Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia.

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

There's certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem.

Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

Within psychology and neuroscience, some new and rigorous experimental paradigms for studying consciousness have helped it begin to overcome the stigma that has been attached to the topic for most of this century.

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

Here, the broader issues are already familiar, and discussion has focused at a more sophisticated and detailed level. Within the philosophy of mind, the problem of consciousness is no big news.

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best.

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a "neural correlate of consciousness"?

Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia.

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years.

Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this.

I never expected this to catch on in the way it did! Of course similar observations have been made by any number of people, and the distinction is obvious to anyone who thinks about the subject a little.

Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate.

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.

Because the idea of zombies seems to make sense, and seems to, in a certain sense, be possible, I think one can use that to argue against the thesis that everything is purely physical. Now many people, I think, agree that the idea of zombies are conceivable, including people who want to be physicalists.

I had the idea that it would be wonderful to be a physicist or a mathematician maybe 500 years ago around the time of Newton when there were really fundamental things just lying around to be discovered.

I think the existence of zombies would contradict certain laws of nature in our world. It seems to be a law of nature, in our world, that when you get a brain of a certain character you get consciousness going along with it.

My interests started about in science and in mathematics; I always thought I was going to be a mathematician.

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.

Studying consciousness tells us more about how the world is fundamentally strange. I think we have a few revolutions to go yet before we get to the bottom of it.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a 'neural correlate of consciousness'?

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science.

And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence.

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.

I'm not sure how aware of the rest of the world I am. I live a rather sheltered existence.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

Now it would be as absurd to deny the existence of God, because we cannot see him, as it would be to deny the existence of the air or wind, because we cannot see it.

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

A vast abortion industry, generating some half a billion dollars annually, sprang into existence in the wake of Roe and Doe.

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.