In 1994 a secular guy named David Chalmers, then at University of Arizona, got famous because he characterized something that had been known and discussed for centuries. He described a problem James Trefil, a Physics professor at George Mason University described this way:

It is the only major question in the sciences that we don’t even know how to ask.

In a couple of papers, he described why the mind-brain (spirit) problem is no where close to being answered in any meaningful way. There is nothing religious in this article nor is David Chalmers friendly in any way toward Christianity–he is an atheist. Much deeper thinkers than he had said this same thing year after year for many years, but for some reason, he got famous for it. Here are his articles and a lengthy 2015 article on the subject in the Guardian.

  • The Hard Problem (1994)
  • Consciousness and It’s Place in Nature (2003)
  • An article from 2015 on why there had been virtually no progress on the problem even though we know a lot more about the brain (what part of the game attracts us to gambling, the part of the brain that causes different kinds of problems, etc.
  • They even did a TED talk on this thing.

I even wrote about it in my blog.

It caused an uproar in the psychology, philosophy and neuroscience worlds, maybe because he did such a good job of describing the problem. People have been trying to find ways to work on it much more aggressively ever since. I say they have been trying to find ways to work on it because they are not really working on the problem itself because it is not amenable to science. They are just trying to figure out a way to work on it.

This is all interesting stuff.

Betty Blonde #430 – 03/10/2010
Betty Blonde #430
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