MADARANG2015

UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE i
TOWARD A NATURALISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MORALITY:

THE POSSIBILITY OF MORAL PROGRESS IN PAUL
CHURCHLANDS NEUROPHILOSOPHY
A Thesis Presented
to the Graduate School
University of Santo Tomas
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Masters of Arts in Philosophy
by
MADARANG, REINALD E.
May 2015
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis was possible because of the help, support, and encouragement of
the people around me. I would like to thank the following people:
My adviser, Dr. Agnes Ponsaran, who became not only my guide in writing
this thesis, but also my mentor on how to pioneer a topic in philosophical research.
This thesis will not be possible without you. Thank you for being my adviser.
My editor and sister, Ate Rhea, who not only helped me in correcting and
improving the grammar and syntax of this thesis, but also aided me in realizing the
value and meaning of my thesis.
My panelists, Dr. Vasco, Father Aligan, and Sir Batoon, for giving me
constructive criticism and insightful comments on how to improve my thesis. Thank
you very much.
My parents who continuously encouraged me in times of hardship in writing

this thesis. Mama, thank you for always reminding me to take care of my health
whenever I get so entranced working on this thesis. Daddy, thank you for
supporting me in my struggle and luxuries in writing this thesis.
My two brothers: Kuya Nel for encouraging me when the times are hard,
and Kuya Rap for providing me simple insights regarding the value of my thesis.
Our Trinity + 1: Carlo, Tan, and Paulo, my closest friends, who

continuously understand my work and my love for philosophy ever since my
undergraduate studies.
My VN brethren: Andres and Luitor, who gave me a fun and relaxing

environment in my stay and struggle in the UST Graduate School.
All of my professors who taught me and inspired me in this course,

philosophy became so interesting and colorful because of all the insights and
wisdom that all of you imparted. I would like to specifically thank Brother Abulad
for giving me a better understanding of Kants framework which became very
essential in the process of writing this thesis.
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE iii
ABSTRACT
In recent years, the gap between neuroscience and morality is slowly closing. Paul
Churchland, one of the founders of neurophilosophy, attempts to further close that
gap by showing how neuroscience can explain the nature of morality. Nevertheless,
it is commonly assumed that neuroscience facts, though they can change our
descriptive understanding of morality, are fundamentally unrelated to our normative
moral assumptions, simply because value judgments (ought) cannot be derived
from natural facts (is). According to Churchland, although this distinction is
valid, normative assumptions ignorant of natural facts are misguided. Similar to
how biological facts radically changed our normative assumptions about healthcare
(i.e., how to best achieve and maintain health), neuroscience facts, Churchland
argues, can also radically change our current normative assumptions about human
nature. Our current oughts can be radically changed by a more developed is.
This thesis aimed to synthesize Churchlands overall account of morality

and determine, within his neurophilosophical framework, how moral progress is
possible by developing a naturalistic understanding of morality. With such aim in
mind, the researcher attempted to establish the role of Churchlands naturalistic
account of morality in his concept of moral progress. Such attempt was done by
first examining the nature of moral learning from Churchlands neurophilosophical
perspective, and by examining his view of moral realism, thereby determining the
nature of moral knowledge in his overall framework. From there, the researcher
concluded that, in Churchlands framework, moral progress first requires the
development of a naturalistic understanding of morality grounded on neuroscience
facts. Second, it requires the development of social institutions promoting the
development and application of such naturalistic understanding. Only after fulfilling
these two requirements can our normative moral assumptions radically develop.
The radical change and development made from this process is what, the researcher
claims, constitutes Churchlands vision of moral progress.
Keywords: Paul Churchland, Neurophilosophy, Neuroscience, Morality, Moral

Progress
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1

A. Background of the Study ............................................................................................................. 1
B. Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................................. 5
C. Significance of the Study ............................................................................................................. 7
D. Scope and Limitation ................................................................................................................... 8
E. Review of Related Literature ....................................................................................................... 9
1. Neurophilosophy .................................................................................................................... 10
2. Eliminative Materialism ......................................................................................................... 13
3. The Future of Folk Psychology .............................................................................................. 16
4. Neuroscience and Morality..................................................................................................... 20
5. Neuroscience and the Is-Ought Gap ....................................................................................... 26
6. Churchland and Moral Progress ............................................................................................. 28
F. Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 31
G. Organization of the Study .......................................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER II: FOUNDING NEUROPHILOSOPHY ........................................................................ 34
A. A Brief History of the Concept of Mind .................................................................................... 34
1. Toward a Contemporary View of Mind ................................................................................. 35
2. Contemporary Debates on the View of Mind ......................................................................... 41
3. Drawing the Influence, Churchlands Stance in the Contemporary Period ............................ 47
B. Folk Psychology and Eliminative Materialism .......................................................................... 48
1. The Nature of Folk Psychology .............................................................................................. 48
2. Folk Psychology as a Theory ................................................................................................. 51
3. Considering Eliminative Materialism: Tracing Historical Parallels ....................................... 57
4. The Limitations of Folk Psychology ...................................................................................... 60
C. Founding Neurophilosophy, toward a New Kinematics of Cognition ....................................... 64
1. The Question of Methodology................................................................................................ 65
2. Exploring Neuroscience, the Foundation for the New Kinematics of Cognition ................... 75
3 Toward a New Kinematics of Cognition ................................................................................. 93
CHAPTER III: MORAL LEARNING ............................................................................................. 115
A. The Nature of Learning: Sculpting the Landscape of the Brain .............................................. 115
1. Hebbian Learning as the Fundamental Mechanism of Learning .......................................... 116
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE v
2. Human Nature, Is It Innate or Acquired? ............................................................................. 122

