Neurophilosophy by Patricia Smith Churchland
June 30, 2021
by William P. Meyers

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subtitle: Towards a Unified Science of the Mind Brain

These are not a general summary for public consumption, but the personal notes of William Meyers for his own use, shared on the internet. Neurophilosophy was published by the MIT Press in 1986.

Overall, the book focussed on combining discoveries in neuroscience or neurology, and to an extent psychology, with philosophy. It is an extended argument that the brain is the mind, and that various forms of dualism are misleading or wrong. It does not attempt to explain consciousness, or say much about qualia, instead pointing out the need to come to a better science of lower level mind body issues like representation, how collections of neurons function, and coordination between the senses and muscles.

[p. 34] 'Artifactual problems plagued research' into neurons in the 19th century, as the instruments, stains, etc., needed improvement. There were also (now forgotten) disputes as to interpretation.

[p. 89]'Until the influx of testosterone the brain is bipotential—that is, capable of becoming characteristically male or female.' Freemartins

[p. 109] Illustration of pathways to the autitory cortex from the ears. Shows complexity of something that might seem simple, given how used to it we are.

[p. 143] 'An outstanding implication of this research is that one dimension of cortical organizqation in mammals, namely the ocular dominance bands, may well be a function, not of genetic specification, but of broader principles governing neuronal competition for space.' In other words, some organization is not specifically coded for by genes.

[p. 182] 'Until much more is known about the mind-brain, these questions will have to wait for an answer, tantalizing though they may be. As things stand, the notions of a center of consciousness, or a center of control, let alone 'mind,' 'self,' 'person,' and 'soul,' are theoretically so ill defined that we are at a loss to know how to count such things.

[p. 259] Begins section on the 'mistakes of logical empiricism.' Note she makes little comment on logical positivism, clearly thinking the empiricist school at least was more on the right track.

[p. 327] She comments on subjective experience, introspection and qualia. Mainly saying they are vague ideas, so that as neurology progresses, and philosophy comes up with better defined terms, they should be subject to neurological analysis.

[p. 335] 'Conscious awareness is not the only aspect of our mental life that has seemed to defy explanation within neuroscience. the representational nature of thought has appeared beyond the capacity of a physical machine.' She is mainly, in this section, taking on arguments against begin able to explain [reduce] mental activity to neural activity.

[352] Functionalism and its arguments and counter-arguments.

[363] Just plain quotable: "My guess is that it shares a flaw with many other philosophical thought-experiments: too much thought and not enough experiment."

[416] Heart of the tensor network, cerebellum, Purkinje cells theory of Pellionisz and Llinas.