Abstract

This is a collection of Paul Churchland's recent essays which have in common an overarching research programme aimed at identifying the scope and the importance of the contributions that neuroscience has made and will make to philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics. The general structure of many of the essays included in the collection is as follows: there is a long-standing problem in the philosophical literature which has escaped not only a convincing solution but also a straightforward analysis of what the solution should look like, and how it could be achieved. Then the neurosciences start addressing a relevantly connected problem, or progress in such a way as to make a difference to our understanding of the original problem, and now a solution is in sight or, at least, we know roughly what the solution should look like.The way in which Churchland presents and defends his research programme in the essays included in the collection is praiseworthy for at least two reasons. First, Churchland's attempt to argue for the relevance of cognitive neurobiology for long-standing philosophical problems is seemingly effortless, which is a very rare …