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Patricia Churchland: The Brains Behind Morality

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What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? In this thought-provoking narrative – drawn from professional expertise as well as personal life experiences – trailblazing neurophilosopher Patricia S. Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology.

Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President’s Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland. The New Yorker magazine observed regarding the philosophical couple that, “Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person.”

[Video and text source: TEDx Talks YouTube channel]

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