Region Western Philosophy | Role Philosopher Name Paul Churchland | |
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Main interests NeurophilosophyPhilosophy of sciencePhilosophy of mindArtificial intelligenceEpistemology Influenced by Patricia Churchland, Jerry Fodor, Willard Van Orman Quine, Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper, Wilfrid Sellars Books Matter and consciousness, The Engine of Reason - the Seat, Plato's Camera: How the, A Neurocomputational Perspective, Scientific realism and the pl Similar People Patricia Churchland, Jerry Fodor, Willard Van Orman Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Paul Feyerabend | ||
Patricia and paul churchland on consciousness
Paul Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full professor at the University of Manitoba before accepting the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a joint appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty. As of this February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the UCSD, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Moscow State University. Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland, with whom he collaborates, and The New Yorker has reported the similarity of their views, e.g., on the mind-body problem, are such that the two are discussed as if they are one person.
Contents
- Patricia and paul churchland on consciousness
- Drs pat paul churchland having a brain wise conversation
- Early life and education
- Career
- Philosophical views
- Popular writing
- Books
- Essays
- Personal life
- References
Drs pat paul churchland having a brain wise conversation
Early life and education
Paul Montgomery Churchland was born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, on October 21, 1942. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts.
He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969, his dissertation entitled "Persons and P-Predicates" written with Wilfrid Sellars as his advisor.
Career
Churchland lectured at the University of Toronto from 1967–69, and began his independent professional career as an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. In 1969, Churchland took a position at the University of Manitoba, where he would teach for fifteen years: as an assistant professor (1969–74) and associate professor (1974–79), and then, from 1979-1984, as a full professor. He spent a part of 1983-1984 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1984. There, he served as Department Chair from 1986-1990.
As of this February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he earlier held the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy (through 2011), and continues to appear as a philosophy faculty member on the UCSD Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Cognitive Science and with the affiliated faculty of the UCSD Institute for Neural Computation. As of February 2017, he is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Consciousness Studies of the Philosophy Department, Moscow State University.
Philosophical views
Churchland's work is in the School of Analytic philosophy in western philosophy, with interests in epistemology and the philosophy of science, and specific principal interests in the philosophy of mind and in neurophilosophy and artificial intelligence. His work has been described as being influenced by the work of W.V.O. Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Russell Hanson, Wilfred Sellars, and Paul Feyerabend as well as by Karl Popper.
Along with his wife, Churchland is a major proponent of Eliminative materialism, the belief that
everyday, common-sense, ‘folk’ psychology, which seeks to explain human behavior in terms of the beliefs and desires of agents, is actually a deeply flawed theory that must be eliminated in favor of a mature cognitive neuroscience.
where by folk psychology is meant everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings, and desires, which are viewed as theoretical constructs without coherent definition, and thus destined to be obviated by a scientific understanding of human nature. From the perspective of Zawidzki, Churchland's concept of eliminativism is suggested as early as his book Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979), with its most explicit formulation appearing in a Journal of Philosophy essay, "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes" (1981, see Written works section below).
Churchland holds that beliefs are not ontologically real; that is, he maintains that a future, fully matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" (see propositional attitudes), in the same manner that modern science discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft. According to Churchland, such concepts will not merely be reduced to more finely grained explanation and retained as useful proximate levels of description, but will be strictly eliminated as wholly lacking in correspondence to precise objective phenomena, such as activation patterns across neural networks. He points out that the history of science has seen many posits once considered real entities, such as phlogiston, caloric, the luminiferous ether, and vital forces, thus eliminated.
Moreover, in The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul Churchland hypothesizes that consciousness might be explained in terms of a recurrent neural network with its hub in the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus, and feedback connections to all parts of the cortex. He acknowledges that this proposal will likely be found in error with regard to the neurological details, but states his belief that it is on the right track in its use of recurrent neural networks to account for consciousness. This has been described, notably, as a reductionist rather than eliminativist account of consciousness.
Popular writing
[Subtitle:] Classical AI is unlikely to yield conscious machines; systems that mimic the brain might.CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)[subscription required]
Books
Professor Churchland has authored several books in philosophy, which have been translated into many languages. Some of the notable of these are:
His book Matter and Consciousness has been frequently and extensively reprinted. Both Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind and A Neurocomputational Perspective have also been reprinted.
Essays
Professor Churchland has written a number of published articles, some of which have been translated into other languages, including several that have had a substantial impact in philosophy. Essays which have been reprinted include:
Churchland's most famous essay is his 1981 Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, which has been translated into five languages and reprinted over twenty times.
Personal life
Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland, and it has been noted that, "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person."
The Churchlands are the parents of two children, Mark Churchland and Anne Churchland, both of whom are neuroscientists.