David Chalmers

Chalmers was born in Sydney, Australia, on April 20, 1966.⁠[1]

He earned an honours BSc in pure mathematics at the University of Adelaide (1983–1986) and in 1987 went to the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry as a Rhodes Scholar to study mathematics as a graduate student.⁠[2]

He recalls that at Oxford he became increasingly obsessed with the problem of consciousness and found current mathematical research less fundamental, so he left his graduate work in mathematics and switched fields.⁠[3]

He earned a PhD in philosophy and cognitive science at Indiana University.⁠[4]

In 1993 he completed his PhD dissertation at Indiana University.⁠[5]

As a graduate student he worked closely with Hofstadter, whom he calls “certainly the greatest influence on my thinking,” though their views on the mind differ.⁠[3]

From 1993 to 1995 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis with a fellowship from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, revising his first book on consciousness with graduate students there and working with Andy Clark on the extended mind.⁠[6]

In 1994, at a large consciousness conference in Tucson, he used the term “hard problem,” calling cognitive functions such as perception the easy problems and consciousness itself the hard one; the phrase then caught on. He said he had no idea it would “blow up the way it did.”⁠[7]

From 1995 to 1998 he taught philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, becoming professor in 1998.⁠[2]

In April 1996 Oxford University Press published The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, expanded from his 1993 PhD dissertation. It argues that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible, proposes fundamental laws connecting the physical and the experiential, and defends a form of strong artificial intelligence; it has been translated into nine languages.⁠[5]

In 1998 he and Andy Clark published “The Extended Mind” in Analysis, arguing that minds can sometimes extend beyond the skin; using the example of Otto, an Alzheimer’s patient who relies on an ever-present notebook, they suggested the notebook actually is his memory. The article prompted many responses.⁠[8]

He recalls that around 1998, at a consciousness conference, Christof KochChristof KochChristof Koch is a neuroscientist who studies the neural basis of consciousness; he collaborated with Francis Crick on consciousness research, taught at Caltech from 1986 to 2013, served from 2011 as chief scientific officer and then president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and is a leading proponent of integrated information theory.Open the full entry predicted that the neural correlates of consciousness would be found within 25 years; Chalmers took the other side, with a case of good wine at stake.⁠[9]

In 1999 he was appointed professor at the University of Arizona.⁠[1]

He is a co-founder and former director of the Center for Consciousness Studies in Tucson and co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.⁠[4]

In 2004 he was appointed professor at the Australian National University and head of its Centre for Consciousness.⁠[1]

He and David Bourget developed PhilPapers from 2006 to 2009; launched in early 2009, it offers a comprehensive index of the philosophy research literature, an open-access archive and a structured bibliography.⁠[10]

In March 2009 he accepted a half-time post at New York University, teaching there each fall for three years while spending the rest of the year at ANU; he also declined senior offers from PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry and Rutgers.⁠[11]

In March 2012 he accepted a tenured appointment as professor of philosophy at NYU, initially spending fall semesters at NYU and the rest of the year at ANU for at least two years, with an expected eventual full-time move to NYU.⁠[12]

From June 19 to 30, 2015, as recipient of the Jean Nicod Prize, he gave four lectures in Paris at NYU Paris and the ENS on “Spatial Experience and Virtual Reality,” arguing that virtual reality is not second-class reality.⁠[13]

On January 29, 2020, he appeared on episode 69 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing the simulation hypothesis, consciousness in virtual reality, music-color synesthesia, philosophical zombies, free will, the meta-problem of consciousness and whether AGI needs consciousness.⁠[14]

He gave an invited talk at NeurIPS 2022, “Could a Large Language Model be Conscious?”, addressing whether claims that large language models such as GPT-3 and LaMDA 2 might be sentient should be taken seriously and setting out the strongest reasons for and against.⁠[15]

On January 25, 2022, W. W. Norton (US) and Allen Lane (UK) published his Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, whose central thesis is that “virtual reality is genuine reality.”⁠[16]

In 2023 Koch publicly conceded at an event in New York and gave him six fine wines; on Koch’s new bet with a 2048 deadline, he said he was still taking the “no” side.⁠[9]

In 2024 he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy; his fields cover the philosophy of mind, language, consciousness and reality and the foundations of artificial intelligence and cognitive science.⁠[17]

That year he said in an interview that he is interested in the possibility of AI systems that are actually conscious, while current systems still fall short in many ways.⁠[6]

He is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness.⁠[18]

Personal website: Public link: https://consc.net/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

New York University: Official website: https://www.nyu.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

Australian National University: Official website: https://www.anu.edu.au/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

University of Arizona: Official website: https://www.arizona.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

University of California, Santa Cruz: Official website: https://www.ucsc.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

PhilPapers: Official website: https://philpapers.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]