In 2023, dualist philosopher David Chalmers unexpectedly won an important 25-year science wager with Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch. Chalmers took the view that no physical “consciousness spot” would be found in the brain by 2023 — and it wasn’t.

Last month, Robert Lawrence Kuhn asked Chalmers at Closer to Truth,

Kuhn: David, you are a great proponent of consciousness being fundamental. What does that imply about the nature of the self? [0:07] So let’s just take the two views extent now: Consciousness is fundamental, as you and an increasing number of people believe and then the traditional belief at least over the last century, the traditional scientific view that consciousness is just derivative — it’s emerging from the brain in ways that we understand some and not all.

Chalmers: If you’re a [2:01] reductionist, you’re going to say both consciousness and the self are derivative, non-fundamental things. That’s the materialist view. Then there’s the property dualist view that says consciousness is a fundamental property.
And then there’s the substance dualist view that says consciousness is a fundamental property and it’s had by a fundamental entity, the self. I divide my credence between those two latter views.

A sign of how things are changing …

Note Kuhn’s phrasing: “Consciousness is fundamental, as you and an increasing number of people believe.” Neither Chalmers nor Koch, the prominent neuroscientist who lost a wager — that was important enough to be written up in Nature — are traditional scientific materialists (physicalists). They do not see consciousness in a materialist way, as something to be explained away, perhaps as an illusion created by purely material phenomena.

Chalmers is a naturalistic dualist: That is, he “advocates for a form of dualism that acknowledges both physical processes and non-physical consciousness elements, challenging the traditional physicalist view of the mind.”

But neuroscientist Koch is not a traditional materialist either; he is a panpsychist. He thinks that consciousness, far from being an illusion, is inherent in everything. But it is present most fully in the human being. Panpsychists are naturalists (nature is all there is) but they want to rescue the mind.

There are still many materialists in science but, contrary to what some might suppose, non-materialists are holding their own today.