physical properties ↔ David Chalmers

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cross_type 13.00 — strongly supporting 12 facts

David Chalmers is centrally concerned with the relationship between consciousness and physical properties, arguing that phenomenal experience is irreducible to physical properties as evidenced by his 'hard problem' [1], [2], and his support for property dualism [3], [4]. He defines physical properties as those describable from a third-person perspective [5] and asserts that they cannot account for the subjective nature of experience [6], [7], [8].

Facts (12)

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The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com Springer 7 facts

claimDavid Chalmers's theory of mind posits that the phenomenal character of experience is irreducible to physical properties, which implies the existence of an additional ontic category without necessarily requiring non-physical 'stuff'.

claimDavid Chalmers argues that because there is a subjective experience of being, consciousness cannot be explained solely in terms of physical properties and must be based on an irreducible fundamental non-physical ontic category.

claimThe core assumption of David Chalmers's 'hard problem of consciousness' is the irreducibility of consciousness to physical properties.

claimDavid Chalmers relates 'property dualism' to both the phenomenal and physical properties of an individual, and to emergent ontic properties of an underlying, more fundamental ontic substance.

claimDavid Chalmers does not consider a priori entailment between phenomenal and physical properties to be a necessary requirement for his theory of consciousness, preferring instead to rely on a contingent principle to explain the relationship.

claimDavid Chalmers defines the physical as properties that can be sufficiently described from a third-person perspective, in contrast to phenomenal properties which can only be described from a first-person view.

claimDavid Chalmers transforms the epistemological explanatory gap into an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal properties by arguing for the necessity of additional ontic categories.

Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 facts

claimDavid Chalmers asserts that no set of physical properties can constitute experience.

claimDavid Chalmers asserts that physical properties cannot imply experience due to the nature of physics, but the existence of novel intrinsic proto-experiential properties cannot be ruled out.

Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 fact

claimFundamental property dualism, as described by David Chalmers in 1996, regards conscious mental properties as basic constituents of reality, comparable to fundamental physical properties like electromagnetic charge, and asserts that their existence is not dependent on or derivative from other properties.

Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 fact

referenceDavid Chalmers' 1996 work on 'consciousness and information' classifies mental and physical properties as reducible to a psychophysically neutral domain.

Episode 2: The Hard Problem of Consciousness – David Chalmers ... futurepointdigital.substack.com Future Point Digital 1 fact

claimDavid Chalmers supports property dualism, which is the idea that mental properties are not reducible to physical ones, even if they are tightly correlated.