Patricia Churchland
{{unreferenced|date=December 2007}}
Oliver, British Columbia,
Canada|death =
Analytic philosophy>Analytic | Neurophilosophy
Philosophy of mind | Philosophy of scienceMedical ethics>Medical and
environmental ethics|notable_ideas = |influences = |influenced = }}
Patricia Smith Churchland (born
July 16,
1943 in
Oliver, British Columbia,
Canada) is a Canadian-American
philosopher working at the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) since
1984. She is currently a professor at the UCSD Philosophy Department, an adjunct professor at the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and an associate of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (
Sejnowski Lab) at the Salk Institute. She won a
MacArthur prize in
1991. Educated at the
University of British Columbia, the
University of Pittsburgh, and the
University of Oxford (
B.Phil.). She taught philosophy at the
University of Manitoba from
1969 to
1984 and is the wife of philosopher
Paul Churchland.Churchland 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 is associated with a school of thought called
eliminativism or
eliminative materialism, which argues that
folk psychology concepts such as
belief,
free will, and
consciousness will likely need to be revised as science understands more about the nature of brain function. She is also called a
naturalist, because she thinks scientific research is the best basis for understanding the nature of the mind. Her recent work focuses also on neuroethics, and attempts to understand choice, responsibility and the basis of moral norms in terms of brain function, brain evolution, and brain-culture interactions.She was interviewed along with her husband
Paul Churchland for the book
Conversations on Consciousness by
Susan Blackmore,
2006.She attended and was a speaker at the (Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival|Beyond Belief) symposium on November 2006 and November 2007.
Bibliography
- Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. (1986) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
- The Computational Brain. (1992) Patricia S. Churchland and T. J. Sejnowski. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
- Neurophilosophy and Alzheimer's Disease. (1992) Edited by Y. Christen and Patricia S. Churchland. Berlin: Spinger-Verlag.
- The Mind-Brain Continuum (1996). Edited by R. R. Llinas and Patricia S. Churchland. The MIT Press.
- On the Contrary: Critical Essays 1987-1997. (1998). Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
- Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy. (2002) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
External links
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