Patricia Churchland

Last updated
Patricia Churchland
Patricia Churchland, 2015 (cropped).jpg
Born
Patricia Smith

(1943-07-16) July 16, 1943 (age 80)
Oliver, British Columbia, Canada
Alma mater University of British Columbia
University of Pittsburgh
Somerville College, Oxford
Spouse Paul Churchland
Era 20th-/21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic philosophy [1] [2]
Main interests
 Neurophilosophy
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of science
Medical and environmental ethics
Notable ideas
 Neurophilosophy, Eliminative Materialism

Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943) [3] is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher [1] [2] noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. [4] She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University. [5] In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. [6] Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and Somerville College, Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland. [7] Larissa MacFarquhar, writing for The New Yorker, observed of the philosophical couple that: "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person." [8]

Contents

Biography

Early life and education

Churchland was born Patricia Smith in Oliver, British Columbia, [3] and raised on a farm in the South Okanagan valley. [9] [10] Both of her parents lacked a high-school education; her father and mother left school after grades 6 and 8 respectively. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked in newspaper publishing in addition to running the family farm. In spite of their limited education, Churchland has described her parents as interested in the sciences, and the worldview they instilled in her as a secular one. She has also described her parents as eager for her to attend college, and though many farmers in their community thought this "hilarious and a grotesque waste of money", they saw to it that she did so. [10] She took her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, graduating with honors in 1965. [7] She received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study at the University of Pittsburgh, where she took an M.A. in 1966. [7] [11] Thereafter she studied at Somerville College, Oxford as a British Council and Canada Council Fellow, obtaining a B. Phil in 1969. [7]

Academic career

Churchland's first academic appointment was at the University of Manitoba, where she was an assistant professor from 1969 to 1977, an associate professor from 1977 to 1982, and promoted to a full professorship in 1983. [7] It was here that she began to make a formal study of neuroscience with the help and encouragement of Larry Jordan, a professor with a lab in the Department of Physiology there. [9] [10] [12] From 1982 to 1983 she was a Visiting Member in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. [13] In 1984, she was invited to take up a professorship in the department of philosophy at UCSD, and relocated there with her husband Paul, where both have remained since. [14] Since 1989, she has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute adjacent to UCSD's campus, where she became acquainted with Jonas Salk [4] [9] whose name the Institute bears. Describing Salk, Churchland has said that he "liked the idea of neurophilosophy, and he gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement at a time when many other people thought that we were, frankly, out to lunch." [10] Another important supporter Churchland found at the Salk Institute was Francis Crick. [9] [10] At the Salk Institute, Churchland has worked with Terrence Sejnowski's lab as a research collaborator. [15] Her collaboration with Sejnowski culminated in a book, The Computational Brain (MIT Press, 1993), co-authored with Sejnowski. Churchland was named the UC President's Professor of Philosophy in 1999, and served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at UCSD from 2000-2007. [7]

She attended and was a speaker at the secularist Beyond Belief symposia in 2006, 2007, and 2008. [16] [17] [18]

Personal life

Churchland first met her husband, the philosopher Paul Churchland, while they were both enrolled in a class on Plato at the University of Pittsburgh, [10] and they were married after she completed her B.Phil at Somerville College, Oxford. [9] Their children are Mark M. Churchland (born 1972) and Anne K. Churchland (born 1974), both of whom are neuroscientists. [19] [20] Churchland is considered an atheist, [21] , but she identified herself as pantheist in a 2012 interview. [22] [23]

Philosophical work

Churchland is broadly allied to a view of philosophy as a kind of 'proto-science' - asking challenging but largely empirical questions. She advocates the scientific endeavour, and has dismissed significant swathes of professional philosophy as obsessed with what she regards as unnecessary. [24]

Churchland's own work has focused on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy. According to her, philosophers are increasingly realizing that to understand the mind one must understand the brain. She applies findings from neuroscience to address traditional philosophical questions about knowledge, free will, consciousness and ethics. She is associated with a school of thought called eliminative materialism, which argues that common sense, immediately intuitive, or "folk psychological" concepts such as thought, free will, and consciousness will likely need to be revised in a physically reductionistic way as neuroscientists discover more about the nature of brain function. [25] 2014 saw a brief exchange of views on these topics with Colin McGinn in the pages of the New York Review Of Books. [26]

Awards and honors

Works

As sole author

As co-author or editor

See also

Related Research Articles

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a "mind", "understanding", or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. Philosopher John Searle presented the argument in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980. Gottfried Leibniz (1714), Anatoly Dneprov (1961), Lawrence Davis (1974) and Ned Block (1978) presented similar arguments. Searle's version has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of Searle's argument is a thought experiment known as the Chinese room.

