Background
Churchland, Patricia Smith was born in 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada.
Churchland, Patricia Smith was born in 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada.
BA, University of British Columbia, 1961-1965. Manuscripts and Archives, University of Pittsburgh, •965-6, BPhil. Oxford University, 1966-1969.
1969-1977, Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba, then Associate Professor, 1977-1982, and Professor, 1983-1984. Member of Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1982-1983. Professor, University of California, San Diego, from 1984.
Main publications:
(1980) A perspective on mind-brain research'. The Journal of Philosophy 77.
(1986) Neurophilosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
(1988) The significance of neuroscience for philosophy’, Trends in Neurosciences 11.
(1990) ‘Is neuroscience relevant to philosophy?’, in D. Copp, (ed.) Canadian Philosophers, University of Toronto Press.
(1992) (with Terence! Sejnowski) The Computational Brain, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
(1992) (with Y. Christen) Neurophilosophy and Alzheimer's Disease, Spinger-Verlag.
(1993) ‘Filling in: why Dennett is wrong’, in Bo Dahlbohm and V. S. Ramachandran (eds), Dennett
and His Critics, Blackwells
reprinted in S. Davis and K. Akins (eds), Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Secondary literature:
Akins, Kathleen A. (1990) Critical Notice of Neurophilosophy (1986), in Journal of Philosophy 87, 2: 93-102.
Hooker, C. A. (1988) Critical Notice of Neurophilosophy (1986), in Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66: 240-8.
From her earliest writings Churchland has shown a twofold interest in the philosophy of mind and in empirical studies of the brain. These have been essentially complementary concerns, each fertilizing the other. Philosophically, she has become a leading exponent of eliminative materialism, rejecting the view that commonsense talk about the mind provides a more or less reliable guide to its real workings.
Such talk, she implies, can survive a scientific understanding of the workings of the brain only in the way in which those who know about the rotation of the earth may still speak of the sun’s rising and setting. Her Neurophilosophy (1986), revcalingly subtitled Towards a Unified Science of the NfindtBrain, was intended to build bridges between the philosophical and empirical study of the mind/brain. devoting roughly equal attention to each. But in her later work she has moved, very much in the empirical direction, and is now probably the philosopher best informed about the detailed workings of the brain.