Look up imaging in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's outward form; especially a visual representation (i.e., the formation of an image).

Imaging methodologies and technologies[link]

• Chemical imaging, the simultaneous measurement of spectra and pictures
• Digital imaging, creating digital images, generally by scanning, or through digital photography
• Disk image, a file which contains the exact content of a data storage medium
• Document imaging, replicating documents commonly used in business
• Geophysical imaging
• Medical imaging, creating images of the human body or parts of it, to diagnose or examine disease
  • Magnetic resonance imaging
• Molecular imaging
• Optical imaging
• Personal imaging, real-time sharing of personal experience through images
• Radar imaging, or imaging radar, for obtaining an image of an object, not just its location and speed
• Reprography, reproduction of graphics through electrical and mechanical means
  • Cinematography
  • Photography, the process of creating still images
  • Xerography, the method of photocopying
• Speckle imaging, a method of shift-and-add for astronomical imaging
• Stereo imaging, an aspect of sound recording and reproduction concerning spatial locations of the performers
• Thermography, infrared imaging

Proper names[link]

• Imaging for Windows, a software product for scanning paper documents

See also[link]

• Image development (disambiguation)
• Image processing
• Imaging technology (disambiguation)
• Imaging science, which includes many fields of science
• Remote sensing, imaging the Earth or a planet from space or aircraft

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Jeff Hawkins

Jeffrey Hawkins (born June 1, 1957, in Huntington, New York) is the founder of Palm Computing (where he invented the Palm Pilot)^[1] and Handspring (where he invented the Treo).^[2] He has since turned to work on neuroscience full-time, founded the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience (formerly the Redwood Neuroscience Institute) in 2002, and published On Intelligence describing his memory-prediction framework theory of the brain. In 2003 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering "for the creation of the hand-held computing paradigm and the creation of the first commercially successful example of a hand-held computing device."

Hawkins also serves on the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition for America and offers advice to the coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.^[3]

Early life and career[link]

Hawkins grew up with an inventive family on the north shore of Long Island. They developed a floating air cushion platform that was used for waterfront concerts. He attended Cornell University, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1979. He went to work for Intel, and then moved to GRiD Systems in 1982 where he developed Rapid Application Development (RAD) software. Hawkins' interest in pattern recognition for speech and text input to computers led him to enroll in the biophysics program at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. While there he patented a "pattern classifier" for hand written text, but his PhD proposal was rejected, apparently because none of the professors there were working in that field. The setback led him back to GRiD, where, as vice president of research, he developed their pen-based computing initiative that in 1989 spawned the GRiDPad, one of the first tablet computers.

Hawkins desired to move on with the development of a smaller, hand-held device, but executives at GRiD were reluctant to take the risk. Tandy Corporation had acquired GRiD in 1988, and they were willing to support Hawkins in a new venture company. Palm Computing was founded in January, 1992. Their first product was the Zoomer, a collaboration with Palm applications, GeoWorks OS, Casio hardware, and Tandy marketing. The Apple Newton came out about the same time, late 1993, but both products failed, partly due to poor character recognition software. Hawkins responded with Graffiti, a simpler and more effective recognition product that ran on both the Zoomer and the Newton. They also developed HotSync synchronization software for Hewlett Packard devices.

Hawkins searched for partners to build a simple new handheld, but was stymied until modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics stepped in with the financial backing and manufacturing expertise to bring the Palm Pilot to market in early 1996. By the fall of 1998, US Robotics' new owner, 3Com, was hindering his plans, and Hawkins left the company along with Palm co-founders Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan to start Handspring, which debuted the Handspring Visor in September 1999. 3Com ended up spinning off Palm in March, 2000, which then merged with Handspring in August, 2003.

Numenta[link]

In March 2005, Jeff Hawkins, together with Donna Dubinsky (Palm's original CEO) and Dileep George, founded Numenta, Inc. The company's goal is to simultaneously create a theory of how the brain works, and a computer algorithm to implement this theory.

They have been using biological information about the structure of the neocortex to guide the development of their theory on how the brain works. So far, they have come up with two major algorithmic frameworks: Hierarchical Temporal Memory and Fixed-sparsity Distributed Representations. The frameworks can find patterns in noisy data, model the latent causes, and make predictions about what patterns will come next.

The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

Neuroscience[link]

After graduating from Cornell in June 1979, he read a special issue of Scientific American on the brain in which Francis Crick lamented the lack of a grand theory explaining how the brain functions.^[4] Initially, Hawkins attempted to start a new department on the subject at his employer Intel, but was refused. He also unsuccessfully attempted to join the MIT AI Lab. He eventually decided he would try to find success in the computer industry and then try to use it to support his serious work on brains, as described in his book On Intelligence.

In 2002, after two decades of finding little interest from neuroscience institutions, Hawkins founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute in Menlo Park, California. As a result of the formation of Hawkins' new company, Numenta, the Institute was moved to the University of California, Berkeley on 1 July 2005, renamed the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, and is now administered through the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

In 2004, Hawkins published On Intelligence (with New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee), laying out his "memory-prediction framework" of how the brain works. His unified theory of the brain argues that the key to the brain and intelligence is the ability to make predictions about the world by seeing patterns. (cf. Franz Brentano's theory of intentionality, published in 1874) He argues that attempts to create an artificial intelligence by simply programming a computer to do what a brain does are flawed and that to actually make an intelligent computer, we simply need to teach it to find and use patterns, not to attempt any specific tasks. Through this method, he thinks we can build intelligent machines, helping us do all sorts of useful tasks that current computers cannot achieve. He further argues that this memory-prediction system as implemented by the brain's cortex is the basis of human intelligence.

References[link]

1. ^ Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence, p.28
2. ^ Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence, p.1
3. ^ "Secular Coalition for America Advisory Board Biography". Secular.org. http://www.secular.org/bios/Jeff_Hawkins.html. Retrieved 2011-07-20. 
4. ^ F H C Crick, Thinking about the Brain. Scientific American 1979, 241,3:181-188

Books[link]

• Hawkins, Jeff w/ Sandra Blakeslee (2005). On Intelligence, Times Books, Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0-8050-7456-2

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeff Hawkins

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeff Hawkins

• TED Talks: Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing - Jeff Hawkins speaks about his theories at TED in 2003
• Jeff Hawkins hacks the Human Brain article from Business 2.0
• On Intelligence
• Crazy about Brains Cornell Engineering Magazine, Spring 2005
• Jeff Hawkins: The man who almost single-handedly revived the handheld computer industry, Pen Computing
• Jeff Hawkins, creator of the PalmPilot, PalmPower Magazine
• Jeff Hawkins, creator of the PalmPilot (Part 2), PalmPower Magazine
• Video lecture: Can a New Theory of the Neocortex Lead to Truly Intelligent Machines?
• Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience
• Portability, People and Passion, Jeff Hawkins speaks at Stanford Podcast
• RSA 2008 Keynote Speaker on Hierarchical Temporal Memory
• 2008 Interview on the Brain Science Podcast
• 2008 Keynote Speech at the RSA Conference called Hierarchical 'Memory: Computing Beyond Turing'

Tom Bosley
Tom Bosley in September 1960
Born	Thomas Edward Bosley (1927-10-01)October 1, 1927 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	October 19, 2010(2010-10-19) (aged 83) Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Heart failure
Residence	Palm Springs, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	DePaul University
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1959–2010
Home town	Chicago, Illinois
Television	Happy Days, Murder, She Wrote, Father Dowling Mysteries
Spouse	Jane Eliot (1962–1978) Patricia Carr (1980–2010)
Children	1
Awards	Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, Cy Young Award
Signature

Thomas Edward "Tom" Bosley (October 1, 1927 – October 19, 2010) was an American actor. Bosley is best known for portraying Howard Cunningham on the long-running ABC sitcom Happy Days. He also was featured in recurring roles on Murder, She Wrote, and Father Dowling Mysteries. He originated the title role of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Fiorello!, earning the 1960 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical.

Early life[link]

Bosley was born in Chicago, the son of Dora (née Heyman) and Benjamin Bosley.^[1] Although well known for playing a Catholic priest—and numerous Protestants—Bosley was actually Jewish.^[2] During World War II, Bosley served in the United States Navy. While attending DePaul University, in Chicago, in 1947, he made his stage debut in Our Town with the Canterbury Players at the Fine Arts Theatre. Bosley performed at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, in 1949 and 1950 alongside Paul Newman.

Career[link]

Early roles and stage roles[link]

Bosley played the Knave of Hearts in a Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of Eva Le Gallienne's production of Alice in Wonderland in 1955. But his breakthrough stage role was New York mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in the long-running Broadway musical Fiorello! (1959), for which he won a Tony Award.^[3] In 1994, he originated the role of Maurice in the Broadway version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Bosley also toured as Cap'n Andy in Harold Prince's 1994 revival of Show Boat.^[4]

His first motion picture role was in 1963, as the would-be suitor of Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger. Other films include The World of Henry Orient, Divorce American Style, Yours, Mine and Ours, Gus and the made-for-television The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal. Bosley shared a heartfelt story about his experience with the Holocaust in the documentary film Paper Clips.

Bosley as George W. Norris in the television anthology Profiles in Courage, 1965

Among his early television appearances was in 1960 on the CBS summer replacement series, Diagnosis: Unknown, with Patrick O'Neal. In 1962, he portrayed Assistant District Attorney Ryan in the episode "The Man Who Wanted to Die" on James Whitmore's ABC legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones. In 1969, he appeared in a comical episode of The Virginian.

[edit] Happy Days and other notable film and television roles

Bosley's best known role was the character Howard Cunningham, Richie and Joanie Cunningham's father, in the long-running sitcom Happy Days. Bosley was also known for portraying Sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. He also portrayed the eponymous Father Frank Dowling on the TV mystery series, Father Dowling Mysteries. Among myriad television appearances, one notable early performance was in the "Eyes" segment of the 1969 pilot episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Joan Crawford.

Bosley also starred in the 2008 Hallmark Channel television movie Charlie & Me. In 2010, he appeared in The Backup Plan starring Jennifer Lopez, which was his final film.

In 1984, Bosley guest-hosted the "Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular" with local newscaster Pat Harper.^[5]

Voice over roles[link]

Also a voice actor, Bosley hosted The General Mills Radio Adventure Theater, a 1977 radio drama series for children. He voiced many cartoon characters, including Harry Boyle in the animated series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. He provided the voice of the title character in the 1980s cartoon The World of David the Gnome and the shop owner Mr. Winkle in the children's Christmas special The Tangerine Bear. He also narrated the movie documentary series That's Hollywood. Additionally, he played the narrator B.A.H. Humbug in the Rankin/Bass animated Christmas special The Stingiest Man In Town. Bosley was also the voice of Mister Geppetto, Pinocchio's 'dad' in Filmation's Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, released in 1987.

Commercials[link]

Tom Bosley in 1979

During the 1970s and 1980s, Bosley did several commercials for the Glad Sandwich and Garbage Bags.

Tom Bosley did radio commercials for the new Saturn Car Company a "different kind of car company," in 1990.

Later in life he was the television spokesman for SMC (Specialty Merchandise Corporation), a national wholesaler and dropshipper.^[6][7]

Bosley was also the “ face “ of LifeBack USA helping bring the benefits of Life Settlements to seniors, having himself sold an unwanted life insurance policy during his later life.

Role in Popular Culture[link]

In a 1997 episode of The Simpsons, Homer claims to have been the son of Tom Bosley. Homer and Marge are going to their high school reunion.

Homer: It'll be great to see the old gang again. Potsie, Ralph Malph, the Fonz.

Marge: That wasn't you, that was "Happy Days"!

Homer: No, they weren't all happy days. Like the time Pinky Tuscadero crashed her motorcycle, or the night I lost all my money to those card sharks and my dad Tom Bosley had to get it back.

Death[link]

Bosley died of heart failure on October 19, 2010, at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California near his home in Palm Springs, California.^[8] He was 83 years old. His agent, Sheryl Abrams, said Bosley had been battling lung cancer.^[8] His remains are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.

