In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation--or 'takes a picture'--of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. His account draws on the best of the recent philosophical literature on semantic theory, and on the most recent results from cognitive neurobiology. The resulting story throws immediate light on issues that have been at the center of philosophy for a

Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

Politics & Social Sciences

Churchland, Paul M.

Philosophy

Mit Pr

Written mainly with the student and general reader in mind, this book explores the nature of conscious intelligence in a concise and straightforward fashion. It tackles the subject using material from a variety of related fields—philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory. Exploiting this unusually broad perspective, it provides a fresh description of the major issues in the current philosophical/scientific debate, a comprehensive discussion of the competing philosophical theories and methodological approaches, and an up-to-date outline of the most important theoretical arguments and empirical data.  Following an introduction, chapters cover the ontological problem (the mind-body problem), the semantical problem, the epistemological problems (self-awareness and other minds), the methodological problem, and computers and artificial intelligence. There is a substantial chapter on the several neurosciences. A concluding chapter speculates on the distribution of intelligence in the universe, and on the possible expansion of human introspective consciousness.

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Bradford Books)

Science & Math

Behavioral Sciences

Churchland (philosophy, cognitive science, UC San Diego) asserts that solutions to the central problems in the philosophy of science must draw on the resources of the emerging sciences of the mind-brain. This book collects his recent essays along with some new ones. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science

Explains new developments in neuroscience and explores the philosophical, sociological, ethical, legal, medical, and personal consequences

The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain/Book and Stereopticon 707

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Paul M. and Patricia S. Churchland are towering figures in the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, and consciousness. This collection was prepared in the belief that the most useful and revealing of anyone's writings are often those shorter essays penned in conflict with or criticism of one's professional colleagues. The essays present the Churchlands' critical responses to a variety of philosophical positions advanced by some two dozen philosophical theorists. The book is divided into three parts: part I, Folk Psychology and Eliminative Materialism; part II, Meaning, Qualia, and Emotion: The Several Dimensions of Consciousness; and part III, the Philosophy of Science. V. S. Ramachandran and Rick Grush are coauthors on two of the essays.

On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987-1997

Churchland, Patricia Smith

Bradford Books

An updated edition of an authoritative text showing the relevance for philosophy of mind of theoretical and experimental results in the natural sciences.
In Matter and Consciousness, Paul Churchland presents a concise and contemporary overview of the philosophical issues surrounding the mind and explains the main theories and philosophical positions that have been proposed to solve them. Making the case for the relevance of theoretical and experimental results in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence for the philosophy of mind, Churchland reviews current developments in the cognitive sciences and offers a clear and accessible account of the connections to philosophy of mind.
For this third edition, the text has been updated and revised throughout. The changes range from references to the iPhone's "Siri" to expanded discussions of the work of such contemporary philosophers as David Chalmers, John Searle, and Thomas Nagel. Churchland describes new research in evolution, genetics, and visual neuroscience, among other areas, arguing that the philosophical significance of these new findings lies in the support they tend to give to the reductive and eliminative versions of materialism.
Matter and Consciousness, written by the most distinguished theorist and commentator in the field, offers an authoritative summary and sourcebook for issues in philosophy of mind. It is suitable for use as an introductory undergraduate text.

Matter and Consciousness, third edition (Mit Press)

Humor & Entertainment

The MIT Press

A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. 
In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation―or "takes a picture"―of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. 
Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.

Written mainly with the student and general reader in mind, this book explores the nature of conscious intelligence in a concise and straightforward fashion. It tackles the subject using material from a variety of related fields—philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory. Exploiting this unusually broad perspective, it provides a fresh description of the major issues in the current philosophical/scientific debate, a comprehensive discussion of the competing philosophical theories and methodological approaches, and an up-to-date outline of the most important theoretical arguments and empirical data. Following an introduction, chapters cover the ontological problem (the mind-body problem), the semantical problem, the epistemological problems (self-awareness and other minds), the methodological problem, and computers and artificial intelligence. There is a substantial chapter on the several neurosciences. A concluding chapter speculates on the distribution of intelligence in the universe, and on the possible expansion of human introspective consciousness.

Matter and consciousness: A contemporary introduction to the philosophy of mind

In Matter and Consciousness, Paul Churchland clearly presents the advantages and disadvantages of such difficult issues in philosophy of mind as behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This new edition incorporates the striking developments that have taken place in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence and notes their expanding relevance to philosophical issues.
Churchland organizes and clarifies the new theoretical and experimental results of the natural sciences for a wider philosophical audience, observing that this research bears directly on questions concerning the basic elements of cognitive activity and their implementation in real physical systems. (How is it, he asks, that living creatures perform some cognitive tasks so swiftly and easily, where computers do them only badly or not at all?) Most significant for philosophy, Churchland asserts, is the support these results tend to give to the reductive and the eliminative versions of materialism.
 A Bradford Book

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

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 neurobiological 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

The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Churchland, Paul M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Churchland, Paul M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Churchland, Paul M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Bradford Books)

A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science

The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain/Book and Stereopticon 707

On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987-1997

Matter and Consciousness, third edition (Mit Press)

Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Bradford Books)

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain