Patricia Churchland is a professor at the University of California and is a
philosopher and cognitive scientist with special knowledge of the
neurosciences. Neuroscience in her opinion is relevant to solving the
problems posed by philosophy in the field of the mind/body problem. This
has given rise to the creation of neurophilosophy, a new sub-discipline in
philosophy. Patricia Churchland has a fixed direction in her agenda that is
directed at proving that the mind is nothing but neurological activity.
Neuroscience in her opinion will in the long run solve the mind/body
problem and at the same time eliminate folk psychology. The basic theme
in her thought is that there is no non-physical mind but that mind must be
explained on the basis of physical activity. She employs the notion of
neural activity as foundational to the mental activity of the brain that is then
responsible for the mind. The problem of how neurological activity can
give rise to the non-physical mind (thought, reason, and so forth) remains
however unanswered.
Although her work has caused widespread commentary, critical
evaluation on deeper levels has not received the attention it warrants. The
following study is an attempt in this regard. For this purpose I have used
the following philosophical tools: ideology analysis, metaphor analysis and
analysis of âkey formulasâ (logosemantic analysis). The result of this
analysis points to a one-sidedness in Patricia Churchlandâs approach to the
mind/body problem, while neuroscience and eliminative materialism is
pushed to its limits.
In this study the abovementioned tool-analysed results have also been
compared to the views of other well-known thinkers in the field. Lastly I
have included some of my own ideas on future prospects for research on
mind and consciousness.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-02192007-131714 |
| Date | 19 February 2007 |
| Creators | Repko, Pieter |
| Contributors | Prof PJ Visagie |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-02192007-131714/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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