Having missed Pat Churchland’s talk at NEI this past October, it was great that she was in town for a full week of speaking engagements not to mention interviews and other demands being made on her time (and she is supposedly retired!). It was a pleasure to meet her (finally!) having followed her work over the years, most notably her Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. I recall the outright hostility to this book when I very naively talked about it in a philosophy department. I asked her if she recalled this hostility – and she did – but soldiered on regardless. The book obviously made an impression on me and hence its title appears as the tag line to this website.
Here is a collection of my Churchland related posts. The Science Network has a superb collection of podcasts featuring not only Pat, but the rest of the Churchland “dynasty” including of course her husband Paul and their children Anne and Mark.
January 27, 2012
Short URL Neurophilosophy, neuroscience, Pat Churchland, Patricia Churchland, Philosophy, Science Network, Unified Science of the Mind-Brain brain, brain science, cognitive science, consciousness, Eliminative Materialism, folk psychology, moral philosophy, moral psychology, neural correlates, neural networks, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, Neurophysics, neuroscience, patricia churchland, paul churchland, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science
January 1, 2012
Short URL cognitive science, consciousness, philosophy of mind, epistemology, qualia, phenomenology, cognition, brain science, brain, intropection, reductionism, christof koch, daniel stoljar, declan smithies
Check out philosopher Dan Lloyd’s film project. On the film site there are several videos of different brain states worth watching. Dan is, of course, no stranger to using other modalities to communicate his thoughts on consciousness – his book Radiant Cool is a classic in the genre.
Inside each of us, at every moment, a symphony plays. It’s the symphony of consciousness, but at the same time it’s the symphony of the brain.
– Dan Lloyd
December 22, 2011
Short URL Cognitive science, Cognition, Philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, consciousness, Dan Lloyd, Brain, Consciousness Studies cognitive science, consciousness, philosophy of mind, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, neurobiology, cognition, Neurophysics, brain science, brain, neuron, dan lloyd, brain scans, data visualization, music, mri and music, mri, neural correlates, neural networks, philosophical psychology, Music of the Hemispheres
The Charlie Rose Brain Series 2: Consciousness with Eric Kandel of Columbia University, Patricia Churchland of University of California, San Diego, Stanislas Dehaene of College De France, Nicholas Schiff of Weill Cornell Medical College and Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia.
December 19, 2011
Short URL Charlie Rose, Eric Kandel, Stanislas Dehaene, Timothy Wilson brain, brain science, charlie rose, churchland, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, philosophy of mind, qualia
Here’s a draft of a forthcoming paper I chanced across.
December 19, 2011
Short URL Cognition, Cognitive science, Embodied cognition, philosophical psychology, Philosophy of mind Andy Clark, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, david chalmers, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, extended mind, externalism, Katalin Farkas, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, situated cognition
Galen Strawson reviews Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow in The Guardian.
December 16, 2011
Short URL Daniel Kahneman, Galen Strawson, Psychology cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, Daniel Kahneman, Galen Strawson, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind
The book was published today. Here is the publisher’s webpage and the Amazon page.

December 13, 2011
Short URL Cognition, Cognitive science, complexity, Friedrich Hayek, Hayek, hebb, philosophical psychology, Philosophy of mind, Psychology austrian economics, brain science, cognitive closure, consciousness, extended mind, externalism, networks, neural networks, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, social connectionism, social epistemology, sociocognition, the sensory order
Alva Noë takes the Opinionator slot.
What is striking about neuroaesthetics is not so much the fact that it has failed to produce interesting or surprising results about art, but rather the fact that no one — not the scientists, and not the artists and art historians — seem to have minded, or even noticed. What stands in the way of success in this new field is, first, the fact that neuroscience has yet to frame anything like an adequate biological or “naturalistic” account of human experience — of thought, perception, or consciousness.
December 4, 2011
Short URL Cognition, Cognitive science, Embodied cognition, neuroaesthetics, philosophical psychology, Semir Zeki Alva Noë, brain, brain science, cognitive science, consciousness, extended mind, externalism, neural correlates, neurobiology, neuromania, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, situated cognition
Here’s a new book to be published early next year by Alva Noë entitled Varieties of Presence. If anyone cares to review it for The Journal of Mind and Behavior, an outlet that has featured some of the best essays in the situated cognition genre, drop me a line. (Offer now closed).
November 9, 2011
Short URL active externalism, active perception, Alva Noë, cognitive science, consciousness, extended mind, externalism, knowing how knowing that, philosophy of mind, situated cognition