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive neuroscience</span> Scientific field

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.

Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard problem of consciousness</span> Philosophical concept, first stated by David Chalmers in 1995

In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking, and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon.

Terrence Joseph Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical and computational biology. He has performed pioneering research in neural networks and computational neuroscience.

Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of neuroscience attempts to clarify neuroscientific methods and results using the conceptual rigor and methods of philosophy of science.

William Hirstein is an American philosopher primarily interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at Elmhurst University.

Paul Montgomery Churchland 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 joint appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty.

The Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mind–body problem</span> Open question in philosophy of how abstract minds interact with physical bodies

The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the body.

The Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, established in 2004, is one of three international awards worth US$500,000 made by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ursula Bellugi</span> American psychologist (1931–2022)

Ursula Bellugi was an American cognitive neuroscientist. She was a Distinguished Professor Emerita and director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. She is known for research on the neurological bases of American Sign Language and language representation in people with Williams Syndrome.

Interactionism or interactionist dualism is the theory in the philosophy of mind which holds that matter and mind are two distinct and independent substances that exert causal effects on one another. An example of your mind influencing your body would be if you are depressed, you can observe the effects on your body, such as a slouched posture, a lackluster smile, etc. Another example, this time of your body affecting your mind would be: If you struck your toe very forcefully on a door, you would experience terrible pain. Interactionism is one type of dualism, traditionally a type of substance dualism though more recently also sometimes a form of property dualism. Many philosophers and scientists have responded to this theory with arguments both supporting and opposing its relevance to life and whether the theory corresponds to reality.

Neuroepistemology is an empirical approach to epistemology—the study of knowledge in a general, philosophical sense—which is informed by modern neuroscience, especially the study of the structure and operation of the brain involving neural networks and neuronal epistemology. Philosopher Patricia Churchland has written about the topic and, in her book Brain-Wise, characterised the problem as "how meat knows". Georg Northoff, in his Philosophy of the Brain, wrote that it "focuses on direct linkage between the brain on one hand and epistemic abilities and inabilities on the other."

Anne K. Churchland is a neuroscientist at University of California, Los Angeles. Her laboratory studies the function of the posterior parietal cortex in cognitive processes such as decision-making and multisensory integration. One of her discoveries is that individual neurons in rodent posterior parietal cortex can multitask i.e. play a role in multiple behaviors. Another discovery is that rodents are similar to humans in their ability to perform multisensory integration, i.e. to integrate stimuli from two different modalities such as vision and hearing.

Keith Frankish is a British philosopher specializing in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of cognitive science. He is an Honorary Reader at the University of Sheffield, UK, Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete. He is known for his "illusionist" stance in the theory of consciousness. He holds that the conscious mind is a virtual system, a trick of the biological mind. In other words, phenomenality is an introspective illusion. This position is in opposition to dualist theories, reductive realist theories, and panpsychism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Goff (philosopher)</span> British philosopher

Philip Goff is a British author, idealist philosopher, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. Specifically, it focuses on how consciousness can be part of the scientific worldview. Goff holds that materialism is incoherent and that dualism leads to "complexity, discontinuity and mystery". Instead, he advocates a "third way", a version of Russellian idealist monism that attempts to account for reality's intrinsic nature by positing that consciousness is a fundamental, ubiquitous feature of the physical world. "The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience."

John Reynolds is an American neuroscientist. He is a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, adjunct professor at University of California, San Diego, and member of the advisory board for the Kavli Foundation Kavli Institute for the Brain and Mind. He studies perception and vision and is known for developing a computational model of attention that scientists use as a framework for understanding how the brain performs attentional selection.