References[link]

External links[link]

United States Navy portal

Listen to this article (info/dl)

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More spoken articles

• Tom Bosley at the Internet Movie Database
• Tom Bosley at the Internet Broadway Database
• Archive of American Television interview
• Tom Bosley at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Tom Bosley at Find a Grave

Dr. Ben Goertzel after giving a talk at the 2009 Humanity+ Summit in Irvine California
Born	(1966-12-08) December 8, 1966 (age 45) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ben Goertzel (born December 8, 1966 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), is an American author and researcher in the field of artificial intelligence. He is currently Chief Science Officer of Hong Kong financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings, and also leads Novamente LLC, a privately held software company that attempts to develop a form of strong AI, which he calls "Artificial General Intelligence". He is also the CEO of Biomind LLC, a company that provides AI-based bioinformatics services. He is Vice Chair of futurist organization Humanity+ and he is an advisor to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and formerly its Director of Research.^[1]. He divides his time between residences in Hong Kong, and Rockville Maryland (USA).

Goertzel is the son of Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University.^[2] He left high school after the tenth grade to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. Goertzel went on to obtain a Ph.D. in mathematics from Temple University in 1989, then taught mathematics, computer science and psychology at various universities, including the University of Nevada, City University of New York, the University of Waikato, and the University of Western Australia.

From 1997 until 2001 he headed Webmind Inc. (also known as Intelligenesis Corp.), a company that he had founded and that attempted to use artificial intelligence for the analysis of financial markets. This work was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal^[3] and The New York Times,^[4] explaining the approach as machine learning combined with natural language processing applied to textual information gathered from the internet, in order to predict business risk or to aid in making buying decisions.

He explained his approach to creating Artificial General Intelligence in a Google Tech talk in May 2007.^[5] He defines intelligence as the ability to detect patterns in the world and in the agent itself. He tries to create a "baby-like" artificial intelligence first, and then raise and train this agent in a simulated or virtual world such as Second Life^[6] to produce a more powerful intelligence.^[7] Knowledge is represented in a network whose nodes and links carry probabilistic truth values as well as "attention values", with the attention values resembling the weights in a neural network. Several algorithms operate on this network, the central one being a combination of a probabilistic inference engine and a custom version of evolutionary programming.^[8] He claims that this combination is able to avoid the combinatorial explosions that both these algorithms suffer from when exposed to large problems.

In an August 2008 audio interview,^[9] Goertzel stated that he is a founding member of the transhumanist Order of Cosmic Engineers and that he has signed up with Alcor to have his body frozen after his death, and that he expects to live essentially indefinitely barring some catastrophic accident. He also promoted the OpenCog project which aims to build an open source general artificial intelligence engine. In, 1996 Goertzel together with Francis Heylighen founded the Global Brain Group to study the global brain emerging from an increasingly intelligent Internet, and in 2011 he joined the scientific board of the newly founded Global Brain Institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Publications[link]

Goertzel has written numerous research papers and journalistic articles. His books include:

• The Structure of Intelligence: A New Mathematical Model of Mind (Springer, 1993)
• The Evolving Mind (Gordon and Breach, 1993)
• Chaotic Logic: Language, Thought and Reality From the Perspective of Complex Systems Science (Plenum Press, 1994)
• Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics (Basic Books, 1995). Written with his father Ted Goertzel. Ted in turn is son of Victor and Mildred Goertzel and Ted credits his parents also as co-authors of the Pauling biography.^[10]
• From Complexity to Creativity (Plenum Press, 1997)
• Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum Press, 2001).
• Mind in Time (Hampden Press, 2003) co-edited by Allan Combs and Mark Germine.
• Artificial General Intelligence: Cognitive Technologies (Springer, 2005), co-edited with Cassio Pennachin, describes the mathematics underpinning the Novamente AI Engine.
• The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind (Brown Walker Press, 2006)
• The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006) co-authored with Stephan Vladimir Bugaj
• Advances in Artificial General Intelligence (IOS Press, 2007) co-edited with Pei Wang

See also[link]

• Whole brain emulation

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ben Goertzel's web site and blog
• Ben Goertzel's Machines Like Us interview
• Artificial Intelligence and Human Immortality, video of Ben Goertzel presentation at the Immortality Institute conference, 17 May 2006
• Google Tech Talk by Ben Goertzel, 30 May 2007
• Interview of Ben Goertzel, by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• Nine Years to a Positive Singularity – If We Really, Really Try. Speech given by Ben Goertzel at the Singularity Summit in September 2007
• Using Virtual Agents and Physical Robots for AGI Research. A Talk given by Ben Goertzel at The Third Conference on Artificial General Intelligence in March 2010 in Lugano Switzerland
• A General Intelligence Oriented Architecture for Embodied Natural Language Processing. A Talk given by Ben Goertzel at The Third Conference on Artificial General Intelligence in March 2010 in Lugano Switzerland
• Video interview with Ben Goertzel. Ben was interviewed during May 2011 about AGI, open cog and new book 'Building Better Minds'

David John Chalmers

Born	(1966-04-20) 20 April 1966 (age 46) Australia
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Philosophy of mind Consciousness Philosophy of language
Notable ideas	Hard problem of consciousness; property dualism; neutral monism; extended mind; two-dimensional semantics
Influenced by Douglas Hofstadter Daniel Dennett

David John Chalmers (born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University.^[1]

Background[link]

Chalmers was born and raised in Australia, and since 2004 has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. From an early age, he excelled at mathematics, eventually completing his undergraduate education at the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. He then briefly studied at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before studying for his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1995, and his first professorship was at UC Santa Cruz, from August 1995 to December 1998. Chalmers was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy (1999–2004) and, later, Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies (2002–2004) at the University of Arizona, sponsor of the Toward a Science of Consciousness^[2] conference where in 1994 he gave a well-received talk that raised his profile in the cognitive science community.^[3]

Chalmers's book, The Conscious Mind (1996), is widely considered (by both advocates and opponents) to be an essential work on consciousness and its relation to the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind.^[4] In the book, Chalmers argues that all forms of physicalism (whether reductive or non-reductive) that have dominated modern philosophy and science fail to account for the existence (that is, presence in reality) of consciousness itself. He proposes an alternative dualistic view he calls naturalistic dualism (but which might also be characterized by more traditional formulations such as property dualism, neutral monism, or double-aspect theory). The book was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year".^[5]

Work[link]

Philosophy of mind[link]

Chalmers is best known for his formulation of the notion of a hard problem of consciousness in both his book and in the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (originally published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995). He makes the distinction between "easy" problems of consciousness, such as explaining object discrimination or verbal reports, and the single hard problem, which could be stated "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?" He expressed this distinction at the first Tucson Conference in 1994. The essential difference between the (cognitive) easy problems and the (phenomenal) hard problem is that the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in philosophy of mind: functionalism. Chalmers argues for an "explanatory gap" from the objective to the subjective, and criticizes physical explanations of mental experience, making him a dualist.

In support of this, Chalmers is famous for his commitment to the logical (though, importantly, not natural) possibility of philosophical zombies, although he was not the first to propose the thought experiment. These zombies, unlike the zombie of popular fiction, are complete physical duplicates of human beings, lacking only qualitative experience. Chalmers argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are logically possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone. Instead, Chalmers argues that consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties, and that there may be lawlike rules which he terms "psychophysical laws" that determine which physical systems are associated with which types of qualia. He further speculates that all information-bearing systems may be conscious, leading him to entertain the possibility of conscious thermostats and a qualified panpsychism he calls panprotopsychism. Chalmers maintains a formal agnosticism on the issue, even conceding that the viability of panpsychism places him at odds with the majority of his contemporaries.

After the publication of Chalmers's landmark paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. These papers (by Daniel Dennett, Colin McGinn, Francisco Varela, Francis Crick, and Roger Penrose, among others) were collected and published in the book Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem. John Searle critiqued Chalmers's views in The New York Review of Books.^[6]

With Andy Clark Chalmers has written The Extended Mind, an article about the borders of the mind.^[7]

Philosophy of language[link]

Chalmers is also an important contributor to the philosophy of language. In this area, his contribution mainly focuses on the theory of reference, being concerned with how words secure their referents. He, together with others such as Frank Jackson, proposes a kind of theory called two dimensionalism arguing against Saul Kripke. Before Kripke delivered the famous lecture series Naming and Necessity in 1970, the descriptivism advocated by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell was the orthodoxy. Descriptivism suggests that a name is indeed an abbreviation of a description, which is a set of properties or, as later modified by John Searle, a disjunction of properties. This name secures its reference by a process of properties fitting: whichever object fits the description most, then it is the referent of the name. Therefore, the description is seen as the connotation, or, in Fregean term, the sense of the name, and it is via which the denotation of the name is determined.

