Analyzing a concept can (perhaps) tell you what the concept means (at least means to some philosophers), but it does not tell… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
When philosophers try to understand consciousness, much of what they claim is not conceptual analysis at all, though it may be shopped… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
The neuroscience of consciousness is not going to stop in its tracks because some philosophers guesses that project cannot be productive. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was the software, not the hardware, increasingly… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Many philosophers in the second half of the 20th century really seemed to think that they were laying the foundations for science… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Given how long philosophers have been at conceptual analysis (I mean the 20th century stuff), and how many have been doing it,… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Even philosophers who did not mind psychology, claimed the brain was irrelevant because it was the hardware, and we only need to… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
I had no idea what philosophy was until I went to college at UBC. I first read Hume and Plato, so naturally… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Studies of decision-making in the monkey, where activity of single neurons in parietal cortex is recorded, you can see a lot about the time-accuracy… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Remember, in the heyday of vitalism, people said that when all the data are in about cells and how they work, we will still… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Suppression of impulses that would put you in danger is obviously an important neurobiological function. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Early studies of sleep and dreaming were crucially dependent on waking subjects up during sleep to find out whether they are dreaming or not.… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
When that theory is isolated from known facts, it is likely not to be productive. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
I used to suspect that in the brain, time is its own representation. I now think the problem is so much more complicated. Initially… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
I am less attracted to guesses about what cannot be done, than about making progress on a problem. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Analyzing a concept can (perhaps) tell you what the concept means (at least means to some philosophers), but it does not tell you anything… — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
Humility bids us to take ourselves as we are; we do not have to be cosmically significant to be genuinely significant. — Patricia Churchland Copy Share Image