References

  1. 1 2 Dummett, Michael (2010). The Nature and Future of Philosophy. Columbia University Press. p. 33. A small number of analytic philosophers–notoriously the two Churchlands–treat the absence of any detailed correspondence [between specific mental occurrences and particular events in the brain] as an objection not to the thesis of mind/brain identity, but to reliance on our familiar mental constructs.
  2. 1 2 Smith, Quentin (1997). Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language. Yale University Press. pp. 93–94. [The postpositivist physicalism of philosophers such as the Churchlands and linguistic essentialism were the] "...two main movements of analytic philosophy of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; no other analytic movement even compares with them in influence and acceptance."
  3. 1 2 Cavanna, Andrea E. (2014-09-30). Consciousness: Theories in Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind. Nani, Andrea. Heidelberg. p. 9. ISBN   9783662440889. OCLC   892914346.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. 1 2 "Salk Institute: Adjunct Faculty". Salk Institute. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  5. ↑ "People". Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department. Retrieved 15 September 2014.[ permanent dead link ]
  6. ↑ "2015 Fellows and Their Affiliations at the Time of the Election" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Churchland, Patricia. "Curriculum Vitae". Archived from the original on 14 August 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  8. ↑ Larissa MacFarquhar (February 12, 2007). "TWO HEADS A marriage devoted to the mind-body problem". NewYorker.com. Retrieved May 14, 2017.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "University of Alberta - Fall Convocation 2007". University of Alberta. 22 November 2007. Archived from the original (web page) on 28 November 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "From the Engine of Reason to the Seat of the Soul: A Brain-Wise Conversation" (video). The Science Studio. The Science Network. 26 June 2006. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  11. ↑ "Fellows Of Note - Major Awards". Princeton, NJ: The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  12. ↑ "Faculty of Medicine - Physiology" (web page). University of Manitoba - Department of Physiology. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  13. ↑ "Social Science Only". A Community of Scholars. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study. Archived from the original on 19 March 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2011. Churchland, Patricia Smith [V] SocSci 1982-83
  14. ↑ Churchland, Paul M. (19 January 2007). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). UCSD Philosophy Department. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  15. ↑ "CNL - People" (web page). Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. The Salk Institute. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
  16. ↑ "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" (web page and video). The Science Network. 5–7 November 2006. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  17. ↑ "Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0" (web page and video). The Science Network. 31 October – 2 November 2007.
  18. ↑ "Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark" (web page and video). The Science Network. 3–6 October 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  19. ↑ "Anne Churchland - Assistant Professor". Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Archived from the original (web page) on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  20. ↑ "Movement Generation Laboratory - Mark Churchland". Columbia University. 2 April 2013. Archived from the original (web page) on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
  21. ↑ Bannister, Andy (2015-07-17). The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or: the dreadful consequences of bad arguments. Monarch Books. p. 25. ISBN   978-0-85721-611-3. ...another atheist writer, the philosopher Patricia Churchland...
  22. ↑ Todd, Douglas (February 4, 2012). "Pat Churchland fights for supremacy of the brain". Vancouver Sun . Retrieved 2021-05-04. When I asked her how she would define herself on the spiritual-philosophical spectrum, however, she surprisingly answered: "Pantheist," adding "I love nature." Pantheists are defined as people who view the natural world as the absolute, as the equivalent of God."
  23. ↑ Todd, Douglas (February 11, 2012). "B.C. academic star fights for beliefs". Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia). p. 44.
  24. ↑ "NOUS: Patricia Churchland on How We Evolved A Conscience". nousthepodcast.libsyn.com. Retrieved 2019-10-21.
  25. ↑ Warburton, Nigel; Edmonds, David (2010). "Pat Churchland on Eliminative Materialism" (audio). Philosophy Bites. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  26. ↑ McGinn, Colin; Churchland, Patricia. "Of Brains & Minds: An Exchange | Patricia Churchland".{{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  27. ↑ "MacArthur Fellows List, "C"". The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Archived from the original (web page) on 26 September 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  28. ↑ "International Academy of Humanism - Humanist Laureates". Council For Secular Humanism. Archived from the original (web page) on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  29. ↑ "Distinguished Cognitive Scientist Award". University of California, Merced. 4 May 2011. Archived from the original (web page) on 13 August 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  30. ↑ Leiter, Brian (7 October 2011). "Two Philosophers Elected Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society". Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  31. ↑ "Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells us about Morality | Patricia S. Churchland". The Montreal Review . September 2011. Retrieved 2022-06-23.

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