A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

The Mind-Body Problem Questions: What is the mind? What is its connection to the body? Most basic division of answers: Dualist and Materialist (or Physicalist) responses.

A Neurocomputationial Perspective illustrates the fertility of the concepts and data drawn from the study of the brain and of artificial networks that model the...

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)

In _Matter and Consciousness_, Paul Churchland presents a concise and contemporary overview of the philosophical issues surrounding the mind and explains the main theories and philosophical positions that have been proposed to solve them. Making the case for the relevance of theoretical and experimental results in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence for the philosophy of mind, Churchland reviews current developments in the cognitive sciences and offers a clear and accessible account of the connections to philosophy of mind. For this (...) third edition, the text has been updated and revised throughout. The changes range from references to the iPhone's "Siri" to expanded discussions of the work of such contemporary philosophers as David Chalmers, John Searle, and Thomas Nagel. Churchland describes new research in evolution, genetics, and visual neuroscience, among other areas, arguing that the philosophical significance of these new findings lies in the support they tend to give to the reductive and eliminative versions of materialism. Matter and Consciousness, written by the most distinguished theorist and commentator in the field, offers an authoritative summary and sourcebook for issues in philosophy of mind. It is suitable for use as an introductory undergraduate text. (shrink)

For the uninitiated, there are two major tendencies in the modeling of human cognition. The older, tradtional school believes, in essence, that full human cognition can be modeled by dividing the world up into distinct entities -- called __symbol s__-- such as “dog”, “cat”, “run”, “bite”, “happy”, “tumbleweed”, and so on, and then manipulating this vast set of symbols by a very complex and very subtle set of rules. The opposing school claims that this system, while it might be good (...) at concluding that Paris is the capital of France or that there must be blood flowing in the left-rear leg of a cow, can never capture the full measure -- indeed, the essence -- of human cognition. For them, the essential features of cognition emerge from the combined effects of myriad, tiny actions far below the surface of consciousness. This is the camp to which Paul Churchland belongs. (shrink)

The doctrine that the character of our perceptual knowledge is plastic, and can vary substantially with the theories embraced by the perceiver, has been criticized in a recent paper by Fodor. His arguments are based on certain experimental facts and theoretical approaches in cognitive psychology. My aim in this paper is threefold: to show that Fodor's views on the impenetrability of perceptual processing do not secure a theory-neutral foundation for knowledge; to show that his views on impenetrability are almost certainly (...) false; and to provide some additional arguments for, and illustrations of, the theoretical character of all observation judgments. (shrink)

In _ Plato's Camera_, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to (...) which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. (shrink)

"Churchland and Hooker have collected ten papers by prominent philosophers of science which challenge van Fraassen's thesis from a variety of realist perspectives. Together with van Fraassen's extensive reply... these articles provide a comprehensive picture of the current debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists."—Jeffrey Bub and David MacCallum, Foundations of Physics Letters.

Churchland explores the unfolding impact of the several empirical sciences of the mind, especially cognitive neurobiology and computational neuroscience on a variety of traditional issues central to the discipline of philosophy. Representing Churchland's most recent research, they continue his research program, launched over thirty years ago which has evolved into the field of neurophilosophy. Topics such as the nature of Consciousness, the nature of cognition and intelligence, the nature of moral knowledge and moral reasoning, neurosemantics or world-representation in the brain, (...) the nature of our subjective sensory qualia and their relation to objective science, and the future of philosophy itself are here addressed in a lively, graphical, and accessible manner. Throughout the volume, Churchland's view that science is as important as philosophy is emphasised. Several of the color figures in the volume will allow the reader to perform some novel phenomenological experiments on his/her own visual system. (shrink)

This collection was prepared in the belief that the most useful and revealing of anyone's writings are often those shorter essays penned in conflict with...

The Hurvich-Jameson (H-J) opponent-process network offers a familiar account of the empirical structure of the phenomenological color space for humans, an account with a number of predictive and explanatory virtues. Its successes form the bulk of the existing reasons for suggesting a strict identity between our various color sensations on the one hand, and our various coding vectors across the color-opponent neurons in our primary visual pathways on the other. But anti-reductionists standardly complain that the systematic parallels discovered by the (...) H-J network are just empirical correspondences, constructed post facto, with no predictive or explanatory purchase on the intrinsic characters of qualia proper. The present paper disputes that complaint, by illustrating that the H-J model yields some novel and unappreciated predictions, and some novel and unappreciated explanations, concerning the qualitative characters of a considerable variety of color sensations possible for human experience, color sensations that normal people have almost certainly never had before, color sensations whose accurate descriptions in ordinary language appear semantically ill-formed or even self-contradictory. Specifically, these "impossible" color sensations are activation-vectors (across our opponent-process neurons) that lie inside the space of neuronally possible activation-vectors, but outside the central 'color spindle' that confines the familiar range of sensations for possible objective colors. These extra-spindle chimerical-color sensations correspond to no reflective color that you will ever see objectively displayed on a physical object. But the H-J model both predicts their existence and explains their highly anomalous qualitative characters in some detail. It also suggests how to produce these rogue sensations by a simple procedure made available in the latter half of this paper. The relevant color plates will allow you to savor these sensations for yourself. (shrink)

