Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in

neurophilosophy Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of ...

and the

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...

. After earning a Ph.D. from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

under

Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". Life and career His father ...

(1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full professor at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

(UCSD) and a joint appointments in that institution's

Institute for Neural Computation The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

and on its Cognitive Science Faculty. As of February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. Churchland is the husband of philosopher

Patricia Churchland Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943) is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Cali ...

, with whom he collaborates, and ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' has reported the similarity of their views, e.g., on the mind-body problem, are such that the two are often discussed as if they are one person.

Early life and education

Paul Montgomery Churchland was born in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada, on October 21, 1942. Note, this link presents only an excerpt of the chapter, the first 10 pages. Growing up in Vancouver, Churchland's father was a high school science teacher and his mother took in sewing. As a boy, he was obsessed with science fiction; he was particularly struck by the ideas in

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

's ''

Orphans of the Sky ''Orphans of the Sky'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, consisting of two parts: "Universe" (''Astounding Science Fiction'', May 1941) and its sequel, "Common Sense" (''Astounding Science Fiction'', October 1941). ...

''. Churchland liked building things in his father's woodworking and metal shop in their basement, and expected to become an aerodynamical engineer. At the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

, Churchland began with classes in math and physics, intending to pursue engineering. Conversations with fellow students in the summer before his sophomore year inspired him to begin taking philosophy classes. He graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in 1964 He earned his Ph.D. from the

in 1969, his dissertation entitled "Persons and P-Predicates" written with

as his advisor.

Career

Churchland lectured at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

from 1967–69, and began his independent professional career as an instructor at the

in 1969. In 1969, Churchland took a position at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba. He spent a year at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

, and joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1984. There, he served as Department Chair from 1986–1990. As of this February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, where he earlier held the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy (through 2011), and continues to appear as a philosophy faculty member on the UCSD Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Cognitive Science and with the affiliated faculty of the UCSD

. As of February 2017, he is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Consciousness Studies of the Philosophy Department,

Philosophical work

Churchland's work is in the school of

analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...

western philosophy Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ' ...

, with interests in

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

and the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

, and specific principal interests in the

and in

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. His work has been described as being influenced by the work of

W. V. O. Quine W. may refer to: * SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel * ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush * "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm ...

, Russell Hanson,

, and

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958 ...

. Along with his wife, Churchland is a major proponent of

eliminative materialism Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that majority of the mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent ...

, the belief that where by folk psychology is meant everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings, and desires, which are viewed as theoretical constructs without coherent definition, and thus destined to be obviated by a scientific understanding of human nature. From the perspective of Zawidzki, Churchland's concept of eliminativism is suggested as early as his book ''Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind'' (1979), with its most explicit formulation appearing in a ''Journal of Philosophy'' essay, "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes" (1981, see #Written works section below). Churchland believes that beliefs are not ontologically real; that is, he believes that a future, fully matured

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

is likely to have no need for "beliefs" (see

propositional attitudes A propositional attitude is a mental state held by an agent toward a proposition. Linguistically, propositional attitudes are denoted by a verb (e.g. "believed") governing an embedded "that" clause, for example, 'Sally believed that she had won ...

), in the same manner that modern science discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft. According to Churchland, such concepts will not merely be ''reduced'' to more finely grained explanation and retained as useful proximate levels of description, but will be strictly ''eliminated'' as wholly lacking in correspondence to precise objective phenomena, such as activation patterns across

neural networks A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

. He points out that the history of science has seen many posits once considered real entities, such as

phlogiston The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...

, caloric, the

luminiferous ether Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum), so ...

, and vital forces, thus eliminated. Moreover, in ''The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul'' Churchland asserts his belief that consciousness might be explained in terms of a

recurrent neural network A recurrent neural network (RNN) is a class of artificial neural networks where connections between nodes can create a cycle, allowing output from some nodes to affect subsequent input to the same nodes. This allows it to exhibit temporal dynamic ...

with its hub in the intralaminar nucleus of the

thalamus The thalamus (from Greek θάλαμος, "chamber") is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon (a division of the forebrain). Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, ...

, and feedback connections to all parts of the cortex. He acknowledges that this proposal will likely be found in error with regard to the neurological details, but states his belief that it is on the right track in its use of recurrent neural networks to account for consciousness. This has been described, notably, as a reductionist rather than eliminativist account of consciousness.

Personal life

Churchland is the husband of philosopher

, and it has been noted that, "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person." The Churchlands are the parents of two children, Mark Churchland and Anne Churchland, both of whom are neuroscientists.

Written works

Popular writing

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Scholarly work

Books

Professor Churchland has authored several books in philosophy, which have been translated into many languages. His works are as follows:

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His book ''Matter and Consciousness'' has been frequently and extensively reprinted. Both ''Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind'' and ''A Neurocomputational Perspective'' have also been reprinted.See (1) "The Mind-Body Problem" in ''Philosophy of Mind'' (Polish), by the Alethia Foundation (1995); and (2) "Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson" in ''The Nature of Consciousness: The Philosophical Debates'' edited by N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Guzeldere (MIT Press - 1997).

Essays

Professor Churchland has written a number of published articles, some of which have been translated into other languages, including several that have had a substantial impact in philosophy. Essays which have been reprinted include:

* See also the PDF version a
K. A. Akins' web pages at Simon Fraser University

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See also

* American philosophy
* List of American philosophers

This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.

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* List of Canadian philosophers
This page lists philosophers from Canada.
{{Dynamic list
*Leslie Armour, Research Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University College, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa
*Vernon J. Bourke (1907-1988), Professor of ...

References

Further reading

*
* The volume includes critical chapters from editor McCauley, Patricia Kitcher

Patricia W. Kitcher (born 1948) is the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, widely known for her work on Immanuel Kant and on philosophy of psychology. She has held many positions at different universiti ...
, Andy Clark

Andy Clark, (born 1957) is a British philosopher who is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Prior to this, he was at professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Sc ...
, William G. Lycan, William Bechtel

William Bechtel (born 1951) is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis from 199 ...
, Jerry Fodor

Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modul ...
and Ernie Lapore, Antonio R. Damasio and Hanna Damasio

Hanna Damasio is a scientist in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Using computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, she has developed methods of investigating human brain structure and studied functions such as language, memory, a ...
, John Marshall and Jennifer Gurd, and Owen Flanagan

Owen Flanagan (born 1949) is the James B. Duke University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social s ...
. These are then followed by a 94 pp. essay in response, by Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland (hence the Churchlands are both the subject of and in part authors of this volume).
*
*
*

External links

Churchland's UCSD homepage

Center for Consciousness Studies of the Philosophy Department, Moscow State University

"From the Engine of Reason to the Seat of the Soul," ''The Science Network'' interview with the Churchlands

Moscow Center For Consciousness Studies interview with Churchland

{{DEFAULTSORT:Churchland, Paul
1942 births
Living people
20th-century American philosophers
Analytic philosophers
Canadian philosophers
Epistemologists
Materialists
Philosophers of mind
University of California, San Diego faculty
21st-century American philosophers
University of Pittsburgh alumni
University of Toronto faculty
People from Vancouver
Presidents of the American Philosophical Association}