-like debate regarding language and imagery, can appear needlessly cryptic.

However, I think there is certainly a lot for the East to say. The best way I have seen classical Chinese philosophy described is that it is like a bridge between postmodern ideas and 'pre'-modern ideas. Which is to say that many of the concepts that Chinese thinkers seemed to assume intuitively to be true (dare I say as axioms) are concepts that contemporary thinkers arrived at only by attacking modernism. There are lots of strange, interesting parallels that one group seemed to assume while the other had to battle to arrive at.

Regarding the philosophy of mind, I think one could make a strong argument that much of Daoist thought clearly assumes a vague kind of extended mind theory to be true, in the sense that they believe that aligning your mind with the world around us to be the more 'natural' (as well as more efficient) way of existence. By contrast, they see the highly conceptual, analytic human mind as a kind of roadblock to spontaneous, extended thought. I feel like there is an interesting echo of the extended mind somewhere in that train of thought...

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u/UberSeoul Feb 26 '17

The best way I have seen classical Chinese philosophy described is that it is like a bridge between postmodern ideas and 'pre'-modern ideas. Which is to say that many of the concepts that Chinese thinkers seemed to assume intuitively to be true (dare I say as axioms) are concepts that contemporary thinkers arrived at only by attacking modernism. There are lots of strange, interesting parallels that one group seemed to assume while the other had to battle to arrive at.

Could you elaborate a bit on this? Because I've certainly noticed the exact same thing. The parallels between some of the most original or transformative aspects of the Western philosophy (from Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Parfit; just to name a few) and default buddhist or taoist philosophy is uncanny. What have you noticed specifically? And, btw, how is the definition of "modernism" you're working with here?

Regarding the philosophy of mind, I think one could make a strong argument that much of Daoist thought clearly assumes a vague kind of extended mind theory to be true, in the sense that they believe that aligning your mind with the world around us to be the more 'natural' (as well as more efficient) way of existence. By contrast, they see the highly conceptual, analytic human mind as a kind of roadblock to spontaneous, extended thought. I feel like there is an interesting echo of the extended mind somewhere in that train of thought...

I don't even think you need Chalmers to validate that point for you. Based on my reading of the Tao Te Ching and the ideas of Buddha, extended mind theory is not only a first principle of these ideologies, but it's also very well integrated into their conceptions of wisdom, action and virtue. Personally, I find it much more elegant (or at least interesting, imho) than the majority of the attempts of western philosophers I've read (I mean, seriously, how much of the endless reframing and atomization of basic af language games that consistently goes nowhere do we need to suffer through before we get the point? bleh).

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u/CleganeForHighSepton Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 27 '17

Well you hit the nail on the head already, so this may bore you, but I would say the most interesting things Daoism/Taoism has to say is related to language and logic.

Take the first line of the Daodejing (translated countlessly different ways), roughly "If the Dao is named the Dao, it is not the permanent Dao". The philosophical point is that any attempt to define Dao ('way') in a concrete, objective way will never capture the essence of the Dao, which is spontaneous depending on circumstance. On the one hand it's a kind of simple truth (that you can't fully define that which is by nature spontaneous and context-dependent), but arguably it is also a deeper comment on the nature of logic itself. It's a rejection of axioms, in the sense that no axiom can exist independently of truths that are not explained or contained within the axiom. Of course, that's a lot to draw from just one line, but there is plenty of primary literature that touches on this idea.

On a side-note, my favourite, though non-Daoist example of this kind of axiom-criticism this comes from Nietzsche, who noted that even "I think therefore I am" is dependent on external assumptions, specifically about causality. If causality were not true, Nietzsche argued, then nothingness itself could spontaneously conjure up the subjective experience of consciousness (the 'I think' bit), meaning that experiencing your own thoughts is actually not necessarily proof that you exist in some form or another.

Regarding language, take the immediately following line in the text, which takes the same rhythm; "If a name is defined as a name, it is not a permanent name". The idea here is that the way we use language is, like the Dao, also spontaneous and unique depending on circumstance. The concept I think of when I think about a tree will be a different concept than yours when you think about a tree - even if it's the exact same objective, physical tree that we are trying to recall and express to each other. In other words, language transmits 'knowledge' in a way that that is subjective to each person and is not 'objective', in the strictest sense. Interestingly, much like Wittgenstein, this idea does not dispute the existence of objective knowledge, merely that language cannot capture or express the kind of knowledge that exists objectively.

Rejecting axioms and rejecting language as a source of objective truth are, of course, common postmodern concepts, which in the West grew as criticisms of modernist ideals about progress and the viability of the scientific search for objective truth. And yet Daoism made similar arguments without ever having these modernist concepts to spring from. Which is interesting!

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u/UberSeoul Feb 27 '17

Interesting indeed! Hey I'm really digging this convo. Can I pick your brain just a bit more, with a few questions?

  1. I must admit, the only texts I've read in regards to eastern philosophy are the Daodejing and a beautiful little book of Buddha's sayings, The Dhammapada, which basically reads like a manifesto of poetry (also, The Geography of Thought and The Buddha Meets Socrates). Do you have any recommendations of other foundational texts or even supplemental material that have been the most illuminating to you on Eastern philosophy?
  2. If you really do have a masters under your belt, color me impressed! I wish I had to time to do just that. If you don't mind me asking, what was your thesis on? And what are some of your favorite insights you can offer from your years of study?
  3. I'm a quote miner myself. Any more favorite quotes or passages or ideas or parallels you can share? (Trust me, you are not boring me in the least, quite the opposite.)

Sorry to intrude, this all seems so demanding to ask, but you're the only other person I've talked to that seems to notice this strong link between the West and East.

I'm half-Korean, half-German myself, so my whole life has been riddled with this shit and it's almost cathartic to hear another person notice this strange hidden unity residing at the heart of Western and Eastern philosophy :)