B. Learning in a Social World, the Emergence of Moral Character ............................................. 140
1. Hebbian Learning in the Human Social World .................................................................... 141
2. Moral Learning, the Acquisition of Moral Character ........................................................... 149
CHAPTER IV: MORAL REALISM ................................................................................................ 164
A. Reconceiving Moral Knowledge ............................................................................................. 164
1. The Non-discursive Nature of Morality ............................................................................... 165
2. Redefining the Role of Language and Discursive Rules ...................................................... 176
3. Moral Knowledge Reconceived ........................................................................................... 187
B. The Objectivity of Moral Knowledge ...................................................................................... 191
1. Parallelism between Moral and Scientific Knowledge ......................................................... 192
2. Unifying Scientific and Moral Knowledge........................................................................... 199
3. The Pragmatic Objectivity of Moral Knowledge ................................................................. 204
4. A Glimpse of Moral Progress: Beyond Churchlands Depiction of Moral Realism ............ 208
C. Reconceiving Moral Realism through the Brains Epistemic Situation................................... 209
1. Neurosemantics: How the Brain Represents the World ....................................................... 211
2. Toward Greater Moral Realism ............................................................................................ 231
CHAPTER V: MORAL PROGRESS .............................................................................................. 242
A. On the Possibility and Actuality of Moral Progress ................................................................ 242
1. On the Actuality of Moral Progress, a Historical Parallel .................................................... 243
2. On the Future of Moral Progress .......................................................................................... 246
B. Critique of Moral Progress ...................................................................................................... 251
1. Flanagan on the Limits of Moral Progress .......................................................................... 251
2. Clark on the Difference between Social and Moral Progress .............................................. 255
C. Moral Progress as a Phenomenon ............................................................................................ 257
1. The Phenomenon of Progress: Morality-Science Parallelism .............................................. 260
2. Changing the Normative Landscape: Addressing the Is-Ought Gap .................................... 265
D. Envisioning Moral Progress, Toward a Naturalistic Understanding of Morality .................... 277
1. Transforming the Normative Moral Landscape ................................................................... 278
2. Radical Moral Progress, Toward a Naturalistic Understanding of Morality ........................ 299
CHAPTER VI: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................ 307
A. Summary ................................................................................................................................. 307
B. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 330
C. Recommendations.................................................................................................................... 334
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 337
ABOUT THE AUTHOR .................................................................................................................. 346
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1..............................................................................................................76
Figure 2.2..............................................................................................................76
Figure 2.3..............................................................................................................83
Figure 2.4..............................................................................................................83
Figure 2.5..............................................................................................................87
Figure 2.6..............................................................................................................88
Figure 2.7..............................................................................................................92
Figure 2.8..............................................................................................................97
Figure 2.9..............................................................................................................98
Figure 2.10..........................................................................................................105
Figure 2.11..........................................................................................................105
Figure 2.12..........................................................................................................106
Figure 3.1............................................................................................................118
Figure 3.2............................................................................................................158
Figure 4.1............................................................................................................216
Figure 4.2............................................................................................................216
Figure 4.3............................................................................................................216
Figure 4.4............................................................................................................219
Figure 4.5............................................................................................................224
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE 1
CHAPTER I
Introduction
A. Background of the Study
The discovery of neurons, the most basic and functional unit in the brain,
led to a revolution in the field of biological sciences. There are 100 billion neurons
in the human body and 100 trillion synaptic connections that can be made from
them. 1 In fact, the quantity of possible synaptic configurations surpasses the
quantity of particles in the entire known astronomical universe. These neurons and
their synaptic connections have been scientifically founded to operate the bodys
sensory function, motor functions, and several of its cognitive abilities.2 Indeed, it
was a revolution to discover a vast new world inside the human body. This world of
neurons is an empirical reality that cannot be ignored. But does this world, vast as it
is, provide facts beyond the physical traits and attributes of the human person? Can
one go so far as saying that all aspects of human behavior, human psychology, and
human culture, can be grounded, and perhaps be reduced to these neurons?
Nevertheless, since the era of rationalism, philosophers like Rene Descartes
were skeptical that facts, insights, or conclusions about human nature can be
1
Paul Churchland, The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey
into the Brain, (Cambridge: MIT press, 1995), 34.
2
[W]e are now in a position to explain how our vivid sensory experience arises in the
sensory cortex of our brains: how the smell of baking bread, the sound of an oboe, the taste of a
peach, and the color of a sunrise are embodied in a vast chorus of neural activity. We now have the
resources to explain how the motor cortex, the cerebellum, and the spinal cord conduct an orchestra
of muscles to perform the cheetah's dash, the falcon's strike, or the ballerina's dying swan... On this
matter of conceptual development there is especial cause for wonder. For the human brain, with a
volume of roughly a quart, encompasses a space of conceptual and cognitive possibilities that is
larger, by one measure at least, than the entire astronomical universe (Ibid).
derived from the physical body alone. 3 As such, even with the progress of
neuroscience and other biological sciences in explaining the physical attributes of
human nature, the mind (mental states), argued by rationalists to be separate from
the body (physical states), cannot be denied as a possibility. Functionalism 4
expanded and clarified this school of thought, positing that mental states are
different from brain states and neural processes. Equipped with its sound
arguments, functionalism dominated the study of human nature, particularly
philosophy of mind, for more than forty years.5
In those years of dominance, Paul Churchland, a Canadian philosopher and
one of the forefathers of neurophilosophy, offered a compelling alternative.
Revitalizing the materialist and reductionist stand of the empiricists like David
Hume, Churchland conceived of a more radical form of materialism. He argued that
all current claims and assumptions about human nature are theoreticalin all of its
salient dimensions functionally, semantically, structurally, and
3
See Joseph Almog, What Am I?: Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
4
Functionalism is based on the view that mental states differ from brain processes in their
logical nature. Mental states are abstract functional states of the entire organism and characterized by
the causal relations through which they become effective in the information processing systems of
an organism... This means that functionally described cognitive processes are conceived of as
species invariant and can in principle be realized by systems which are entirely different physically.
They are of an abstract nature and their characteristics are consequently independent of every
particular physical implementation (Martin Carrier and Jrgen Mittelstrass, Mind, Brain, Behavior:
The Mind-Body Problem and the Philosophy of Psychology, [Berlin: alter de Gruyter, 1995], 5859).
5
Several schools of thought (e.g. logical behaviorist, identity theorists, and dualists) fully
embrace or at least partially accept the assumptions of functionalism. It is a natural philosophical
home for the modern philosophy of mind. Thus, it leaves no wonder why functionalism remained in
a dominant position in philosophy of mind since its inception in the 1960s. See Paul Churchland,
Functionalism at Forty: A Critical Retrospective, in Neurophilosophy at Work, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1836.
epistemologically. 6 In this sense, even though prevailing claims about human
nature are compelling, and seem to fit as a description of human reality, there is a
logical possibility that such claims and assumptions are radically mistaken.7 In the
same way that the old theory of a flat earth or Ptolemys geocentric model seemed
to describe earth sufficiently but was later disproved, any theoretical assumption
will be totally displaced and replaced with a more effective theory if it does not
continue to be true and effectively reflect reality once new discoveries and
dimensions of material reality are revealed. As such, all past and present claims and
assumptions about human nature are subject to falsification.
Subject to such scrutiny, where should philosophy or any field striving to
know human nature seek confirmation? Churchland asserts that the answer could
hardly be obviouswhere else, but into the brain.8 Certainly, the vast world of
neurons may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of human nature.
Indeed, neuroscience in its study of the brain and the nervous system has
progressed so much since its inception. Its significance and remarkable
contributions to cognitive science and philosophy of mind can no longer be denied.9
6
Paul Churchland, The Evolving Fortunes of Eliminative Materialism, in Brian
McLaughlin and Johnathan Cohen, eds., Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Malden,
160181, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 165.
7
Ibid.
8
Paul Churchland, Neurophilosophy at Work, (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 238.
9
Neuroscience is now able to explain several cognitive phenomena such as: how sensory
experience arises, why emotions are felt, how is motor movement possible, and more importantly,
neuroscience is slowly grasping how all these phenomena work at the fundamental level. Moreover,
the study is beginning to unlock facts that provides possible answers to the question that baffled
philosophy of mind throughout its history, for example the mind-body problem. See Paul
Churchland, The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995); Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about
In recent years, even the gap between neuroscience and morality is slowly closing.
This is partially because of the discovery of the social areas in the brain,10 whose
11
function is believed to provide the fundamental foundations of morality.
Nevertheless, it is commonly assumed that neuroscience facts are fundamentally
unrelated to our normative moral assumptions, simply because value judgments
cannot be derived from natural facts; ought cannot be derived from is. 12 This is
why several thinkers assert that the contribution of neuroscience to morality only
lies in its descriptive dimension.13
Morality, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011); Paul Churchland, A Neurocomputational
Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), chap.
5, Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive Neurobiology.
10
Portions of the temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and amygdala make up
what neuroscientists collectively call the social brain. The social brain is associated with several
fundamental functions for human interaction such as: 1) agency recognizing the difference
between oneself and the other, 2) sensitivity to the feelings of others through facial and motor cues,
3) empathy the ability to adopt the perspective of others, and more. See David L. Clark, Nash N.
Boutros and Mario F. Mendez, The Brain and Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral
Neuroanatomy, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Temporoparietal junction and the
social brain, 6667; Medial prefrontal cortex, default brain, network, and the social brain, 9798.
11
Research on developmental social psychology and neuropsychology suggests that moral
cognition is founded on early basic social cognition. See Melanie Killen and Michael T. Rizzo,
Morality, Intentionality and Intergroup Attitudes, Behaviour 151 (2014): 337359; Larisa
Heiphetz and Liane Young, A Social Cognitive Developmental Perspective on Moral Judgment,
Behaviour 151 (2014): 315335.
12
The naturalistic fallacy, which springs from the is-ought problem, was first raised by
David Hume in Treatise of Human Nature, and further elucidated by George Edward Moore in
Principia Ethica. This problem raised several arguments as to what natural facts can contribute to
our moral claims. Particularly, in recent years of its development, neuroscience is now able to
provide some facts that have moral implications. The question of what those facts could contribute
to our moral claims is directly related to the concern raised by Hume and Moore. See William D.
Casebeer, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, And Moral Cognition, (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2005), chap. 2, Clearing the Way for Reduction: Addressing the Naturalistic Fallacy and
the Open-Question Argument, 1536; chap. 5, Connectionism and Moral Cognition: Explaining
Moral Psychological Phenomena, 101126.
13
Bernard Gert, Neuroscience and Morality, Hastings Center Report 42, no. 3 (2012):
2228; Joshue Greene, From Neural Is to Moral Ought: What Are the Moral Implications of
Neuroscientific Moral Psychology? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 4 (October 2003): 847
850.
On the contrary, Churchland asserts that developments in neuroscience hold
the potential not only to radically change our descriptive understanding of human
nature, but also to radically change our moral laws, rules, and practices, thereby
changing our normative moral assumptions. For Churchland, this development is
what constitutes moral progress.14 But, considering the is-ought distinction, there
is this problem of how neuroscience facts can lead to progress in the normative
dimension of morality. Churchland did not elaborate on this matter; he only stressed
the importance of developing a neuroscientifically informed account of morality as
a requirement for moral progress. Although Churchland was committed to develop
a naturalistic account of morality, and advocates the possible progress it can lead to,
some critics think that he is too optimistic about the fact that moral progress is
possible precisely because he neglected the normative factors that surround
morality. 15 This thesis aimed to clarify this issue by attempting to establish the
normative significance of a naturalistic account of morality through Churchlands
concept of moral progress.
B. Statement of the Problem
The possibility of moral progress is a disputed topic. Some would even go
so far to argue that civilization, instead of attaining moral progress, suffered from
moral regress. Churchland, on the contrary, argues that moral progress is possible.
14
Paul Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, in
Neurophilosophy at Work, 7274.
15
Owen Flanagan, The Moral Network, in Robert N. McCauley, ed., The Churchlands
and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 192215.
His optimism, he claims, is grounded on natural facts, particularly neuroscience
facts. Although sound, his claims are not without dispute. This study attempted to
establish a rejoinder to some of the disputes in Churchlands view of moral progress
and it also aimed to determine how moral progress, in both the normative and
descriptive dimension, is possible in Churchlands framework. Ultimately, this
thesis aimed to answer the question: Can the normative significance of a
naturalistic account of morality be established through Churchland's concept of
moral progress?
Sub-problems:
1) What is neurophilosophy?
a. What makes Churchlands neurophilosophy different from traditional
philosophy?
b. How is Churchlands neurophilosophy grounded on neuroscience facts?
c. What are the implications of Churchlands neurophilosophy on human
nature?
2) What are the neurophilosophical grounds that make morality possible?
a. What is learning in the context of neural phenomena?
b. What is moral learning, as conceived in Churchlands neurophilosophy?
3) What is moral knowledge from a neurophilosophical point of view?
a. What is moral knowledge, as depicted by Churchland?
b. How did Churchland show the objectivity of moral knowledge?

c. What is moral realism in the context of Churchlands overall
epistemology?
4) How is moral progress in both the descriptive and normative dimension possible?
a. What is moral progress, as depicted by Churchland?
b. What is the role of a naturalistic understanding of morality in developing
our normative moral assumptions?
C. Significance of the Study
Churchland is primarily an epistemologist; thus, his works on morality,
although relevant and comprehensive, are relatively scarce compared with his
works on epistemology. That being the case, most of the secondary sources that
critique and expand his ideas focus on epistemology, while only a few focus on his
ideas on morality. This study attempted to expand and widen such discussion by
exposing and analyzing Churchlands framework on morality in general, and
establishing a rejoinder to some of the unresolved problems in his concept of moral
progress in particular. This was specifically done by synthesizing, and thereby
updating, Churchlands early writings on morality with his latest writings.
Furthermore, since Churchlands ideas on morality are ultimately tied to
neuroscience, this study, through Churchlands framework, also aimed to clarify the
nature of morality from the perspective of neuroscience and trace some of the
possible contributions of neuroscience research to morality. Thus, this study may
prove beneficial to: 1) scientists who aim to study the moral dimension of
neuroscience and 2) policy makers who may find the ethical or moral implications
of this research relevant in policy making.
D. Scope and Limitation
The study is primarily philosophical in its approach. Thus, even though
several of the topics discussed in this research cover neuroscience and partially
science in general,16 the research does not include specific discussions on empirical
studies done in these fields. Overall, the discussion of neuroscience facts in this
thesis was not exhaustive and relied mostly on Paul Churchlands writings.
This research covered accessible works of Paul Churchland. Some of these
major works are 1) The Engine of Reason, Seat of the Soul, which contains his most
detailed account of morality, 2) A Neurocomputational Perspective, 3)
Neurophilosophy at Work, and 4) Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain
Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals, all of which contain his extensive
discussions on neurophilosophy overall. Churchlands minor works (his journals
and articles) were also covered in this research. Some of the notable journals that
discuss his view on morality are 1) Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge, 2) Toward
a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, and 3) Rules, Know-How, and the
Future of Moral Cognition.
16
Aside from discussing basic neuroscience facts to aid in the discussions of Churchlands
neurophilosophy, this thesis also included discussions of some scientific concepts to give ground for
the discussions of scientific progress, which is a relevant topic related to Churchlands concept of
moral progress.
In addition to Churchlands works, secondary sources (books, journals, and
articles) that critique and expand his framework were also included in this thesis.
Some secondary sources not directly related to Churchlands work but that discuss
morality, neurophilosophy, and science in general were also included to aid in
understanding Churchlands framework more broadly.
Several of the books, journals, and electronic sources consisting of
philosophical and scientific journals that were used as sources in the study come
from the University of Santo Tomas Miguel de Benavides Library. Other books,
journals, conference proceedings, and articles significant to the research were also
gathered online by the researcher.
E. Review of Related Literature
This review is organized according to the following selected themes: 1)
neurophilosophy, 2) eliminative materialism, 3) the future of folk psychology, 4)
neuroscience and morality, 5) neuroscience and the is-ought gap, and 6) moral
progress. Each theme represents a major concern in this study. This literature
review aims to aid the reader in understanding the major topics in Churchlands
neurophilosophy, and introduce some of the significant sources that aided the
researcher in solving the main problem stated in this thesis.

