QUOTE : 2019 essay David Chalmers notes that when he was in graduate school, there was a saying about philosophers: “One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist.” Although Chalmers cannot account for where the truism originated, he argues that its logic is more or less intuitive. In the beginning one is impressed by the success of science and its ability to reduce everything to causal mechanisms. Then, once it becomes clear that materialism has not managed to explain consciousness, dualism begins to seem more attractive. Eventually the inelegance of dualism leads one to a greater appreciation for the inscrutability of matter, which leads to the embrace of panpsychism. By taking each of these frameworks to their logical yet unsatisfying conclusions, “one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness.” This is idealism.