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

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MIT Press, 1992 - Philosophy - 321 pages

If we are to solve the central problems in the philosophy of science, Paul Churchland argues, we must draw heavily on the resources of the emerging sciences of the mind-brain. A Neurocomputationial Perspective illustrates the fertility of the concepts and data drawn from the study of the brain and of artificial networks that model the brain. These concepts bring unexpected coherence to scattered issues in the philosophy of science, new solutions to old philosophical problems, and new possibilities for the enterprise of science itself.

 

Contents

Chapter
5
Why Folk Psychology Might Really Be False
6
Chapter 2
23
Functionalism and Methodology
44
Jacksons Knowledge Argument
61
Converting a ThirdPerson Account into a FirstPerson Account
74
Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive Neurobiology
77
Cortex with More than Two Layers
96
Chapter 9
153
Some Functional Properties of Brainlike Networks
171
The Naturalization of Epistemology
188
A PDP Approach
197
Inference to the Best Explanation
218
Chapter 11
231
Automated Science
250
The Semantics of Observation Predicates
271

Chapter 6
111
Commentary on Dennett
125
Chapter 10
131
Chapter 8
139
Some Virtues Consequences
287
Praxis Theoria and Progress
300
Index
315
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About the author (1992)

Paul M. Churchland is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (both published by the MIT Press), and other books.

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