1. Neurophilosophy
Paul Churchland was not alone in his early endeavors to develop
neurophilosophy. His wife Patricia Smith Churchland worked with him, co-
authoring several early works that are now the preliminary foundations of
neurophilosophy. In fact, their decades of partnership make it difficult to
distinguish who really pioneered the early ideas of neurophilosophy. Considering
this fact, it would be appropriate to introduce in this review some of the major
works of P. S. Churchland.17 Their works, while independent, clearly complement
one another, with Brian Keeley even saying: Pauls work is the Yin and Pats work
is the Yang.18 Thus, orienting oneself in both of their works will generate a clearer
understanding of neurophilosophy from both ends.
Patricia Churchlands book Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of
the Mind-Brain19 was one of the first seminal attempts to integrate neuroscience and
philosophy. This attempt was made by establishing the field of neurophilosophy as
a study that intersects neuroscience and philosophy. In her book, P. S. Churchland
introduces some of the fundamental concepts in neurophilosophy, such as
reductionism and eliminative materialism. Reductionism basically states that mental
states are reducible to brain or neural processes, the discussion of which paves the
way for eliminative materialism. P. S. Churchland argues that our current
17
The researcher would refer to Patricia Churchland either by her full name or P. S.
Churchland to avoid confusion.
18
Brian Keeley, Introduction: Becoming Paul M. Churchland, in Paul Churchland,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Preface, xxi, 2.
19
Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
conception of the mind (which she calls folk psychology) suffers from flaws, and
must eventually be replaced, or at the very least modified, by more neuroscience-
informed concepts. This means that completely flawed folk psychological concepts
must be eliminated. On the other hand, the remaining concepts, if they are really
viable, will inevitably face neural reduction. This implies that any concept or theory
about the mind that cannot be reduced to brain or neural processes is an invalid one.
That being the case, P. S. Churchland offers a new paradigm on how the human
person makes sense of or represents the environment. This new paradigm
presupposes the fact that the mind does not operate under our normal conception of
logic or language; rather, it operates through a complex neural process of
computation and representation. This runs counter to the traditional notion of
logical empiricists, which assumes that the mind is like a serial machine governed
by the rules of logic that operate on sentence-like representations.20
P. S. Churchland predicts, or perhaps envisions, that when a more complete
neuroscience is established, folk psychology, or old concepts about the mind, will
be obsolete and new concepts grounded on neuroscience will emerge and establish
a new paradigm, similar to the one stated above. With P. S. Churchlands
prediction, one of the main tasks of neurophilosophy becomes clear: It must
conceive and develop new brain-based or neuroscience-informed concepts and
paradigms. Such task is what neurophilosophers like Paul and Patricia Churchland
seek to accomplish.
20
Ibid., 350.
Georg Northoff, in his book Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem,21
exposes the current issues faced by the philosophy of mind. The classic mind-body
problem evolved into the more complex mind-brain problem. This problem, which
he calls the brain problem, is examined extensively by neuroscience and
philosophy. In an attempt to solve this brain problem, Northoff adopts an
epistemological and empirical account of the brain. He argues that philosophy
should shift from the study of the mind into the study of the brain, and from the
philosophy of mind into the philosophy of the brain. In this sense, resolving the
mind-brain problem would involve a paradigm shift in philosophy from the
traditional philosophical framework that neglects the brain into a new one,
neurophilosophy. The latter has a methodology that can provide the
transdisciplinary linkage between neuroscience and philosophy.22
The book Paul Churchland23 is a compilation of different authors works
which serves as a supplementary material to Churchlands philosophical
framework. Brian Keeley, in his article Introduction: Becoming Paul M.
Churchland,24 summarizes the philosophical vision of Churchland and mentions
the past philosophers (Russell Hanson, Wilfrid Sellars, and Paul Feyerabend) who
have influenced Churchlands current framework. The book also serves as an
exposition, analysis, rejoinder, and critique of Churchlands major concepts such as
eliminative materialism (which Jose Luis Bermudez discusses in his article

21
Georg Northoff, Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem, (Netherlands: John
Benjamins Publishing, 2004).
22
Ibid., 351.
23
Brian Keeley, ed., Paul Churchland, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
24
Brian Keeley, Introduction: Becoming Paul M. Churchland, in Ibid., 131.
Arguing for Eliminativism,25) and connectionism26 (which Aarre Laakso and
Garrison Cottrell tackled in their article Churchland on Connectionism.27) This
book is not only a comprehensive summary of Churchlands specific concepts on
neurophilosophy, but is also a ground for critique and perhaps the establishment of
a rejoinder to some of the unresolved issues in his framework.
2. Eliminative Materialism
Eliminative materialism is one of the core concepts of Paul Churchlands
neurophilosophy. Several earlier thinkers conceived of this concept even before
Churchland applied it to neurophilosophy. The following works trace the
development of eliminative materialism and expose the earlier accounts of the
concept before Churchlands time.
In 1956, before the term eliminative materialism emerged, Wilfrid Sellars,
in his acclaimed work Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Mind,28 proposed the
idea that our commonsense conception of the mind is merely a model derived from
overt human behavior and linguistic tendencies. The primary purpose of Sellars
work was to attack the myth of the given, or debunk the idea of Cartesian innatism
or nativism. With such aim, Sellars argues that our commonsense conception of the
25
Jose Luis Bermudez, Arguing for Eliminativism, in Ibid., 3265.
26
Connectionism is a field in cognitive science that uses of artificial neural networks
(simplified models of the brain) as models to explain psychological and mental phenomena.
Churchland, by default, calls this approach neurocomputational perspective, which will be the
term used throughout this thesis to refer to his connectionist approach in general.
27
Aarre Laakso and Garrison Cottrell, Churchland of Connectionism, in Ibid.,113153.
28
Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997 [1956]).
mind is formed not through direct access from it; rather, it is formed by a semantic
process. Such process entails a theorization of a domain that is not immediately
perceptible to the human person. As such, our commonsense view of the mind
becomes merely a model, or a falsifiable theory; it is not an inner account of the
mind as it is. This Sellarsian account of the mind, even though it is not completely
eliminative per se, would eventually be one of the precursors to the founding of
eliminative materialism.
After Sellars, Paul Feyerabend, in his Mental Events and the Brain
(1963),29 revisited the age-old debate between monism and dualism of the mind and
body. Feyerabend asserted that the proper stance a monist should take in his
response to a dualist is to develop a theory without using the current terminologies.
It would be a new theory based purely on physiology, rather than partly accepting
some of the mental states that dualism advocates. Feyerabend was confident that
any theory based on physiology will not be endangered in the way a claim without
physiological basis will be, similar to how a physiological account of epilepsy
does not become an empty tautology on account of the fact that it does not make
use of the phraseor of the notion'possessed by the devil', 'devil' here occurring
in its theological sense.30 That being the case, Feyerabend saw no reason a purely
physiological account of the human person could not be established as a
background theory of human nature. In this sense, he was indirectly proposing the
29
Paul K. Feyerabend, Comment: Mental Events and the Brain, The Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 60, No. 11 (May 23, 1963): 295296.
30
Ibid., 296.
elimination of mental phenomenon in favor of a purely physiological account of
human nature, which was one of the fundamental assumptions of early eliminative
materialism.
Richard Rorty, in his article Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories
(1965)31 was one of the first to propose the idea that future empirical discoveries on
human nature may radically change the way we currently think. Rorty specifically
attempted to show the possibility that if brain processes and sensations are shown to
be empirically identical (identity theory), then there will certainly be radical
changes with the way we speak. He added that there is no method of classifying
linguistic expressions guaranteed to remain undisputed despite the results of future
empirical inquiry. Rorty then concluded that the current language used to explain
mental phenomena could be deemed obsolete in the future similar to how
demoniacal possession is now a form of hallucinatory psychosis, or how Zeus
thunderbolts are now simply discharges of static electricity. Adopting this
premise, Rorty went on to show why sensations as we know it can be mistaken and
replaced by explanations based on brain processes.
Following Rortys train of thought, James W. Cornman introduced the term
eliminative materialism for the first time in 1968, in his article On the Elimination
of Sensations and Sensations.32 Cornman attempted to justify the metaphysical
doctrine of materialism and solve some of its shortcomings. He provided an
31
Richard Rorty, Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories, The Review of
Metaphysics, vol. 19, No. 1 (Sep., 1965): 2454.
32
James Conman, On the Elimination of Sensations and Sensations, Review of
Metaphysics, vol. XXII, (1968): 1535.
alternative to the most commonly used reductive strategy of identity theory.33 He
claimed that instead of solely attempting to reduce mental phenomena to physical
phenomena, for example brain processes, eliminative materialism can be used.
Eliminative materialism is basically a method that totally eliminates mental
phenomena unnecessary to explain human nature. Using this method, Cornman
aimed to eliminate the very concept of sensations. However, even with such
rigorous attempts, Cornman conceded that the concept of sensations cannot be
totally discarded, because there is no current alternative physiological (particularly
neurophysiological) theory that can completely explain such mental phenomena.
Thus, he partially opposed Rortys previous assumption on the obsolescence of the
conventional concept of sensations.
3. The Future of Folk Psychology
Although Churchland was heavily influenced by the eliminative materialists
before him, he has his own unique take on eliminative materialism. His view hinges
on how folk psychology, our current view of human nature, can be displaced or
eliminated by a new theory of human nature based on future matured neuroscience.
This view is evidently shared by P.S. Churchland as briefly shown earlier. Although
compelling, this view advocated by both Paul and Patricia Churchland is not
without disputes.
33
Identity theory is often considered a reductive form of materialism because of its
tendency to assume that all mental phenomena are identical to physical phenomena.
Raymond Tallis, in his article What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About

