Worth looking for the full article:
Annals of Science
Two Heads
A marriage devoted to the mind-body problem.
by Larissa Macfarquhar February 12, 2007 New Yorker
PROFILES of Paul and Patricia Churchland. Paul and Patricia Churchland are in
their early sixties and are both professors of philosophy at the University of
California at San Diego (U.C.S.D.). They have been talking about philosophy
together since they met; they test ideas on each other and criticize each
others work. Some of their ideas are quite radical. The guiding obsession of
their lives is the mind-body problem, or how to understand the relationship
between conscious experience and the brain. In the past, everyone was a
dualist. Nowadays, few people doubt that the mind somehow is the brain. Paul
and Pat Churchland believe that the mind-body problem will be solved not by
philosophers but by neuroscientists. Describes Pats childhood and background;
she attended the University of Pittsburgh, where she met Paul, and Oxford.
Describes Pauls background; as a child he was influenced by the science
fiction novels of Robert Heinlein. Mentions Wilfrid Sellars. Describes their
jobs a
s professors at the University of Manitoba in the early 1970s. Mentions Pats
study of the split brain. Mentions Thomas Nagels What Is It Like to Be a
Bat? Pat disagreed with Nagels assertion that science could never understand
consciousness. She also objected to the prevelant notion that neuroscience
would never be relevant to philosophical concerns. In the early 1990s,
Australian philosopher David Chalmers developed a theory of consciousness as a
universal primitive, like mass or space. Mentions Francis Crick and the
neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran. These days, many philosophers give Pat
credit for making the link between the mind-body problem and the brain. Pat and
Paul are currently studying the implications of neuroscience for ethics and the
law. Much of Pauls work is focused far into the future. Both he and Pat like
to speculate about a day when whole chunks of English are replaced by
scientific words. As people learn to speak differently, theyll learn to
experience
and think differently. Paul believes that someday language will disappear
altogether and people will communicate by thought. If so, a philosopher might
come to know what its like to be a bat.
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