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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.