34
Ourselves, emphasizes that neuroscience cannot replace our current
commonsense view of human nature. Tallis critiques the notion that neuroscience
can fully account for all mental and psychological phenomena, a notion he calls
neuroscientism. While neuroscience can reveal some of the important conditions
that make human activity and behavior possible, it does not provide a complete
account of all the conditions needed to make them possible (particularly,
neuroscience currently cannot explain the nature of consciousness and
intentionality). This means that the descriptions and explanations employed by
neuroscience are incomplete in several crucial aspects. Thus he concludes that a
new view of neuroscience cannot replace our current folk psychological views of
human nature, in contrast to what the Churchlands have been envisioning.
Related to Tallis view, Andy Clark, in his article Futures: Folk
Psychology and the Role of Representations in Cognitive Science, 35 and Robert
McCauley, in his article Explanatory Pluralism and The Science of Co-evolution
of Theories in Science, 36 both agree with Churchlands claim that neuroscience
can change our understanding of human nature, but they both disagree with some of
his points. Clark argues that even though neuroscience can radically improve our
understanding of human nature, a new view based on it will not displace folk
34
Raymond Tallis, What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves, New Atlantis:
A Journal of Technology & Society, vol. 29 (2010): 325.
35
Andy Clark, Dealing in Futures: Folk Psychology and the Role of Representations in
Cognitive Science, in McCauley, The Churchlands and their Critics: 86103.
36
Robert N. McCauley, Explanatory Pluralism and The Science of Co-evolution of
Theories in Science, in McCauley, The Churchlands and their Critics: 1747.
psychology precisely because folk psychology offers an understanding of human
nature that neuroscience cannot provide by itself. Based on this, Clark suggests that
neuroscience research must not seek to displace folk psychology but rather augment
it, thereby arguing that an augmentative materialism is a more appropriate goal than
eliminative materialism. Similar to Clark, McCauley argues that folk psychology
will not be eliminated as a theory of human nature; rather, it will serve as a guide to
neuroscience research. Particularly, McCauley is suggesting that folk psychology
and neuroscience can mutually co-evolve to enhance our overall understanding of
human nature. Hence he disagrees with Churchlands claim that folk psychology
will be eliminated or displaced by future neuroscience research.
In contrast to the claims above, some thinkers are in favor of Churchlands
vision for the future of folk psychology. William Ramsey, Stephen Stich, and
Joseph Garon, in their article Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future of Folk
37
Psychology, state that current neuroscience research, particularly that of
connectionism, suggests that neural networks, when simulated in artificial neural
networks, can give rise to human-like cognitive activity. Such cognitive activity
operates not through lingua-formal or proposition-based assumptions as common
sense tells us, but on an entirely different non-lingual mechanism. If these artificial
networks accurately depict the human nervous system, Ramsey, Stich, and Garon
suggest that this will instigate an ontologically radical change in our commonsense
37
William Ramsey, Stephen Stich, and Joseph Garon, Connectionism, Eliminativism and
the Future of Folk Psychology, in John D. Greenwood, eds., The Future of Folk Psychology:
Intentionality and Cognitive Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 93119.
assumptions about human nature. Our views that human cognitive activity operates
through proposition, they claim, may be displaced, similar to how old scientific
theories such as caloric and phlogiston were deemed obsolete.
Partially agreeing to Ramsey, Stich, and Garon, Daniel Dennett, in his
article Two Contrasts: Folk Craft versus Folk Science, and Belief versus Opinion,
38
claims that connectionism indeed offers a more realistic model of how human
cognitive activity works. Dennett argues that the folk psychological model that
assumes that cognitive activity operates through sentences (that is, the language of
thought hypothesis of cognition) is unrealistic in a sense that it cannot account for
non-proposition-based cognitive activity. On the other hand, the model provided by
connectionism does not have this problem, precisely because it sketches cognition
as something driven by neural factors, which seems to be non-linguistic by nature.
He cautions, however, that connectionism is still developing, and, currently, it does
not show an adequate molecular-level explanation for very complex molar-level
cognitive activities. Until connectionism provides such explanation, Dennett
suggests that we should temper our enthusiasm on the promise that
connectionism will radically change our folk psychological views about cognition
in the future.
Overall, the works cited in this section provide the current diverse views on
the future of folk psychology. Apparently, there are many disputes as to what state
our folk psychological assumptions will ultimately reach when faced with the
38
Daniel Dennett, Two Contrasts: Folk Craft versus Folk Science, and Belief versus
Opinion, in Greenwood, eds., The Future of Folk Psychology: 135148.
growth of neuroscience research. This insight is important to be able to situate
Churchlands view on the overall landscape of the discussion.
4. Neuroscience and Morality
Patricia Churchland, in her book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us
about Morality,39 asks two key questions: Where do values come from? How and
why do brains care about others?40 P. S. Churchland writes that these questions
can be answered by adopting ideas and data from neuroscience, evolutionary
theory, genetics, experimental psychology, and philosophy. Through thousands of
years of evolution, the brain has evolved to develop empathy, a sense of attachment,
and bonding. To prove this point, she cites neurobiology, particularly the influence
and role of the neurochemical signals, 41 which enable human beings to develop
attachment to one another, starting with mother-child attachment, followed by peer
(kin) attachment, then eventually attachment to larger and larger circles of people.
She emphasizes the fact that increased levels of specific types of neurochemicals
improve the social landscape and decrease tensions and conflicts among groups of
humans, thus increasing their survival rate. In this sense, P. S. Churchland has
shown that survival was the main trigger for empathy to develop. This development
became the first foundation of morality.
39
Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, (New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011).
40
Ibid., 12.
41
Specifically, P.S. Churchland is referring to the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is a
neurotransmitter or neuropeptide present in mammals that is said to be responsible for promoting
offspring and mate attachment. Further research suggests that oxytocin plays a role in the behavior
of an animal in social settings. See Ibid., 202, 209, 213.
Certain levels of neurochemicals, however, do not only serve as survival
mechanisms. By their nature, some neurochemicals give certain amounts of joy and
pleasure, depending on their levels. Thus, while their survival is already secured,
human beings continue to bond with one another. Eventually, this drive for bonding
and attachment shaped human social interactions, and developed our sense of right
and wrong. The belief that being accepted as part of society brings pleasure while
being rejected by society brings pain also followed.
True to her words, P. S. Churchland has given a scientifically informed
account of the genealogy of morality, as she concludes in the last chapter of her
book: Morality seems to me to be a natural phenomenonconstrained by the
forces of natural selection, rooted in neurobiology, shaped by local ecology, and
modified by cultural developments.42 Her account of morality provides a broader
ontological context to Paul Churchlands very specific epistemological account of
morality. As previously mentioned, Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland differ
in their direction of research; however, having very similar premises, their
conclusions complement one another. Thus, P. S. Churchlands view of
neuroscience and morality serves as comprehensive supplementary information to
the topic of this thesis.
In William D. Casebeers book, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution,
Connectionism and Moral Cognition,43 he proposes a renewed naturalistic view of
42
Ibid., 191.
43
William D. Casebeer, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, And Moral
Cognition, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).
morality. Adopting the ideas of evolutionary theory and cognitive science, he
exposes the natural ethical facts that bridge science and morality. He claims that
similar to how the nature of other cognitive functions is already being unlocked by
the sciences, moral cognition can already be studied empirically and scientifically.
He expounds on this point by asserting that moral cognition can be naturalized
through the findings of computational neuroscience in conjunction with artificial-
neural-net framework, which is basically connectionism at its very core. He further
argues that, currently, connectionism is the most plausible approach to naturalize
morality. In this pursuit, he closely follows Paul Churchlands seminal attempt to
provide a cognitive neurobiology of moral virtues. This being the case, he tackles
several key issues in morality through neuroscience and neural-net framework,
which is very similar to Churchlands approach.
Overall, Casebeers view of morality basically sets the preliminary grounds
for the discussion of moral cognition in this thesis, for the reason that Churchlands
account of moral cognition is basically connectionist. Thus, understanding the
plausibility of a connectionist view of morality is a significant step in solving the
main problem of this thesis.
Liane Young and James Dungan, in their article Where in the Brain Is
44
Morality? Everywhere and Maybe Nowhere, points out that the field
neuroscience of morality, with its very first attempts to investigate the moral brain,
aims to answer the obvious question: Where in the brain is morality? With such
44
Liane Young and James Dungan. Where in the Brain Is Morality? Everywhere and
Maybe Nowhere, Social Neuroscience, 2012, 7 (1): 110.
aim, researchers of moral neuroscience investigated the nature of the emotional
brain and the social brain, and its possible link to morality. Indeed, as the article
points out, moral neuroscience was successful in finding the social and emotional
areas in the brain, and enumerating their plausible relation to morality.
Nevertheless, even with such efforts, current neuroscience is still unable to discover
a specific place in the brain that can serve as the center for morality, as Young and
Dungan writes: Morality is made up of complex cognitive processes, deployed
across many domains and housed all over the brain. However, no neural substrate
or system that uniquely supports moral cognition has been found.45 In this sense, it
may perhaps be the case that moral cognition is formed through the convergence of
multiple inputs spread across different multiple cognitive systems. Thus, the
question Where is morality in the brain? cannot be answered, for as Young and
Dungan concludes: It seems to be either everywhere or nowhere at all.
With this, Young and Dungan clarified the position of current neuroscience
in its specific discoveries about morality. Despite the promise of neuroscience in
enhancing our understanding of morality as depicted by P.S. Churchland and
Casebeer, Young and Dungans article gives an insight on the current limits of
neuroscience research on morality.
Besides the current state of neuroscience research on morality, more
philosophical issues surrounding the relationship between neuroscience and
morality are prevalent. Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, in their book
45
Ibid., 1.
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 46 argue that neuroscientists and
neurophilosophers alike commonly commit a category mistake they call the
mereological fallacy. The fallacy involves ascribing psychological or mental
attributes solely to the brain. Bennett and Hacker maintain that a human being is a
psychophysical unity...not a brain embedded in the skull of a body.47 In a sense,
they are claiming that neuroscience alone cannot completely replace the common
and traditional psychological explanations of human activities. Applying Bennett
and Hackers argument to morality, it can be claimed that neuroscience alone
cannot completely account for the nature of morality.
Contrary to Bennett and Hackers warning, there are several neuroscientists
and neurophilosophers who take into account factors beyond the brain. Particularly,
in recent interdisciplinary studies of neuroscience and morality, the discussions are
evidently not limited to the brain as Bennett and Hacker caution.
Antonio Damasio, in his article The Neural Basis of Social Behavior:
Ethical Implications,48 argues that ethics is not simply a matter of evolution, genes,
or brain structures. For him, culture, in the form of laws in justice system and
