patricia churchland - neurophilosophy

[...]... mind - or the mind -brain - rather than as questions for philosophy or for neuroscience or for psychology Administrative distinctions have a purpose so far as providing office spaceand salaries is concerned, but they should not dictate methods or constitute impedimenta to easy exchange This is not to deny that there are divisions of laborindeed, within neuroscience itself there are divisions of labor-... to ignorance or to inflexible imaginations The sustaining conviction of this book is that top-do \-\ Tn strategies (as characteristic of philosophy , cognitive psychology , and artificial intelligence research) and bottom -up strategies (as characteristic of the neurosciences) for solving the mysteries of mind -brain function should not be pursued in icy isolation from one another What is envisaged instead... of a very general framework suited to the development of a unified theory of the mind -brain Additionally , it aims to bestir a yen for the enrichment and excitement to be had by an interanimation of philo so- 4 General Introduction phy , psychology , and neuroscience, or more generally , of top-down and bottom -up research In away , nothing is' more obvious than that philosophers of mind could profit... sense of the word - that is, perverse, dark , and anyhow pointless Philosophical detail is apt to dissolve into mere crinkum -crankum , and it is my intention to risk snubbing the niceties in order to preserve an uncluttered pattern of the main arguments In the most straightforward sense, what is wanted is a unified theory of how the mind -brain works We want a theory of how the mind -brain represents... contracts , it showed twitch if : . (grants 41 0- 8 1- 0182, 45 1- 8 3- 3049). I am also grateful to the University of California at San Diego for support in the final stages of preparation of the manuscript (grants RJ11 1- G, RK9 1- G) to talk to and what to read. My vvorst fear- that as a philosopher I would be con- sidered an utter waste of time- was virtually never realized. Invari - ably neuroscientists were exceedingly generous,. world and consequently rekindled - and, I suspect, realigned- my philosoph - ical preoccupations . Among philosophers , my first and greatest debt is to Paul M . Churchland , who has been a partner