Paul M. Churchland

Paul Churchland's book, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979), provided a statement of how the new sciences of mind and brain impact the philosophy of science. His article "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes" provided an argument from science to the radical conclusion of eliminativism: science shows that folk psychology is a defective theory, but propositional attitudes are defined by that theory, so no one really has beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes at all. He is also the author of Matter and Consciousness (1984), and published many articles on reduction in neurobiology and on the materialism/dualism debate.