ethical rules for example, are important factors in shaping our overall morality and
ethics. He claims that human nature is not simply reliant on the brain; culture is also
46
Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, Selections from Philosophical Foundations of
Neuroscience, in Maxwell Bennett et al., Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and
Language, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
47
Ibid., 6.
48
Antonio Damasio, The Neural Basis of Social Behavior: Ethical Implications, in
Walter Glannon, ed., Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science: Essential Readings in
Neuroethics, (New York: Dana Press, 2007):175178.
an important element in shaping our lives. He further claims that perhaps culture is
a more influential factor than brain structures and even biological factors.
Parallel to Damasios claim, Andy Clark, in his article Word and Action:
Reconciling Rules and Know-How in Moral Cognition, 49 claims that moral
cognition does not depend solely on non-discursive neural mechanisms, but are also
affected by discursive factors such as moral rules or laws. Clark suggests that
morality is possible precisely because of the interplay of these two factors.
Although neuroscience research has yet to reveal how such interaction happens at
the neural level, Clark suggests that future neuroscience research must take this
interaction into account. Only then can neuroscience illuminate the nature of how
we become moral.
In their article The Neural Mechanisms of Moral Cognition: A Multiple-
Aspect Approach to Moral Judgment and Decision-Making,50 Patricia Churchland
and William Casebeer review the growing literature on neural mechanisms of moral
cognition (NMMC). P. S. Churchland and Casebeer conclude that most of the
current experiments designed in NMMC are inadequate at simulating real-life
situations in their experimental design. They claim that moral cognition, along with
moral judgment and decision-making, is never made in a vacuum but is done in a
highly social environment. Thus, experimental designs, for them to accurately
49
Andy Clark, Word and Action: Reconciling Rules and Know-How in Moral Cognition,
in Richmond Campbell and Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized, (Calgary: University of
Calgary Press, 2000): 267290.
50
Patricia Churchland and William Casebeer, The Neural Mechanisms of Moral
Cognition: A Multiple-Aspect Approach to Moral Judgment and Decision-Making, Biology and
Philosophy 18 (2003): 169194.
uncover how neural mechanisms are related to our moral cognition, must simulate
the real world as accurately as possible. Overall, they are advocating for
experimental designs in NMMC to consider the environmental factors more
adequately than before.
In sum, the three articles above show that research on neuroscience and
morality not only focuses on the brain and its neural mechanism, but also on
external factors. This trend is evidently reflected in Churchlands neurophilosophy.
As will be shown in this thesis, he is not attempting to completely reduce morality
to the brain. Roughly in line with the trend presented above, he also considers the
significance of factors outside the brain.
5. Neuroscience and the Is-Ought Gap
Despite the promise that neuroscience shows in enhancing our
understanding of morality, some thinkers argue that it cannot account for the
normative aspect of morality. Bernard Gert, in his article Neuroscience and
Morality51 exposes three different perspectives from three different thinkers about
what science, specifically neuroscience, can say about morality. Kwame Anthony
Appiah,52 in his book Experiments in Ethics, notes that science can show what sort
of activities, laws, and practices have the best chance of promoting well-being, but
does not determine what counts as well-being. Thus, science is useful only in
51
Bernard Gert, Neuroscience and Morality, Hastings Center Report 42, no. 3 (2012):
2228.
52
Ibid., 25, 28.
challenging common moral intuitions and in helping us avoid the harms that we all
want to avoid; science does not provide us with new ends or values. In this sense,
Appiah is stating that the natural facts science provides cannot contribute to our
value judgments. On the other hand, Sam Harris, 53 in his book The Moral
Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, argues that science is our
best method for finding out truths about events and states of the world and our
brains, adding that it is the best method for finding out truths about well-being.
He also emphasizes that the primacy of neuroscience and the other sciences of
mind on questions of human experience can no longer be denied. Lastly, Patricia
S. Churchland, 54 in her book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about
Morality, posits that the normative sense of morality is derived from what happens
in the brain. She strongly holds her position that neuroscience provides an
explanation of why human beings make the kinds of moral decisions and
judgments the way they do.
At the end of his article, Gert compares and contrasts the view of the three
thinkers mentioned. He concludes that even though all of them think that science is,
to some extent, useful in contributing to our view of morality, they all have
different accounts of morality and how it is supposed to be connected to
neuroscience. For Gert, this relativism means that it is unlikely for neuroscience to
add anything to our current understanding of morality as a code of conduct or law
that one should or ought to abide to. However, he thinks that neuroscience may
53
Ibid., 2324.
54
Ibid., 2728.
be able to explain why we behave the way we do in situations that call for moral
decisions or judgments. In this sense, Gert is basically stating that neuroscience
cannot affect our normative assumptions about morality but can enhance our
descriptive understanding of it.
Parallel to Gerts claim, Joshua Greene writes in his article From Neural
Is to Moral Ought: What Are the Moral Implications of Neuroscientific Moral
Psychology?55 that the pursuit of a naturalistic ethics through neuroscience often
leads to non sequitur. He states that we cannot go from This is how we think to
This is how we ought to think,56 and claims that attempting to find theories about
right and wrong through neuroscience is a mistake. Instead, he advocates that we
must see neuroscience as something that can provide us with a better understanding
of the nature of morality. While Greene thinks that the is-ought gap cannot be
bridged, he also acknowledges the potential of neuroscience facts to radically
influence our moral thinking in a deep way.57 Overall, similar to Gert, Greene
advocates that the role of neuroscience is to illuminate our descriptive
understanding; it cannot provide us with moral oughts.
6. Churchland and Moral Progress
As stated previously, Churchlands concept of moral progress is not without
disputes. The problems that his critics pointed out specifically hinges on
55
Joshua Greene, From neural is to moral ought: what are the moral implications of
neuroscientific moral psychology? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 4 (October 2003): 847
850.
56
Ibid., 847.
57
Ibid., 849.
Churchlands way of conceiving the normative dimension of morality, which is
where the main problem of this thesis is founded.
Owen Flanagan, in his critical essay The Moral Network,58 stresses that
Churchlands vision of moral progress is overly optimistic. Flanagan infers that the
reason for this is because Churchland thinks that progress in the moral domain is
the same as progress in the scientific domain. Flanagan argues that this leads
Churchland to miss several of the normative factors that affect our moral views that
are not present in our scientific endeavors. First, because Churchland thinks that
scientific progress is similar to moral progress, he fails to acknowledge that the
ends we pursue in our moral endeavors is radically different from the ends we
pursue in our scientific endeavors. For Flanagan, our moral pursuits are filled with
diverse ends and local value judgments. For example, what constitutes moral
progress for a Muslim will be different for a Catholic. This is not the case in our
scientific pursuits. Science is by standard a field that globally seeks objective
knowledge and can thus aim for a progress that is linear and unified. In this sense,
Flanagan thinks Churchlands view of moral progress as a global and linear
development is an overly optimistic claim that fails to account for the normative
dimension of morality, specifically the locality and diversity of value judgments.
58
and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 192215.
Andy Clark, in his critical essay Making Moral Space: A Reply to
Churchland, 59 takes an entirely different form of critique toward Churchlands
concept of moral progress. The problem, Clark thinks, lies in Churchlands failure
to differentiate between social and moral progress. For Clark, Churchland sees
moral progress as simply an increase in the overall social competence of
humankind. From this perspective, we progress morally by becoming better in
handling the social world we live in. On the contrary, Clark argues that moral
progress is not supposed to be simply the improvement of our socialization skills,
but must also constitute the improvement of our moral sensibilitythat is, our
sensitivity to the needs, desires, and goals of others. In a sense, Clark critiques
Churchlands view of morality as a prescriptive concept, and attempts to provide an
improved, or, at the very least, a different form of prescription of how moral
progress ought to be realized.
Overall, both Flanagan and Clark point out the crucial issues in
Churchlands concept of moral progress that need to be addressed to solve the main
problem. Solving these issues is crucial because if Churchlands concept of moral
progress indeed holds the answer to the possible normative significance of a
naturalistic account of morality, one would first need to solve the inherent
normative issues surrounding such concept.
59
Andy Clark, Making Moral Space: A Reply to Churchland, in Richmond Campbell and
Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000): 307
312.
F. Methodology
To adhere faithfully to Churchlands neurophilosophical account of
morality, the researcher employed the methodological hermeneutics framework of
interpretation. In this method, the text of a philosopher is taken as a finished fact.60
Therefore the researcher took Churchlands texts as faithfully as possible in their
original context.
Specifically, the researcher did the following: 1) employed textual analysis
of Churchlands works to extract his overall neurophilosophical framework and
method, 2) applied this framework and method to the exposition of his view of
morality, and 3) synthesized Churchlands account of morality, as shown in his
early works in 19892000, with his account of epistemology, as shown in his latter
works in 20012012.61 In particular, the researcher synthesized Churchlands early
views of moral realism with his latter views of scientific realism, and his early
views on moral progress with his latter views on scientific progress and socio-
cultural development. This synthesis was done to comprehensively provide a more
extensive examination of his view of morality and to address Churchlands evident
lack of elaboration on the is-ought gap, which can mostly be found in his latter
writings on epistemology.
60
Emmanuel Batoon, A Guide to Thesis Writing in Philosophy, (Manila: REJN Publishing,
2005), 61.
61
Overall, this approach is done based on Churchlands fundamental premise that all types
of cognition (whether moral or scientific) are covered in his epistemology (this claim was
expounded on in Chapter IV). Based on this, the researcher claims that applying the premises of
Churchlands latter epistemology to his early writings on morality is justified, at least within
Churchlands framework.
G. Organization of the Study
This research is divided into six chapters. Chapter I introduces the thesis and
presents the initial direction and structure of the study. This chapter contains the
background of the study, statement of the problem, significance of the study, scope
and limitation, methodology, organization of the study, and review of related
literature.
Chapter II introduces the philosopher Paul Churchland, and orients the
reader to his field, neurophilosophy. Such introduction is made by first providing a
brief historical background on how Churchlands philosophical thought developed,
thereby pointing out the key differences of his thought from traditional philosophy.
This leads to the discussion of eliminative materialism, one of the foundational
premises of his philosophy. Second, the chapter discusses Churchlands overall
neurophilosophical framework and method and its general implications on our
conception of human nature. Overall, this chapter primarily focuses on discussing
the general assumptions and framework of Churchlands neurophilosophy.
Chapter III is an in-depth analysis of moral learning. Specifically, this
chapter attempts to demonstrate how morality may be possessed or acquired by a
human person. It traces the developmental aspect of neurophilosophy and relates it
with morality. The researcher develops this topic by first discussing the relationship
of neural phenomena to learning in particular, and morality in general. Thus,
overall, this chapter attempts to set the preliminary grounds for Churchlands
naturalistic account of morality.

