Patricia Churchland
| Patricia Smith Churchland | |
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| Born |
July 16, 1943 Oliver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Alma mater |
University of British Columbia University of Pittsburgh University of Oxford |
| Era | 21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Analytic Philosophy |
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Main interests
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Neurophilosophy Philosophy of mind Philosophy of science Medical and environmental ethics |
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Notable ideas
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Neurophilosophy, Eliminative Materialism |
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Influences
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Patricia Smith Churchland (born July 16, 1943) is a Canadian-American analytical 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. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University. 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.".
Churchland was born Patricia Smith in Oliver, British Columbia, and raised on a farm in the South Okanagan valley. Both of her parents lacked a high-school education; her father and mother left school after grades 6 and 8 respectively. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked in newspaper publishing in addition to running the family farm. In spite of their limited education, Churchland has described her parents as interested in the sciences, and the worldview they instilled in her as a secular one. She has also described her parents as eager for her to attend college, and though many farmers in their community thought this "hilarious and a grotesque waste of money", they saw to it that she did so. She took her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, graduating with honors in 1965. She received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study at the University of Pittsburgh, where she took an M.A. in 1966. Thereafter she studied at Oxford University as a British Council and Canada Council Fellow, obtaining a B. Phil in 1969.
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