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23Is the Visual System as Smart as It Looks?PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.Irvin Rock's hypothesis that certain stages of perceptual processing resemble problem solving in cognition is contrasted to some recent work in computer vision (Marr, Ullman) which tries to reduce intelligence in perception to computational organization. The focal example is subjective contours which Marr thought could be handled by computational modules without descending control, and which Rock thinks are the outcome of intelligent processing.
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72Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/BrainPhilosophical Review 97 (4): 573. 1988.
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61The Necessary-and-Sufficient BoondoggleAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (1): 54-55. 2007.No abstract
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11Discussion: The timing of sensations: Reply to LibetPhilosophy of Science 48 (September): 492-497. 1981.
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4Replies to comments to symposium on Patricia Smith Churchland's neurophilosophyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 29 (June): 241-272. 1986.
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5Moral decision-making and the brainIn Judy Illes (ed.), Neuroethics: Defining the Issues in Theory, Practice, and Policy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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96Word and ObjectMIT Press. 1960.Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is asocial art.
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349What Should We Expect From a Theory of Consciousness?In H. Jasper, L. Descarries, V. Castellucci & S. Rossignol (eds.), Consciousness: At the Frontiers of Neuroscience, Lippincott-raven. pp. 19-32. 1998.Within the domain of philosophy, it is not unusual to hear the claim that most questions about the nature of consciousness are essentially and absolutely beyond the scope of science, no matter how science may develop in the twenty-first century. Some things, it is pointed out, we shall never _ever_ understand, and consciousness is one of them (Vendler 1994, Swinburne 1994, McGinn 1989, Nagel 1994, Warner 1994). One line of reasoning assumes that consciousness is the manifestation of a distinctly…Read more
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37The co-evolutionary research ideologyIn Alvin Goldman (ed.), Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Mit Press. 1993.
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2Can neurobiology teach us anything about consciousness?" Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Associatiojn, Pacific DivisionProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. Lancaster Press: Lancaster, Pa. forthcoming.
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5Reduction and the neurobiological basis of consciousnessIn Anthony J. Marcel & E. Bisiach (eds.), Consciousness in Contemporary Science, Oxford University Press. 1988.
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2094A critique of pure visionIn Christof Koch & Joel L. David (eds.), Large-scale neuronal theories of the brain, Mit Press. pp. 23. 1993.Anydomainofscientificresearchhasitssustainingorthodoxy. Thatis, research on a problem, whether in astronomy, physics, or biology, is con- ducted against a backdrop of broadly shared assumptions. It is these as- sumptionsthatguideinquiryandprovidethecanonofwhatisreasonable-- of what "makes sense." And it is these shared assumptions that constitute a framework for the interpretation of research results. Research on the problem of how we see is likewise sustained by broadly shared assump- tions, wh…Read more
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22My behavior made me do it: The uncaused cause of teleological behaviorismBehavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1): 130-131. 1995.Toward a neurobiologically grounded approach to explaining self-control we discuss the case of a patient with a bilateral lesion in frontal ventromedial cortex. Patients with such lesions display a marked deficit in social decision making. Compared with an account that examines the causal antecedents of self-control, Rachlin's behaviorist approach seems lacking in explanatory strength
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52How Quine perceives perceptual similarityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (June): 251-255. 1976.The explanation of a child's discriminate responses to his environment turns on ascribing to the child a perceptual discrimination which counts certain things as more similar to one another than to some other thing. As Quine forcefully puts it:If an individual is to learn at all, differences in degree of similarity must be implicit in his learning pattern. Otherwise any response, if reinforced, would be conditioned equally and indiscriminately to any and every future episode, all these being equ…Read more
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50The Neurobiological Platform for Moral ValuesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 76 97-110. 2015.What we humans call ethics or morality depends on four interlocking brain processes: caring. Learning local social practices and the ways of others – by positive and negative reinforcement, by imitation, by trial and error, by various kinds of conditioning, and by analogy. Recognition of others' psychological states. Problem-solving in a social context. These four broad capacities are not unique to humans, but are probably uniquely developed in human brains by virtue of the expansion of the pref…Read more
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1Do we propose to eliminate consciousness?In Robert N. McCauley (ed.), The Churchlands and their critics, Blackwell. pp. 297--300. 1996.
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30Replies to commentsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 29 (1-4). 1986.No abstract
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43Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About MoralityPrinceton University Press. 2011.What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules,…Read more
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108On the alleged backward referral of experience and its relevance to the mind-body problemPhilosophy of Science 48 (June): 165-81. 1981.A remarkable hypothesis has recently been advanced by Libet and promoted by Eccles which claims that there is standardly a backwards referral of conscious experiences in time, and that this constitutes empirical evidence for the failure of identity of brain states and mental states. Libet's neurophysiological data are critically examined and are found insufficient to support the hypothesis. Additionally, it is argued that even if there is a temporal displacement phenomenon to be explained, a neu…Read more
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29Psychology and Medical Decision-MakingAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (6-7): 79-81. 2009.No abstract
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3Is Neuroscience Relevant to Philosophy?Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 16 (n/a): 323-341. 1990.Many questions concerning the nature of the mind have remained intractable since their first systematic discussion by the ancient Greeks. What is the nature of knowledge, and how is it possible to represent the world? What are consciousness and free will? What is the self and how is it that some organisms are more intelligent than others? Since it is now overwhelmingly evident that these are phenomena of the physical brain, it is not surprising that an established empirical and theoretical found…Read more
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3Consciousness and the neurosciences: Philosophical and theoretical issuesIn Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences, Mit Press. 1995.
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