Chapter IV contains a detailed discussion on Churchlands view of moral
knowledge. Overall, the purpose of this chapter is to set the foundational premises
of Churchlands concept of moral progress. With such purpose in mind, the
researcher first exposes Churchlands account of moral knowledge and how it is
developed at the individual and collective level. Second, the researcher establishes
Churchlands account of moral realism, which leads to an examination of his
arguments for the objectivity of moral knowledge. Finally, the researcher attempts
to contextualize Churchlands view of moral realism with his overall
epistemological framework.
Chapter V contains the answer to the main problem. This chapter first
exposes Churchlands concept of moral progress. Second, it examines the major
critiques of his concept of moral progress. Third, it clarifies the possible
misunderstandings assumed by his critics. Fourth, it aims to establish the
requirements for moral progress within the context of Churchlands overall
philosophy, thereby determining the possible normative significance of a
naturalistic understanding of morality.
Chapter VI, the final chapter, concludes the research by: 1) summarizing
each chapter, from Chapters IIV, 2) providing the final and definitive resolution to
the main problem, and 3) enumerating possible recommendations for future studies.
CHAPTER II
Founding Neurophilosophy
In an attempt to explain what neurophilosophy is, the aim of this chapter
will be the following: 1) provide a brief conceptual and historical context for
Churchlands thought, 2) comprehensively introduce Churchlands
neurophilosophy to the reader, and 3) outline some of the basic concepts in
neuroscience that is essential to understanding Churchland's neurophilosophy.
A. A Brief History of the Concept of Mind
Churchlands main goal in founding neurophilosophy is to develop a more
scientifically informed and penetrating account of human nature. In a sense, he
basically seeks the most naturalistic account of human nature.62 As a consequence,
his development of neurophilosophy lies heavily on scientific and empirical facts.
But Churchlands neurophilosophy did not simply grow from the development and
breakthroughs in neuroscience; it also sprang from a rich history of philosophy.
Indeed, the influence of prominent philosophers on Churchlands works is
62
This claim is based on this comment about Churchlands philosophy: Churchland is the
first truly natural epistemologist. Quine (1951) opened the doors by arguing that natural science does
matter to philosophy (and vice versa). Churchland was the first to boldly step through those doors
and demonstrate how naturalized epistemology could, and should, be done (Aarre Laakso and
Garrison Cottrel, Churchland on Connectionism, in Paul Churchland, [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006], 149).
undeniable. 63 [W]hile he has clearly developed his own unique view of the
philosophical terrain, he is not without his influencesinfluences that he in no way
attempts to hide. 64 To trace some of these influences and their significance to
Churchlands founding of neurophilosophy, a brief history of how philosophy
developed into the contemporary period will be shown. The discussion will focus
on how the view of mind changed in the course of the history of Western
philosophy.
1. Toward a Contemporary View of Mind
The mystery of where the mindthe seat of consciousness and rationality
resides is something that baffled philosophers since time immemorial. Even today,
the answer to this mystery is still under debate. Several earlier thinkers attempted to
solve this mystery either from a dualistic or materialistic standpoint. The approach
thus became a problem of how the mind is related or connected to the body, giving
birth to the mind-body problem. However, during the ancient era, dualism prevailed
at the hands of the ancients like Plato.65 This trend continued in the modern era,
with the heights of this trend arguably reaching its peak at the hands of Rene
63
The influence of contemporary philosophers of mind is clearly seen in Churchlands
earlier and latter works, as will be shown in the latter parts of this chapter.
64
Brian Keeley, Introduction: Becoming Paul M. Churchland, in Paul Churchland,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1.
65
Plato completely separated the soul from the body, assuming truth and reason can only be
realized in the soul. Although Aristotle took a different stance, both thinkers took it as a given that
the mind (our intellect and rationality) is fundamentally an inherent property of the soul. This focus
on the soul dominated the philosophy of mind until the end of the medieval period. See Plato,
Platos Phaedo, trans. David Bostock, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 64c5, 65b2 and
65c2; Aristotle, De Anima, trans. D.W. Hamlyn, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),
412b4; Peter A. Morton, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind: Readings with
Commentary, (Ontario: Broadview Press, Dec 23, 1996), 3.
Descartes (15961650). By separating the res cogitans (thinking substance) from
res extensa (extended substance), Descartes gave birth to what we came to know as
Cartesian dualism. 66 Nevertheless, despite the dominance of dualism, some
materialistic views also emerged during the modern era. 67 Unfortunately, even
though modern materialists were thorough in their discussions, they evidently failed
to provide a convincing explanation on how mere matter can produce seemingly
immaterial aspects of mind such as sensations, consciousness, language, and
mathematical reasoning. Along with poor reception from the academic world, what
68
we can call as classical materialism will be overshadowed by dualism;
66
This entails the separation of thinking from all other physiological processes, and even
all physical substance all together. It is an assumption that the selfor the Iis ones mind and
not ones body, which adheres to Descartes famous dictum: cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am). Cartesian dualism, then, is a form of substance dualism, because it regards the mind as a
different substance from the body. This would mean that, even though all physiological processes
are highly mechanical and determined, processes of the mind (e.g. thinking, imagination and willing)
are still independent from any physical mechanism because they are of a different substance. See
Ren Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: A Latin-English Edition, trans. John Cottingham,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Apr 11, 2013); Descartes, Discourse on Method, in
Ren Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress,
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, Mar 1, 1998), 18 [par. 32]; Ren Descartes, Treatise on Man
and Descriptions of the Human Body, in Descartes, The World and Other Writings, trans. Stephen
Gaukroger, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 99205.
67
Thomas Hobbes (15881679) advocated an early form of reductive materialism. In his
work Leviathan, Hobbes details how the faculties of reason can be reduced to motions and matter.
See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan eds. J.C.A. Gaskin, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998),
Part 1 Of Man.
Another prominent but not well-known materialist view during the modern era is the
Alexandrian view. This view advocates that the mind can be attributed to the matter of the brain. It
opposes the Greek-medieval belief that the mind resides in the soul. This scientifically appealing
account served as a threat to the traditional concept of the soul, thus, leading some Catholic
theologians to provide theories about the soul that does not contradict the mechanistic view
prevalent at that time. The most notable of these theories was Cartesian Dualism. See Christina E.
Erneling and David M. Johnson, eds., The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4546.
68
[S]ince Platos time, materialism has been slandered as being crass and immoral, and
few if any professors have dared teach it. To this day, the ontological ideas of [materialists such as]
Hobbes...are being systematically distorted, reviled, or just ignored in history of philosophy courses
(Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry, [New York: Springer Science & Business
Media, Sep 14, 2010], 123).
materialism in general did not arise as an influential thought, at not least until
science started to unlock the secrets behind the mind.
More than three centuries after Descartes era, Cartesian dualism is still
prominent as ever. 69 Although this dualism evolved into a less radical form, it still
preserves its core doctrine, which is substance dualism. However, after World War
II, dualism encountered what we can call direct and indirect blows to its
plausibility. One direct blow was made by behaviorists and logical positivists, such
70 71
as Ludwig Wittgenstein (18891951) and Gilbert Ryle (19001976).
Wittgenstein and Ryle dismissed dualism merely as a mistaken assumption, and that
the separation of the mind from the body sprang from a misuse of grammar and
logic. They concluded that the idea that the mind is a separate substance is a
myth, and the mind-body problem is simply a pseudo-problem. But this bold
declaration implies that there is only one substance that constitutes humans. If the
mind is actually not a separate substance from the body, this would mean that all
mental phenomena must be ascribed to material causes. Behaviorism and logical
69
During the 1950s, Gilbert Ryle acknowledged that Cartesian dualism, despite its flaws,
was still the most accepted theory of the mind, labeling it as the official doctrine. Although it is no
longer in its original form, its basic architecture is still assumed to be sound. See Gilbert Ryle, The
Concept of Mind, (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2009 [1949]), I. Descartes
Myth.
70
Ludwig Wittgenstein declares that Cartesian dualism sprang from a misunderstanding
that the mental world is separate from the physical world, which came from a grammar mistake. See
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies for the Philosophical Investigations, Generally known
as The Blue and Brown Books, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998 [1958]), On the Separation of
mental and physical world See 4748; About its grammar issue, see 67.
71
Ryle declares that dualism sprang from a category mistake. He illustrates his argument in
this manner: I must first indicate what is meant by the phrase Category-mistake. This I do in a
series of illustrations. A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number
of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He
then asks But where is the University? He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same
category as that to which the other institutions belong (Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 6).
positivism, however, failed to completely account for these material causes. 72
Nonetheless, the rapid progress of science gave new light to this lack. This
eventually led to the indirect blow to dualism after World War II: the rise of
materialism, which was triggered by the rapid development in the sciences.
The 1950s to 1960s can be considered the greatest decade for the
development of neuroscience and biology. Indeed, the discovery of the DNA and
most of the foundations of modern neuroscience was established during that time.73
Furthermore, the huge breakthroughs in computer science, accompanied by the
discovery of the cellular mechanism of the brain, enabled the foundation of a
revolutionary idea that the brain is similar to a computer. 74 This idea implies
several things, but its most basic and perhaps its most groundbreaking implication
is that the brain is more than just a gland; the brain actually stores and processes
information.
A computers information is digital, thus, one can argue that such
information is immaterial. Evidently, a person cannot exactly empirically grasp the
entirety of data, save for its representations in computer screens and its user
interfaces. Indeed, it is counterintuitive to assume that a piece of data, an e-book for

