Part 3 - Philosophy in the Age of Neuroscience

Patricia Churchland gives a talk for the UCSD 40/40 Vision Lecture Series in which she discusses the progress that has been made in neurophilosophy in the past four decades, and then makes predictions as to what the field will bring in the next four.

This is part 3 of 6.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Neuroscience
• Philosophy
• of
• Mind
• Eliminative
• Materialism
• Folk
• Psychology

[robotaholic]

I hate idiots who quantum physics everyting to oblivion or sweep every neural problem under the quantum physics rug- and I REALLY hate the idea that Quantum physics somehow gives us free will just because of indeterminancy- we need so much of the Churchland type of philosophy and honesty

[LennyBound]

hear hear! :-)

[theinternetscholar]

I agree, the neurosciences are going to the be the leading sciences of this century

[MikeTrance666]

She is saying that the human brain has approximately 10 to the 12th neurons. That is wrong, it "only" has 10 to the 11th. There is a difference of 900 billions

[exfalsoquodlibet]

Substance dualism would violate the law of the conservation of energy, because the hypothetical non-physical mind would have to introduce new energy into the physical world in order to have an effect on it. Another reason why Descartes can't be right.

[gen6k]

it would be funny if decartes was right. like our mind is mostly located in another non-physically reachable dimension. all these quantum entangalists are either idiots or descartes is a prophet.

[JAYDUBYAH29]

that "exactly" was meant for robot.

jake - that is incorrect.

the burden of proof is not shifted by the argument from ignorance - that's exactly her point.

just because we don't yet know exactly how consciousness arises from matter in the cases where it does doesn't make an argument from ignorance that it cannot be possible any more strong

[JAYDUBYAH29]

.

we also have seen no evidence in the natural world anywhere for anything supernatural and the arguments for something other than the brain causing consciousness are so thin as to be almost non existent.

evidence viz a vis split brain patients, strokes and alzheimers are pretty suggestive,, no?

[JAYDUBYAH29]

exactly.

[jakealv]

regarding what PC says on the arguement from ignorance... people conclude that it is implausible for matter to be conscious because consciousness does not fit with anything else we know about the properties of matter. so, the conclusion is rejected because it is implausible not because people are lazy and cannot imagine matter as being conscious. surely, the burden of proof is on PC to say why we should accept a belief incongrous to everything else we know matter?

[granvilleguy]

PC rocks ass!

[Jizuschrist]

Say it in Latin and it becomes more authoritative sounding.