Patricia and Paul Churchland on Consciousness

Patricia Smith Churchland is Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. Her recent research interest focuses on neuroethics and attempts to understand choice, responsibly and the basis of moral norms in terms of brain function, evolution and brain-culture interactions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Churchland

Paul M. Churchland is Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. With his wife and philosophical partner, Patricia, he has been an advocate of "eliminative materialism," which claims that many of our common-sense folk-psychological conceptions of our mental lives will fail to have any explanatory role in a mature neuroscience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Churchland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_Materialism

The complete 1 hour and 45 minute interview can be viewed here:
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/the-science-studio/from-the-engine-of-r...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Neurophilosophy
• Neuroscience
• Philosophy of Mind
• Vitalism
• Eliminative Materialism
• Folk Psychology
• Reductionism
• Neural Plasticity

[Nades129]

Man, I can't wait to do research in cognitive science

[Alexdurrant7]

@FeelOfFriction Huh? Reductionism is the basis of modern science.

[metaldude82]

Ok, tell me if anyone with what I am about to say. One major mistake of eliminative materialism is the assumption that just because something like consciousness has neurophysiological mechanisms which correlate with it, that means it is entirely physical. This is very similar to the "God of the gaps" where it is assumed that God can only exist in areas where we lack knowledge.

[gkodekrakca]

I can't believe I heard an eliminative materialist use the words God and Soul.

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 Check your own words: "Consciousness is a state... which ALLOWS FOR volitive action." I rest my case.

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 Imagine that Universe A has consciousness, and Universe B does not. What is the essential difference? According to you, it is that A is DOING something that B is not. According to me, it is that a new DIMENSION has opened up in A. In Chalmers' terms, consciousness is an "emergent," a synergy that cannot be predicted by the substrate. If consciousness were merely activity, then a description of brain activity would describe what being conscious is like. And it doesn't. QED.

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 Your surly because you don't understand my questions. (Nor did you answer them.) The purpose of any supposed activity of consciousness would be to make the condition of being apparent. Thinking is a process IN consciousness, not OF consciousness.  (Machines asrguably think; that doesn't make them conscious.)

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 Okay, let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment. If Consciousness is a verb (and I'm practically puking just to write that), then what is the achievement of that activity? What does that activity achieve? What is its effect? Is it not to make the condition of being apparent?

Personality Test: Are you more like a "thing that perceives space," or a "space that perceives things"?

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 You seem unaware of the difference between doing and being. I repeat: "Last time I checked, consciousness meant awareness of the condition of being." And, if you check, you'll notice that "you" aren't doing anything more to BE conscious than you are doing to simply BE at all. Consciousness is a CONDITION, not a verb. You're hooked on slotting consciousness as a verb. Please get over it before you reduce away the entire world.

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 Last time I checked, consciousness meant awareness of the condition of being. That awareness may require neural activity--if that's what you mean by "activity"--but that doesn't mean that consciousness is itself neural activity. That's confusing cause and effect and would be exactly the kind of reductionism you're complaining about in your posts.

[crookedfinger13]

@Omnicron777 "Without the body, there cannot be consciousness." Pray tell, how do you know that?

[ArcadianGenesis]

Great. I'll be doing a cognitive neuroscience PhD starting this fall at UT Dallas.