Matter and Consciousness

A short introduction to the philosophy of mind, written for students and general readers, that also connects the subject with neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Churchland sets out the main problems: the ontological problem of what mental states are, the semantic problem of how mental terms get their meaning, the epistemological problem of how we know other minds and our own, and the methodological problem of how the mind should be studied. For the ontological problem he surveys the main theories in turn: substance and property dualism, philosophical behaviourism, reductive materialism or the identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism, the view he himself favours, which holds that ordinary 'folk psychology' of beliefs and desires is a theory that may prove false and be replaced by neuroscience. He presents the arguments for and against each fairly before giving his own. Later chapters introduce artificial intelligence, neuroscience and the evolution of intelligence, and later editions bring this scientific material up to date.

It is one of the clearest short guides to the main theories of mind, and it introduces eliminative materialism from its leading defender.