72
Philosophical behaviorism claimed that all terms about mental phenomena can be
paraphrased into concrete physical observable behavior and circumstance. Thus, there would be no
need to posit a separate substance to account for mental phenomena. Unfortunately, behaviorism
had two major flaws that made it awkward to believe, even for its defenders. It evidently ignored,
and even denied, the 'inner' aspect of our mental states and it proved to be impossible to adequately
paraphrase certain mental phenomena without positing seemingly infinite propositions about
physical reality, unless one posits a mental state, precisely what behaviorism is trying to avoid. See
Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013), 3839.
73
Gordon Shepherd, Creating Modern Neuroscience: The Revolutionary 1950s, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010), See 1113, specially Shepherds Timetable of Discoveries.
74
Ibid., see 16. Theoretical Neuroscience: The Brain as a Computer and the Computer as a
Brain, 218232.
example, would reside in space and possess some kind of mass and matter.
Following this argument, it would not make sense to say that the e-book in ones
tablet is contained in X place and occupies Y mass in the physical plane of the
tablet. This thought seems to further affirm the immateriality of information;
however, it is hasty to assume that information in a computer is completely
immaterial. It is important to note that a computers inner workings is based on a
material mechanism, even though its digital manifestations seem to be completely
immaterial.75
The idea that the brain deals with information similar to a computer may
mean that it operates on or with something immaterial. If a computer, a physical
system, can process language data and serve as a calculator that can process
mathematical data, it would not be a mystery how the brain, also a physical system,
can do the same. This invalidates an old claim made by dualists, such as Descartes,
that anything physical is unlikely to engage in language use or mathematical
reasoning. Indeed, the computer, something physical, has these very abilities.76 As
75
Digital information is not entirely immaterial. It is possible to explain its materiality by
discussing its binary manifestation on the device. But that materiality has no socio-cultural
importancethat is, at the binary level, all socio-cultural meaning is lost. See Luke Tredinnick,
Digital Information Contexts: Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Digital Information,
(Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2006), 105106.
76
It is perfectly understandable, during Descartes era, to subscribe to substance dualism.
Even though Descartes knew that humans and all other animals have a mechanistic physiology, he
knew that there are cognitive functions that only humans possess, for example language and
mathematical reasoning. He assumed that these abilities cannot be explained by biology alone, and
thus he concluded that these abilities must come from the rational mind. This view perhaps
represents a prominent belief during that time: that is, physical substances cannot produce
immaterial substances. The complex cognitive abilities of the mind, then, can never be attributed to
anything physical. This leads us to the issue that will penetrate the philosophy of mind until today:
the possible irreducibility of the mind. See Descartes, Discourse on Method, 3233 (par. 5755);
can be seen in calculator programs and conversational mobile apps such as Siri,77
mathematics and language can be realized through physical means.
Now, can we say that the brain is similar to a computer, and the mind is its
data? Or more generally, can we say that the brain is akin to hardware and the mind
is akin to its software? Several cognitive scientists believe that this is indeed the
case.78 From this perspective, there is a strong possibility that the mind is indeed
realized through the brain. The truth of such claim would make substance dualism
far less plausible, and make the umbrella claim of classical materialism more
plausible.
Overall, the revolutionary idea of the brain as a computer would lead to a
new form of discussion concerning the mind-body problem. Instead of debating
over the relationship between mind and body, the debate shifts to the relationship of
the mind to the brain. Thus, the birth of the mind-brain problem.79
Erneling and Johnson, eds., The Mind as a Scientific Object, 4546; Churchland, Matter and
Consciousness, 1314.
77
Siri (a recent iPhone app) responds to verbal instructions and interactions (it uses a
template matching scheme for voices rather than for visual images), and partly because it has access
to an entire Yellow Pages for the local area, and can thus direct you any specified kind of retail
outlet that you might request (Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 184).
78
Some cognitive scientists take the software-hardware, mind-brain comparison to be more
than just an analogy. They think that it is an accurate depiction of the relationship between the mind
and body. See Jos Luis Bermdez, Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind,
(New York: Cambridge University Press, Mar 27, 2014), 6061.
79
Northoff in his work describes the shift from the philosophy of mind to the philosophy of
the brain. See Georg Northoff, Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem, (Netherlands: John
Benjamins Publishing, 2004).
2. Contemporary Debates on the View of Mind
The rapid development of relevant sciences concerning the mind led most of
the professional community to accept materialism; however, this did not produce
much unanimity on the view of what the nature of the mind actually is. 80 Instead,
the resurgence of neuroscience and technology produced three distinct forms of
materialism, namely: reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative
materialism.
2.1. Reductive Materialism (Identity Theory)
The main assumption of reductive materialism is that anything mental can
be completely reduced and identified with brain processes. In a sense, the workings
of the mind can be completely accounted for through knowing the workings of the
brain. U. T. Place81 (19242000), one of the earliest identity theorists, illustrates
reductive materialism in the following manner: it is a fact that we can reduce the
phenomenon lightning to mere electric discharges. The reason why we can do
this is because our scientific theory of electricity and optics completely explains
why electric discharge can produce the appearance of lightning. Thus, it becomes
perfectly reasonable to assume lightning is merely an electric discharge perceived
in our eyes. To make a crude analogy, it is also perfectly reasonable to assume that
water can be reduced and identified with H20.
80
Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 35.
81
See Ullin Thomas Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process? in Brian Beakley and
Peter Ludlow, The Philosophy of Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues 2nd Edition,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006 [1956]), 8996.
U.T. Place argues further that the same may be true for mental states (e.g.
consciousness and sensations). If neuroscience can explain why we have those
mental states, then it would be reasonable to assume that those states are
identifiable with brain states. Mental states, then, would be equal to brain states. If
this is the case, can we assume that the mind can be completely reduced or
identified with the brain? Considering the rapid progress of neuroscience, this
possibility cannot be denied. But a competing form of materialism provides an
alternate theory that directly critiques these very assumptions of reductive
materialism.
2.2 Functionalism
Functionalism is another form of materialism that opposes the thesis of
reductive materialism. The basic premise of functionalism is that the essence or the
form of the mind cannot be found in the brain, but rather in the function that it
fulfills in a human being. Thus, the mind, particularly its mental states, and
processes, cannot be completely reduced to or identified solely with brain
processes. While it is true that functionalists also assume that brain states are
responsible for producing mental states, they argue that those processes can be
realized in different kinds of physical systems. This multiple realization
argument is illustrated by renowned functionalist Hilary Putnam (1926-). 82
82
See Hilary Putnam, The Nature of Mental States, in Brian Beakley and Peter Ludlow,
The Philosophy of Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues 2nd Edition, (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2006[1967]), 97106.
According to Putnam, the mental state pain cannot be completely reduced
to a single universal brain state, because pain is an experience common to a
variety of creatures equipped with radically different nervous systems from one
another. For example, the brain state for pain in mollusks will be different from the
brain state of pain in humans. But even if these brain states are physically different
from one another, the state of pain will still produce that same general experience
for both creatures. This is the case because pain cannot be reduced to a single
exclusive brain state, or to any other exclusive physical state for that matter. Thus,
it is unreasonable to assume that pain is solely a brain state. On the other hand, it is
more reasonable to assume that pain is a functional statethat is, any kind of
physical state that can fulfill the role of pain. One can argue that the same may
also be true for other mental states, that they are also more likely to be functional
states than brain states.
Following this argument, it would not be farfetched to assume that an aliens
with a radically different biology from ours (silicon beings for example as opposed
to our carbon-based biology), can have a mind similar to ours, as long as they
resemble the functional states of our mind. If this is true, it would mean that the
studies of the mind do not need to be dependent on any study of the brain. If mental
states are indeed functional states that can be realized with many other physical
systems, it would be impractical to pursue the physical mechanisms behind the
mind. Instead, it would be more efficient to simply study the functional states
shown by these mechanisms. In fact, in the recent decades, research about the mind
in artificial intelligence (AI)83 and cognitive science84 assumes this basic premise of
functionalism. Research was undertaken with the assumption that the mind can be
studied independently from neuroscience, that cognitive science is autonomous.
This autonomy can be compared loosely with the study of software in
information technology, which can proceed independently with almost no
knowledge of hardware from electrical engineering. Indeed, one does not need to
know the mechanisms behind silicon chips to make a specific program in a PC, or
an app in a mobile device. Knowing how software works is enough to study and
make programs. This is precisely the method applied by AI research on cognition.
However, when it comes to studies on the mind this approach seems to be lacking,85
and this is precisely why Churchland critiques the premises of functionalism. But
before proceeding to the details of the said critique (or Churchlands philosophy for
that matter), a discussion of another prominent materialist account of the mind,
which Churchland heavily favors, is in order.
83
See Maria Eunice Quilici Gonzalez, Information and mechanical models of intelligence:
What can we learn from Cognitive Science? in Itiel E. Dror, ed., Cognitive Technologies and the
Pragmatics of Cognition, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, Aug 23, 2007): 109126; 110
111.
84
Bermdez, Cognitive Science, 61.
85
AI-based cognitive research has encountered several problems in its study of the mind
for example, in the frame problem and the problem of symbols and meaning. These problems will be
discussed in detail with the discussion of Churchlands neurophilosophy, at the latter parts of this
thesis. (For an illustration of the frame problem in AI, see Daniel Dennett, Cognitive Wheels: The
Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, in Daniel Dennett, Brain Children, (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1998), 181206; For an illustration of the problem of meaning and linguistic understanding in
AI, See Jean Searle, Minds, Brains, and Programs, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3
(1980), 417424.)
2.3 Eliminative Materialism (EM)
Similar to functionalism, one of the main premises of eliminative
materialism is that mental states cannot be completely reduced to brain states.
Eliminative materialists, however, hold their skepticism for different reasons. They
assume that our current commonsense view of mental states are flawed and is
essentially a mistaken account of how the mind works. Thus, instead of reducing
mental states to brain states, our concept of mental states will be outright eliminated
because it is falsely conceived. To understand how EM leads to this conclusion,
one needs to explore the basic ideas of its founders.
The revolutionary idea that our commonsense perception of ourselves is a
theory began with Wilfrid Sellars (19121989).86 Sellars asserted that our view of
mind does not refer to the actual nature of mind as it israther, it is a model
formed from the repeated exposure to overt human behaviors and their linguistic
tendencies.87 In a sense, our concept of mind is formed not through introspection or
by the direct inner examination of our minds, but by an outer account of other
peoples behavior and language. Our concept of mind, then, is an empirical theory.
This idea that the mind is an empirical theory instigates the possibility that it
can be mistaken and may possibly be replaced by a more viable theory. Richard
86
Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997 [1956]).
87
Sellars theory on how the formation of the concept of mind through the outer world took
place can be seen in his famous thought experiment: The Myth of Jones. See Ibid., XII. Our
Rylean Ancestors.
Rorty 88 (19312007) subscribes to this possibility. Similar to how demonic
possession is now simply hallucinatory psychosis, he argues that our current
language and terms for mental phenomena may be made obsolete by the theories of
brain research in the future.
Paul Feyerabend,89 (19241994) on the other hand, doubts the reliability of
commonsense theories in general. He claims that even though commonsense views
stood the test of time and solved several human problems, they may still be
radically false since they are not founded on facts, but on scientifically untested
belief. Thus, for Feyerabend, there is a reason to suppose that a scientific
physiological account of human nature can eventually replace our commonsense
view of human nature.
In sum, the argument of EM can be outlined in this manner: 1) Our
commonsense view of mind is an empirical theory, 2) Like any other theory, it is
falsifiable, and 3) If it turns out to be false, it must be eliminated and displaced by a
more viable theory of mind.
Now that the three prominent positions (reductive materialism,
functionalism, eliminative materialism) in contemporary philosophy of mind has
been laid down, we can now proceed with Churchlands position in this debate.
88
Richard Rorty, Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories, The Review of
Metaphysics, vol. 19, no. 1 (Sep., 1965): 2454.
89
See Paul Feyerabend, Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem, in Realism,
rationalism and scientific method: Philosophical papers, vol. 1, (New York: Cambridge University
Press: 1981 [1963]), 161175; Comment: Mental Events and the Brain, The Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 60, No. 11 (May 23, 1963): 295296.
3. Drawing the Influence, Churchlands Stance in the Contemporary Period
Paul Churchland is widely known for advocating eliminative materialism. In
his 1981 landmark work, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,90
he argued that EM is the most empirically viable among the three materialist
positions. 91 However, while it is true that he favors EM over the other two
prominent materialist positions, he considers all of them to be plausible accounts of
human nature.92 As stated in the beginning of this chapter, Churchlands main aim
is to develop an account of human nature that is as naturalistic as possible.
Knowing this, Churchland chose EM as his background framework for his
naturalistic account, precisely because he thinks that EM is the most empirically
grounded among the prominent materialist positions.
That being the case, it can be said that Churchland is not merely considering
the assertions of EM as a loose possibility (which the previous eliminative
materialists may have assumed); rather, he is serious on the actual elimination of
our commonsense view of mind, and is adamant about displacing it with a more
informed and penetrating framework. Indeed, this conviction is reflected in his
90
Paul Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, The Journal
of Philosophy, vol. 78, no. 2 (Feb., 1981), 6790; reprinted in Churchland, A Neurocomputational
Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
91
In retrospect, Churchland asserts that in his 1981 work, he defended the most
empirically likely outcome, which is eliminative materialism. See Paul Churchland, Folk
Psychology, in Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland, On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987
1997, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 8.
92
In Churchlands early work, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, he states four
different possible resolutions to the mind-body problem, It will either end with 1) dualism, 2)
reductive materialism, 3) functionalism, and 4) eliminative materialism. Churchland argues that # 2
4 are the most likely prospects. But he explicitly states that he favors eliminative materialism among
the four. See Paul Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1979), sec. 15, The mind/body problem; Churchlands position can be found in
116.
establishment of neurophilosophy, which assumes EM as its starting premise.
Certainly, EM is essential to Churchlands establishment of neurophilosophy. His
own account of EM is an expanded view of the EM advocated by previous thinkers,
and is centered on his radical view of commonsense theories, which he calls folk
psychology. 93 Before proceeding to discuss Churchlands neurophilosophy, a
discussion of his own account of folk psychology (FP) and EM is in order.
B. Folk Psychology and Eliminative Materialism
Churchland adopts the claims of eliminative materialists to heart, and sets a
new aim for his own project: the development of a new framework about the mind
that will replace the old folk psychological framework. To understand why
Churchland is advocating the elimination of FP, one must first know what FP is
from his perspective and why he thinks it is flawed.
1. The Nature of Folk Psychology
Folk psychology is nothing more and nothing less than a culturally

