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

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Anyone interested in using a contemporary approach to philosophy of mind in an introductory course will find Paul Churchland's Matter and Consciousness a useful text .... Churchland has a wonderful talent for linking ideas together."
—Kathleen Gill, Teaching Philosophy



"Churchland's Matter and Consciousness remains a compact treasure trove for anyone interested in an instant overview of the mind-body problem, related philosophical issues, and their connection with the developing neuro-and psychological sciences of our day."
—Keith Gunderson, Philosophy of Science

Product Description

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.

Paul M. Churchland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. A Bradford Book.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; Revised edition (January 22, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262530740
• ISBN-13: 978-0262530743
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #344,771 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good introduction to a vexing problem, November 2, 2002

By	Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The mind-body problem, as it is called in Western philosophy, still has the attention of philosophers, despite centuries of debate. It will no doubt occupy more of philosophers time in the upcoming decades due to the resurging interest (and advances) in artificial intelligence. But the goal of most research in A.I. is now geared towards computational algorithms that are able to learn and can discover new knowledge or data patterns. The "hard A.I." problem, that of creating conscious machines, is not top priority it seems.

But philosophers will continue with the analysis of the nature of conscious intelligence, and the author is one of these. Interestingly though, and correctly, he asserts that progress in this analysis has been made, and he notes that philosophy has joined hands with psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory in making this progress. And this will no doubt continue as advances in these fields are made, and the 21st century will see the advent of the "industrial philosopher". Once thought to be a purely academic profession, the ethical considerations behind genetic engineering and the legal rights of thinking machines will require the presence of philosophers in the rank and file of engineers, technicians, and managers. And because of this, these philosophers, and their coworkers will themselves have considerable knowledge outside their own field.

Again, the refreshing feature of this book is that the author believes that philosophy has made considerable process on the nature of mind. This was done, he says, by understanding the mind's self-knowledge, by providing a much clearer idea of the nature of the different theories of mind, and by clarifying the sorts of evidence that must be acquired in order to distinguish between these different theories. Empirical evidence, he states, has enabled the making of these distinctions much more rational and scientific. But he is careful to note that the evidence is still ambigious, and much work still needs to be done before the these ideas can be differentiated with more clarity. He discusses in detail the different theories of dualism and materialism. An entire chapter is devoted to discussing substance dualism, property dualism, philosophical behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. The author asks readers to start anew and throw away their convictions while analyzing these conceptions of mind and matter.

For the author, the mind-body problem cannot be solved without considering three problems: 1. Semantical: The meaning of ordinary common-sense terms for mental states. 2. Epistemological: The problem of other minds and the capacity for introspection. 3. Methodological: The proper methodology to use in constructing a theory of mind. Entire chapters are devoted to these, and after reading them the reader entering the debate on the mind-body problem for the first time will have an over-abundance of food for thought.

An entire chapter is spent on the topic of artificial intelligence. If this book were updated, this chapter would probably have to be considerably expanded, in that many advances have been made in A.I. since this book was first published. Research in A.I. has been rocky, and many promises that were unfullfilled were made in the past about it. But now it seems a more rational and realistic attitude is taken about the claims of A.I. Most everyone involved in it understands that it is an enormously complex problem, and have concentrated their efforts on building intelligent machines from a piece-meal, microscopic approach, i.e. from solving the simplest problems first before tackling the more difficult ones.

A chapter is also devoted to neuroscience. Thanks to imaging technologies and other approaches to mapping the brain, this field has mushroomed in recent years. The author only gives a cursory overview of the brain and the nervous system in this chapter, due no doubt to lack of space. The reverse engineering of the human brain has been pointed to by some researchers in artificial intelligence as being the best hope for building intelligent machines. The dramatic increases in chip technology and bus design have made this belief certainly more feasible. It remains to be seen, via actual empirical research, whether the reverse engineering of the human brain, and then its subsequent implementation in electronic devices, will indeed result in the rise of intelligent machines.

Whatever the future of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, the mind-body problem will no doubt be of interest to philosophers for decades to come. It will be fascinating to see what kinds of conceptual frameworks and methodologies will be employed in attempts to solve this problem. Without doubt some new ideas would be welcome in this regard, as proposals for solutions to the mind-body problem seem to be stuck in a local minimum. But, as the author argues well for, the solution will bring in many areas and possibly some radical ideas, all supported by painstaking experimentation.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Certainly not for a graduate philosophy of mind class, May 27, 2000

By	whywong (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews

It is quite ridiculous that someone should use Paul Churchland's Matter and Consciousness for a graduate class in philosophy of mind. Paul Churchland, for one, never intended it to be so, and certainly was not writing for such an audience. Having said that, Matter and Consciousness qualifies as one of the best brief introductions to pertinent issues in philosophy of mind. Do note, however, that Paul Churchland's focus is philosophical rather than psychological or cognitive. The book begins with a discussion of the mind-body problem and various standard proposed solutions, i.e. various forms of dualism, mind-brain identity theory, functionalism and the like. Each school of thought is presented in an orderly fashion, beginning with a brief outline of the general solution with a couple of examples, then proceeding to sections on the advantages and disadvantages of the school of thought in question.

Now, as with all truly introductory surveys of academic disciplines, the discussions in Matter and Consciousness are superficial from the perspective of more mature students. However, its brevity and clarity make it probably the best introductory text to philosophy of mind around. I read Matter and Consciousness in a single sitting over a cup of tea, and vouch for its accessibility.

Matter and Consciousness also has sections on the psychological, computational and neuroscientific side of things, and although much of the scientific material is dated, these sections still give the uninformed reader a general flavor of ongoing work in those areas, and much to contemplate.

If Matter and Consciousness is being used for an introductory course on philosophy of mind, I would suggest augmenting the material in Matter and Consciousness by selecting appropriate readings from Lycan's Mind and Cognition: An Anthology. Matter and Consciousness was written quite awhile ago, when work in parallel distributed processing in AI was just being resurrected, and way before the embodied cognition revolution. Therefore, it would be an excellent idea to look at section 4 (Mind as a Computer: Machine Functionalism) of Kim's Philosophy of Mind for a fairly theoretical introduction to the ideas behind artificial intelligence, brief selections from Russell and Norvig's introductory AI text or Winston's AI text for an understanding of standard techniques (i.e. search, neural networks, production systems and the like) in AI, and Andy Clark's introduction to the foundations of AI, "Philosophical Foundations", in Artificial Intelligence (Handbook of Perception and Cognition) edited by Margaret Boden.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intelligient, interesting and brilliant introduction, September 24, 1999

By A Customer

Paul Churchland provides a brief introduction to the philosophical theories of the mind-body problem, analysing each in the process. It is easy to understand and rarely gets boring. After the first fifty pages the author discusses the importance of neuroscience and its relation to Eliminative Materialism (the theory proposed by Churchland). However, as most philosophers (eg. J.Searle, T.Honderich) would agree, "eliminativism" is NOT a credible theory of consciousness, since it eliminates the role and existence of mental states. I agree with Searle that mental states are a REAL feature of the world ("mental realism"). Nevertheless, the book is full of interesting information about the brain and neurones and also self-consciousness.