However, as Kripke argued in Naming and Necessity, a name does not secure its reference via any process of description fitting. Rather, a name determines its reference via a historical-causal link tracing back to the process of naming. And thus, Kripke thinks that name does not have sense, or, at least, does not have sense which is rich enough to play the reference-determining role. Moreover, name, in Kripke's view, is a rigid designator, which refers to the same object in all possible worlds. Following this line of thought, Kripke suggests that all the scientific identity statement like "Water is H₂O" is also a necessary statement, i.e. true in all possible worlds. Kripke thinks that this is a phenomenon that the descriptivist cannot explain.

And, as also proposed by Hilary Putnam and Kripke himself, Kripke's view on name can also be applied to the reference of natural kind term. The kind of theory of reference that is advocated by Kripke and Putnam is called the direct reference theory.

However, Chalmers disagree with Kripke, and all the direct reference theorists in general. He thinks that there are two kind of intension of a natural kind term, a stance which is now called two dimensionalism. For example, the words,

"Water is H₂O"

are taken to express two distinct propositions, often referred to as a primary intension and a secondary intension, which together compose its meaning.^[8]

The primary intension of a word or sentence is its sense, i.e., is the idea or method by which we find its referent. The primary intension of "water" might be a description, such as watery stuff. The thing picked out by the primary intension of "water" could have been otherwise. For example, on some other world where the inhabitants take "water" to mean watery stuff, but where the chemical make-up of watery stuff is not H₂O, it is not the case that water is H₂O for that world.

The secondary intension of "water" is whatever thing "water" happens to pick out in this world, whatever that world happens to be. So if we assign "water" the primary intension watery stuff then the secondary intension of "water" is H₂O, since H₂O is watery stuff in this world. The secondary intension of "water" in our world is H₂O, and is H₂O in every world because unlike watery stuff it is impossible for H₂O to be other than H₂O. When considered according to its secondary intension, water means H₂O in every world. Via this secondary intension, Chalmers proposes a way to explain the necessity of the identity statement on one hand, and reserve the role of intension/sense in determining the reference, in the other hand.

Verbal disputes[link]

In recent work, Chalmers has concentrated on verbal disputes.^[9] He argues that a dispute is best characterized as "verbal" when it concerns some sentence S which contains a term T such that (i) the parties to the dispute disagree over the meaning of T, and (ii) the dispute arises solely because of this disagreement. In the same work, Chalmers describes novel procedures for the resolution of verbal disputes. One of these he calls the "elimination method", which involves eliminating the contentious term and observing whether any dispute remains.

In media[link]

Chalmers appears in the video documentary "The Roots of the Matrix" (a reference to The Matrix) and presents a novel take on a large part of the "brain in a vat" hypothesis, maintaining that it is not, contrary to common philosophical opinion, a skeptical hypothesis.

He serves on the editorial board of the journals Philo, Consciousness and Cognition, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Psyche.

He is also noted for originating the (philosophical) zombie blues^[10] and recently performed as part of the New York Consciousness Collective at the Qualia Fest held December 14, 2010 in New York.^[11]

See also[link]

• PhilPapers

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

A partial list of publications by Chalmers:

• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996). Oxford University Press. hardcover: ISBN 0-19-511789-1, paperback: ISBN 0-19-510553-2
• Toward a Science of Consciousness III: The Third Tucson Discussions and Debates (1999). Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak and David J. Chalmers (Editors). The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58181-7
• Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2002). (Editor). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514581-X or ISBN 0-19-514580-1
• The Character of Consciousness (2010). Oxford University Press. hardcover: ISBN 0-19-531110-8, paperback: ISBN 0-19-531111-6

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

• Official website
• David Chalmers's bibliography
• Fragments of Consciousness - Chalmers's blog.
• Interview with Chalmers - in Philosophy Now.
• Consciousness, an episode of Philosophy Talk, hosts Chalmers
• Video Interview on BloggingHeads.tv by science writer John Horgan.
• The Mystery of Consciousness on Bright SBM Production.