Part 2 - Patricia Churchland at the Beyond Belief Confrence

Patricia Churchland is the chair of the University of California, San Diego Philosophy Department. Her recent research focuses mainly on neuroethics and attempts to understand choice, responsibility and the basis of moral norms in terms of brain function, evolution and brain-culture interactions.

This talk took place at the "Beyond Belief" conference in 2006. Her talk deals with neuroethics, abductive reasoning, and the Is-Ought gap.

This clip is part 2 of 2.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Neuroscience
• Neuroethics
• Neurophilosophy
• Religion
• Atheism
• Richard
• Dawkins
• Sam
• Harris
• Daniel
• Dennett

[KnowKnot]

@Khuno2 I respect her as well, and I tend to sympathize with her appraoch. And it is old news... but I think she was intentionally attempting to address an audience outside that auditorium. It sounds like she was trying to add to the presence of simple "extra-biblical" accounts for morality, in the face of religious antipathy to the idea. Sort of a public service announcment. Not her strong suit, but noble enough if that's it.

[Khuno2]

This was unsatisfying and gimmicky. I respect Pat Churchland, and realize these conferences and their dissemination on youtube are quasi informative as to the "issues" and serve to tease the uninitiated into assuming "serious people" deal with them at greater depth, but I expected an argument against the fact value distinction- not a reframe of the argument and a hint at a solution. If all that is aspired is to show that evolutionary biology explains why we value, that is very old news.

[TheThePostulate]

Pretty unforgivable conflation of the is-ought gap and this idea of a 'fundamental' morality...I've never even seen those two ideas associated...

[PianoIsTheRemedy]

Quite a slam on Is-Ought and categorical imperative. I do like stoning children though. : )

[robotaholic]

I adore this lady- she's my hero