Further reading

For a more advanced introduction to the topic of consciousness, which includes an historical survey of philosophical and psychological work on the topic and a survey of recent debates, see:

Güzeldere, G. (1997) ‘The many faces of consciousness: a field guide’, in N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere (eds), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, pp. 1–67. (The collection in which this essay appears is a useful one, which reprints many important papers on consciousness.)

The following chapters also contain useful introductions – though each reflects its author's own theoretical preoccupations and assumptions:

Carruthers, P. (2000) Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1. (Introduces some useful distinctions and concepts and provides a route map of contemporary theories of consciousness.)

Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York, Oxford University Press, Chapters 1–2. (Chapter 1 is an accessible introduction to the problem of consciousness; Chapter 2 is technical but includes useful discussion of reductive explanation.)

Dennett, D.C. (1991) Consciousness Explained, Boston, Little, Brown, Chapter 2. (Argues against substance dualist approaches to consciousness.)

McGinn, C. (1999) The Mysterious Flame, New York, Basic Books, Chapter 1. (Emphasises how strange and inexplicable consciousness can seem.)

Tye, M. (1995) Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, Chapter 1. (Introduces phenomenal consciousness and outlines a number of problems surrounding it.)

Finally, a useful general resource, which you may like to explore at your leisure, is David Chalmers's website, at http://consc.net/ chalmers [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . This contains a wealth of material on consciousness, including a list of online papers, bibliographies of philosophical and scientific work and many of Chalmers's own papers.