Brain-wise: Studies In Neurophilosophy

Brain-Wise This page intentionally left blank Patricia Smith Churchland Brain-Wise Studies in Neurophilosophy A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, and information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Times New Roman on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Churchland, Patricia Smith. Brain-Wise : studies in neurophilosophy / Patricia Smith Churchland. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-03301-1 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-262-53200-X (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Neurosciences—Philosophy. 2. Cognitive science—Philosophy. I. Title: Studies in neurophilosophy. II. Title. [DNLM: 1. Neuropsychology. 2. Knowledge. Metaphysics. 4. Neurology. 5. Philosophy. 6. Religion and Psychology. WL 103.5 C563b 2002] RC343 .C486 2002 1530 .01—dc21 2002066024 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface 1 I II III 1 Introduction 35 Metaphysics 2 An Introduction to Metaphysics 3 Self and Self-Knowledge 4 Consciousness 5 Free Will 37 59 127 201 239 Epistemology Religion vii 6 An Introduction to Epistemology 7 How Do Brains Represent? 8 How Do Brains Learn? 321 Religion and the Brain 373 371 9 273 241 vi Contents Notes 403 References Index 451 421 Preface A lot of water has passed over the dam since I published Neurophilosophy in 1986. Groundbreaking advances have been made in computational methods, in neuroscientific techniques, and in cross-field connections. Fruitful interactions have developed, for example, between molecular biology and neuroscience, and between experimental psychology and neuroscience. Philosophers, initially wary (to put it politely) of the idea that neuroscience might have some relevance to the problems they call their own, have slowly warmed to the idea of neurophilosophy. Two decades ago, proposing an undergraduate course in neurophilosophy was more or less a bad joke. Now such courses are beginning to spring up even in departments that had been proudly ‘‘antibrain.’’ Students not only in philosophy but also in the sciences are signing up and eagerly attacking philosophy’s Big Problems—such as the nature of consciousness, free will, and the self—in full recognition that neuroscientific data are indispensable to making progress. Alert to the change in philosophical winds, various people began to needle me concerning the absence of an introductory, single-authored neurophilosophy text. This book is the response to that needling. I have assumed that an introductory text should provide a basic framework for how the brain sciences—the neurosciences and cognitive science— can interface with traditional topics in philosophy. Insofar as it is elementary, such a text should be as compact and uncluttered as is consistent with being pedagogically serviceable. Of necessity, this means keeping in-text references to an almost indecent minimum; it means slimming the number of suggested readings. It means making incendiary choices about which research best illustrates a point and which debates are worth recounting. Although selectivity serves the goal of presenting a fairly clean picture of how I see things