The problem of natural kinds forms the busy crossroads where a number of larger problems meet: the problem of universals, the problem of induction and projectibility, the problem of natural laws and de re modalities, the problem of meaning and reference, the problem of intertheoretic reduction, the question of the aim of science, and the problem of scientific realism in general. Nor do these exhaust the list. Not surprisingly then, different writers confront a different ‘problem of natural kinds,’ depending on (...) which background issue is for them the principal issue at stake. The issues of essentialism, meaning, and reference, for example, have tended to dominate recent discussions of natural kinds. But evidently these are only part of the puzzle. (shrink)

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 …. (shrink)

How, if at all, does the internal structure of human phenomenological color space map onto the internal structure of objective reflectance‐profile space, in such a fashion as to provide a useful and accurate representation of that objective feature space? A prominent argument (due to Hardin, among others) proposes to eliminate colors as real, objective properties of objects, on grounds that nothing in the external world (and especially not surface‐reflectance‐profiles) answers to the well‐known and quite determinate internal structure of human phenomenological (...) color space. The present paper proposes a novel way to construe the objective space of possible reflectance profiles so that (1) its internal structure becomes evident, and (2) that structure’s homomorphism with the internal structure of human phenomenological color space becomes obvious. The path is thus reopened to salvage the objective reality of colors, in the same way that we preserved the objective reality of such features as temperature, pitch, and sourness—by identifying them with some objective feature recognized in modern physical theory. (shrink)

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is here criticized from the perspective of a more naturalistic and less compromising form of materialism. Parallels are explored between the problem of cognitive activity and the somewhat more settled problem of vital activity. The lessons drawn suggest that functionalism in the philosophy of mind may be both counterproductive as a research strategy, and false as a substantive position.

Philosophers have long been familiar with the contrast between predicates privado privado son las únicas características cualitativas realmente simples. Con base en que, después de todo, sus referentes externos admiten un análisis estructural, relacional, causal o funcional de algún tipo. En este artículo quiero adoptar un enfoque más general y más filosófico que los argumentos antireduccionistas evidenciando los problemas que generan con la filosofía de la ciencia; la neurociencia emergente y con la historia de la ciencia en general. Sus argumentos (...) carecen incluso de solidez con respecto a los estándares de la filosofía puramente analítica únicas características cualitativas realmente simples. Con base en que, después de todo, sus referentes externos admiten un análisis estructural, relacional, causal o funcional de algún tipo. En este artículo quiero adoptar un enfoque más general y más filosófico que los argumentos antireduccionistas evidenciando los problemas que generan con la filosofía de la ciencia; la neurociencia emergente y con la historia de la ciencia en general. Sus argumentos carecen incluso or concepts that denote “qualitative simples,” as opposed to predicates or concepts that denote or express “structural, relational, causal, or functional” features. The tendency has been to think of these two classes of properties as being ontologically quite different from each other. Some would insist that the features displayed in this private cognitive domain are the only genuinely simple qualitative features, on grounds that their external brethren all turn out to admit of a structural, relational, causal, or functional analysis of some kind after all. In this paper I wish to take a more general and more philosophical approach to the anti-reductionist arguments which run into trouble with the philosophy of science, with emerging neuroscience, and with the history of science generally. They lack integrity even by the standards of purely analytic philosophy. / Los filósofos conocen bien el contraste entre predicados o conceptos que denotan características “cualitativas simples”, a diferencia de predicados o conceptos que señalan características “estructurales, relacionales, causales o funcionales”. La tendencia ha sido pensar estas dos clases de propiedades como ontológicamente diferentes entre sí. Algunos insistirían en que las características que se muestran en este dominio cognitivo de solidez con respecto a los estándares de la filosofía puramente analítica. (shrink)

Professor Clark's splendid essay represents a step forward from which there should be no retreat. Ourde factomoral cognition involves a complex and evolving interplay between, on the one hand, thenondiscursive cognitive mechanisms of the biological brain, and, on the other, the often highly discursive extra-personal “scaffolding” that structures the social world in which our brains are normally situated, a world that has been, to a large extent, created by our own moral and political activity. That interplay extends the reach and (...) elevates the quality of the original nondiscursive cognition, and thus any adequate account of moral cognition must address both of these contributing dimensions. An account that focuses only on brain mechanisms will be missing something vital. (shrink)

It is argued herein that there are two distinct ways in which all observation vocabularies are prejudiced with respect to theory. An argument based on the demands of adequate translation is invoked to show that even the simplest of our observation predicates must display the first and more obvious grade of bias--intensional bias. It is also argued that any observation vocabulary whose predicates are corrigibly applicable must manifest a second and equally serious grade of bias--extensional bias--independently of whatever intensional bias (...) its predicates may or may not have. (shrink)

An important methodological argument is outlined in support of general theoretical challenges to the dominant materialist paradigm. The idea is that the empirical inadequacies of a dominant theory can be hidden from view by various factors, and will emerge from the shadows only when viewed from the perspective of a systematic conceptual alternative. The question then posed is whether parapsychology provides a conceptual alternative adequate to this task. The provisional conclusion drawn is that it does not. Some further consequences are (...) drawn from this concerning the experimental side of the parapsychological tradition. (shrink)

The identity theory was called into doubt not because the prospects for a materialist account of our mental capacities were thought to be poor, but because it seemed unlikely that the arrival of an adequate materialist theory would bring with it the nice one-to-one match-ups, between the concepts of folk psychology and the concepts of theoretical neuroscience, that intertheoretic reduction requires. The reason for that doubt was the great variety of quite different physical systems that could instantiate the required functional (...) organization. Eliminative materialism also doubts that the correct neuroscientific account of human capacities will produce a neat reduction of our common-sense framework, but here the doubts arise from a quite different source. (shrink)