Patricia Churchland

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Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943)<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher<ref name="Dummett 2010 33">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Smith 1997 93–94">Template:Cite book</ref> noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989.<ref name="Salk faculty">Template:Cite web</ref> She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University.<ref name="Moscow">Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref> In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and Somerville College, Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland.<ref name=CV>Template:Cite web</ref> Larissa MacFarquhar, writing for The New Yorker, observed of the philosophical couple that: "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Biography

Early life and education

Churchland was born Patricia Smith in Oliver, British Columbia,<ref name=":0" /> and raised on a farm in the South Okanagan valley.<ref name="doctor of law" /><ref name="Pat and Paul interview" /> Both of her parents lacked a high-school education; her father and mother left school after grades 6 and 8 respectively. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked in newspaper publishing in addition to running the family farm. In spite of their limited education, Churchland has described her parents as interested in the sciences, and the worldview they instilled in her as a secular one. She has also described her parents as eager for her to attend college, and though many farmers in their community thought this "hilarious and a grotesque waste of money", they saw to it that she did so.<ref name="Pat and Paul interview">Template:Cite web</ref> She took her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, graduating with honors in 1965.<ref name=CV /> She received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study at the University of Pittsburgh, where she took an M.A. in 1966.<ref name=CV /><ref name="Wilson fellow">Template:Cite web</ref> Thereafter she studied at Somerville College, Oxford as a British Council and Canada Council Fellow, obtaining a B. Phil in 1969.<ref name=CV />

Academic career

Churchland's first academic appointment was at the University of Manitoba, where she was an assistant professor from 1969 to 1977, an associate professor from 1977 to 1982, and promoted to a full professorship in 1983.<ref name=CV /> It was here that she began to make a formal study of neuroscience with the help and encouragement of Larry Jordan, a professor with a lab in the Department of Physiology there.<ref name="doctor of law" /><ref name="Pat and Paul interview" /><ref name="Jordan lab">Template:Cite web</ref> From 1982 to 1983 she was a Visiting Member in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.<ref name="IAS soc sci scholars">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1984, she was invited to take up a professorship in the department of philosophy at UCSD, and relocated there with her husband Paul, where both have remained since.<ref name="Paul Churchland CV">Template:Cite web</ref> Since 1989, she has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute adjacent to UCSD's campus, where she became acquainted with Jonas Salk<ref name="Salk faculty" /><ref name="doctor of law" /> whose name the Institute bears. Describing Salk, Churchland has said that he "liked the idea of neurophilosophy, and he gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement at a time when many other people thought that we were, frankly, out to lunch."<ref name="Pat and Paul interview" /> Another important supporter Churchland found at the Salk Institute was Francis Crick.<ref name="doctor of law" /><ref name="Pat and Paul interview" /> At the Salk Institute, Churchland has worked with Terrence Sejnowski's lab as a research collaborator.<ref name="Salk people">Template:Cite web</ref> Her collaboration with Sejnowski culminated in a book, The Computational Brain (MIT Press, 1993), co-authored with Sejnowski. Churchland was named the UC President's Professor of Philosophy in 1999, and served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at UCSD from 2000-2007.<ref name=CV />

She attended and was a speaker at the secularist Beyond Belief symposia in 2006, 2007, and 2008.<ref name="Bbelief 2006">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Bbelief 2007">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Bbelief 2008">Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

Churchland first met her husband, the philosopher Paul Churchland, while they were both enrolled in a class on Plato at the University of Pittsburgh,<ref name="Pat and Paul interview"/> and they were married after she completed her B.Phil at Somerville College, Oxford.<ref name="doctor of law" /> Their children are Mark M. Churchland (born 1972) and Anne K. Churchland (born 1974), both of whom are neuroscientists.<ref name="Anne Churchland">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Mark Churchland">Template:Cite web</ref> Churchland is considered an atheist,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> but she identified herself as pantheist in a 2012 interview.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Philosophical work

Churchland is broadly allied to a view of philosophy as a kind of 'proto-science' - asking challenging but largely empirical questions. She advocates the scientific endeavour, and has dismissed significant swathes of professional philosophy as obsessed with what she regards as unnecessary.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Churchland's own work has focused on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy. According to her, philosophers are increasingly realizing that to understand the mind one must understand the brain. She applies findings from neuroscience to address traditional philosophical questions about knowledge, free will, consciousness and ethics. She is associated with a school of thought called eliminative materialism, which argues that common sense, immediately intuitive, or "folk psychological" concepts such as thought, free will, and consciousness will likely need to be revised in a physically reductionistic way as neuroscientists discover more about the nature of brain function.<ref name="phil bites">Template:Cite web</ref> 2014 saw a brief exchange of views on these topics with Colin McGinn in the pages of the New York Review Of Books.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Awards and honors

Works

As sole author

As co-author or editor

  • The Computational Brain. (1992) Patricia S. Churchland and T. J. Sejnowski. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
  • Neurophilosophy and Alzheimer's Disease. (1992) Edited by Y. Christen and Patricia S. Churchland. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
  • The Mind-Brain Continuum (1996). Edited by R.R. Llinás and Patricia S. Churchland: The MIT Press.
  • On the Contrary: Critical Essays 1987-1997. (1998). Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

See also

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References

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Further reading

  • The Churchlands and Their Critics. (1996) Robert N. McCauley. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell
  • On the Churchlands. (2004) William Hirstein. Florence, Kentucky: Thomson Wadsworth

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