A Philosophical Journey into the Brain by Paul M. Churchland
This book tells us how heated and extravagant delusions can get when the deluded happens to be a combination of philosopher and cognitive scientist. As long as something readable is produced on a topic with popular interest, all is well. Only real philosophy and science are left behind. To put it simply, Churchland is an incompetent philosopher who knows very little science; but he appears to be more interested in philosophical questions than even the greatest philosophers and uses more scientific jargons in his writings than the best scientists. a compelling case for eliminative materialism,
toshiro@bloodyspew.com, September 15, 1999
while looking at a review here and reading the back-cover i noticed a mistake people are making regarding interpretation of churchland's view. churchland is "not" a reductionist, he is an eliminationist. for churchland neural states are not the same as mental states; "mental states" as-we-know-them are part of a theoretical framework known as "folk psychology" that's doomed to disappear just as beliefs in witches, caloric fluid, and demonic sources of illness disappeared from our knowledge pool. Reviews
"...The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul [is] a very important book full of tantalizing and astute observations and insights about consciousness, thinking and thought. Its sweep encompasses morality, politics, the arts, education, penology, psychiatry and the very nature of freedom itself. This is a book to be reckoned with." - Los Angeles Times A new picture of the mind is emerging, and explanations now exist for what has so long seemed mysterious. This real understanding of how the biological brain works - of how we work - has generated a mood of excitement that is shared in a half-dozen intersecting disciplines. Philosopher Paul Churchland, who is widely known as a gifted teacher and expository writer, explains these scientific developments in a simple, authoritative, and pictorial fashion. He not only opens the door into the ongoing research of the neuro-biological and connectionist communities but goes further, probing the social and moral dimensions of recent experimental results that assign consciousness to all but the very simplest forms of animals. In a fast-paced, entertaining narrative, replete with examples and numerous explanatory illustrations, Churchland brings together an exceptionally broad range of intellectual issues. He summarizes new results from neuroscience and recent work with artificial neural networks that together suggest a unified set of answers to questions about how the brain actually works; how it sustains a thinking, feeling, dreaming self; and how it sustains a self-conscious person. Churchland first explains the science - the powerful role of vector coding in sensory representation and pattern recognition, artificial neural networks that imitate parts of the brain, recurrent networks, neural representation of the social world, and diagnostic technologies and therapies for the brain in trouble. He then explores the far-reaching consequences of the current neurocomputational understanding of mind for our philosophical convictions, and for our social, moral, legal, medical, and personal lives. Churchland's wry wit and skillful teaching style are evident throughout. He introduces the remarkable representational power of a single human brain, for instance, via a captivating brain/World-Trade-Tower TV screen analogy. "Who can be watching this pixilated show?" Churchland queries; the answer is a provocative "no one." And he has included a folded stereoscopic viewer, attached to the inside back cover of the book, that readers can use to participate directly in several revealing experiments concerning stereo vision. A Bradford Book Synopsis
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