Paul Churchland,
Neurophilosophy at Work, CUP, 2007.
I just finished Paul Churchland's latest book, a collection of essays published by him during the last 10 years. They cover many topics: how to give a neurobiological account of consciousness, why functionalism is wrong, why (non-classical) connectionism is the way to go, how to build a cognitive neurobiology of the moral virtues, how to be an epistemological reliabilist without believing in the propositional attitudes, how to account for mental content in terms of neural maps, how to support the identity theory/reductionism (using "chimerical colors", i.e., color experiences that do not correspond to any real color), and how to vindicate realism about colors.
On most of these topics, Churchland has plenty of insightful things to say. He spends little time discussing traditional philosophical arguments and positions. Instead, he tries to convince the reader that his views about the mind (semantic holism, empiricism, connectionism, etc.) are more or less mandated by his
interpretation of contemporary neuroscience, which he presents as if it were uncontroversial. All is done in Churchland's characteristically charming and eloquent way.
Of course, you shouldn't take Churchland at face value. His views about the mind are often not, in fact, mandated by his own interpretation of neuroscience, and his own interpretation of neuroscience is often not uncontroversial. Nevertheless, his account is original, powerful, and ably defended.
I do have one bone to pick. Churchland is especially sloppy when it comes to matters of computation.
For example, in Chap. 7 he commits the "Church-Turing fallacy", which is Jack Copeland's term for the belief that something demonstrated or defended by Church or Turing (such as the Church-Turing thesis) entails that the mind-brain is a computing system. Committing the Church-Turing fallacy was somewhat excusable in the 1980s, when most philosophers of mind committed it (including Paul Churchland). But in 2007, after ten years of hammering by people like Jack Copeland, people should be more careful about these matters. (My own effort to combat fallacious arguments for computationalism from the Church-Turing thesis, such as Churchland's argument, may be found
here.)
Another problem is Churchland's conflation of functionalism with classical computationalism (Chap. 2). Churchland argues against a formulation of functionalism that is indistinguishable from an especially straw-manish version of classical computationalism. The result is both unsound and confused. (My own
effort to clarify the distinction between functionalism and computationalism, and some related matters, is forthcoming in
PPR.)
In short: Churchland is one of my heroes, but he is not always as careful as he could be.