entrenched theory of how we and the higher animals work.94
93
Although Churchland uses the term folk psychology, it is not clear who introduced the
term folk psychology into the philosophy of mind. It gained wide usage during the 1980s and is
rarely used outside philosophy. The phrase commonsense psychology is sometimes used by
philosophers synonymously with folk psychology, although the former term seems to be dying out.
Psychologists rarely use folk psychology, preferring the phrase theory of mind (or sometimes
nave psychology). Just as there is ambiguity in the use of folk psychology, theory of mind is
used to refer both to mindreading and to the theory hypothesized to underpin mindreading (Ian
Ravenscroft, Folk Psychology as a Theory, in Edward Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy [Fall 2010 Edition], from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/folkpsych-
theory/>).
94
Paul Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, in Paul
Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science,
In Churchlands framework, FP is a grand theory of human beings. It is a
powerful theory that enables us to quickly explain and predict the workings behind
complex human behavior with great ease. Indeed, an average person can easily
explain the context of situations as complex as this for example:
James drove into town because he wanted to see his friend

Joann and he believed that she would be there, at their favorite bar.
When he got there and saw her sitting cozily in a booth with Ralph,
he felt crushed, and walked outside, dazed and confused.95
Without a word or explanation from anyone, it would be easy for an average
person to conclude, through common sense alone, that James has romantic feelings
for Joann, and that he was heartbroken because he saw her with another guy. But
how did we arrive at this conclusion?
Feats like these are ubiquitous, thus, it is easy to miss the staggering
knowledge needed to arrive at conclusions similar to the one above. But, if we
examine the example closely, it can be appreciated that several background
generalizations are assumed before the conclusion was reached: from general
assumptions (what it means to have romantic feelings for someone, what it feels
like to be rejected, what it means to be jealous) to very specific ones (what do
people usually do in bars, what does it mean for a man and woman to be together in
the bar, how does it feel to drive a few miles, only to be rejected upon arrival?).
Perhaps, hundreds and hundreds of other statements like this can be derived from
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 17. The cited article was first printed in The Journal of Philosophy,
vol. 78, no. 2 (Feb., 1981), 6790.
95
Example taken from William Hirstein, On the Churchlands, (Canada: Thomson
Wadsworth, 2004), 1.
that single conclusion alone. What is even more astonishing is that we can easily
and quickly draw these background assumptions and make a conclusion from them
without much thinking or analysis. How is this amazing feat possible?
For Churchland, the explanatory and predictive powers of FP came from the
rich network of laws, as he writes:
Reassuringly, a rich network of common-sense laws can

indeed be reconstructed from this quotidian commerce of
explanation and anticipation; its principles are familiar homilies;
[sic] and their sundry functions are transparent. Each of us
understands others, as well as we do, because we share a tacit
command of an integrated body of lore concerning the lawlike
relations holding among external circumstances, internal states, and
overt behavior. Given its nature and functions, this body of lore may
quite aptly be called folk psychology.96
This said lore is deeply embedded in human culture and language,
embodying the accumulated wisdom of thousands of generations. 97 Thus, it is no
wonder why FP is very capable at explaining and predicting complex behavior
using thousands of background assumptions. But if FP is a successful theory, why
is Churchland insisting on its possible displacement?
It is important to note that Churchland is not suggesting that FP must be
outright removed from human culture. 98 According to him, it would not be
practical to do so. The day-to-day use of FP will not die out in culture if practicality
does not demand it. What needs to be done is to eliminate and displace the faulty
assumptions that FP bears about the mind. In other words, its ontology about the
96
Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, in A
Neurocomputational Perspective, 2.
97
98
Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, 1819.
mind is the one that is subject for elimination. In order to understand this distinction
(that is, why FPs theory of mind needs to be displaced despite its efficiency in
practical application), one must first understand the principles behind FP and its
similarities with normal theories.
2. Folk Psychology as a Theory
It has been discussed above that FP is a grand theory of how human beings
work. Indeed, FP can be likened to a theory. But is FP literally a theory, similar to
how Albert Einsteins special theory of relativity is a theory? Churchland thinks
that it is so, for a number of reasons.
For Churchland, most of the generalizations of FP are causal and
explanatory in character, and one can easily see that this is indeed the case if we
look at certain statements assumed by FP, generalizations such as the ones below:
A person who suffers severe bodily damage will feel pain.

A person who suffers a sudden sharp pain will wince.
A person denied food for any length will feel hunger.
A hungry persons mouth will water at the smell of food.
A person who feels overall warmth will tend to relax.
A person who tastes a lemon will have a puckering sensation.
A person who is angry will tend to be impatient.99
These statements, and thousands of others similar to them, are causal and
explanatory generalizations about several mental states (e.g. fear, pain, hunger, and
the full range of emotions and bodily sensations). In a sense, these generalizations
99
Paul Churchland, Folk Psychology and the Explanation of Human Behavior, in
Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective, 113. The cited article was first printed in
Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory (1989): 225241.
resemble laws, laws that postulate a range of mental states and their diverse
causal relations.100 Through these laws, we can predict and explain a wide range of
human behavior. But what has been covered here concerns only simple mental
states that do not point to something beyond themselves. There is another type of
mental states that are the major subject of concern of Churchlands EM program.
This second type of mental states are those that point to or refer to
something, particularly, to propositions, examples of which are thoughts, beliefs,
and desires. This reference to a proposition can be illustrated in this way:
One has...
the thought that [children are marvelous]
the belief that [humans have great potential], and
the desire that [civilization will reach another Golden
Age].101
If we look at the pattern above (the thought/belief/desire that [proposition or P]),
all the statements in brackets are indeed propositions. But they do not just refer to
the given proposition, but also express an attitude toward it. This is why
Churchland calls this type of mental states propositional attitudes.102
To avoid confusion, mental states ascribed to propositional attitudes will be
called intentional mental states because they intend or point to something
beyond themselves, or, more technically, they display intentionality. On the other
hand, the mental type discussed earlier will be called non-intentional mental
100
101
Ibid., 103.
102
The term propositional attitude was coined by Bertrand Russell. Churchland uses the
term when he refers to the intentional type of mental states. See Churchland, Eliminative
Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, 34.
states.103 In sum, non-intentional mental states are demonstrated in this manner: A
person who is angry will tend to be impatient, while intentional ones are like this:
I believe that anger tends to make a person impatient. But, one may ask, why is
this distinction important?
It is significant to point out that the commonsense view of mind is based on
assumptions that are founded on intentional mental states; thus, it is based heavily
on propositional attitudes. Churchland thinks that this propositional-attitude
conception of mind 104 is possibly a theory, a theory no different from other
scientific theories. Thus, similar to any other theory, it is subject to evaluation. This
argument of similarity between FP and scientific theory is best illustrated in
Churchlands comparison between propositional attitudes and numerical attitudes.
The comparison can be construed in the following manner: There is a
similarity between the structure of folk psychology and the structure of theories of
physical science. Indeed, parallels can be found in their systematic structure, as
shown in this example:105
103
This distinction is taken from Churchlands board classes of folk psychology in Folk
Psychology and the Explanation of Human Behavior, in A Neurocomputational Perspective, 113
114.
104
The term is taken from Paul Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism When It Is
Liberated from the Propositional Attitudes? in Neurophilosophy at Work, 102. The cited article was
first published in Philosophical Topics, 29, no. 1 and 2 (2001): 91112.
a special issue on the philosophy of Alvin Goldman
105
Table taken from Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 105.
Propositional attitudes Numerical attitudes106
...believes that P ...has a lengthm of n
...desires that P ...has a velocitym/s of n
...fears that P ...has a temperatureF of n
...sees that P ...has a chargec of n
...suspects that P ...has a kinetic energyj of n
and so on. and so on.
In the table above, folk psychology is represented by propositional attitudes, and
mathematical physics is represented by numerical attitudes. One will notice that the
statements in both columns are predicate-forming expressions.107 This allows both
to cover for various propositions for FP, or a wide range of numbers for
mathematical physics. From this structural parallel, we can yield further parallels.
For example, arithmetic relations between numbers portray objective relations
between numerical attitudes; on the other hand, logical relations between
propositions portray relations between propositional attitudes.
This thought can be illustrated in the following example: 108 an arithmetic
relation, for example, being twice as large as n, can characterize this relation
between numerical attitudesmy weight may be twice your weight. On the other
106
In regards to numerical attitude, the attitude here is parallel to intentional mental states
(e.g. belief, desire). A numerical attitude corresponds to a specific mathematical property (e.g.
length, temperature) of a number, instead of belief/thought/desire to a proposition.
107
108
hand, a logical relation: for example, logical inconsistency, can characterize this
relation between propositional attitudes: my belief that P is inconsistent with your
belief that not-P. What insight can be derived from this parallel?
The significance of this parallel to the discussion can be seen if we apply
and use them to yield lawlike relations that universally apply to a range of
propositions and numbers. To better illustrate this point an example is needed.
Consider these lawlike declarations from FP:
If x fears that P, then x desires that not-P.

If x hopes that P, and x discovers that P, then x is pleased that P.
If x believes that P, and x believes that (if P, then Q), then, barring
confusion, distraction, and so on, x will believe that Q.
If x desires that P, and x believes that (if Q, then P), and x is able to
bring it about that Q, then, barring conflicting desires or preferred
strategies, x will bring it about that Q. 109
Then compare them to these laws of mathematical physics:
If x has a pressure of P, and x has a volume of V, and x has a mass of

z, then, barring very high pressure or density, x has a temperature of
(PV/R).
If x has a mass of M, and x suffers a net force of F, then x has an
acceleration of (F/M). 110
The examples above show the parallel clearly. Both FP and mathematical physics
exploit abstract relations to account for empirical regularities of either real states
and properties of objects (e.g. temperature, weight) or of varied mental states (e.g.
belief, desire). 111 In other words, their respective objects and relations may be
109
Example taken from Ibid., 106.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid., 107.
different, but essentially, both are frameworks that account for regular patterns in
empirical reality. This suggests that both are empirical theories.
For Churchland, the parallels above heavily imply that FP is a theory as
much as any scientific theory. That being the case, he thinks that this warrants that
FPs theory about the mind is subject to evaluation. Such evaluation, he argues,
will be based on how well FPs theory of human nature relates to the theories of the
sciences (particularly of neuroscience), as Churchland writes:
...the realization that folk psychology is a theory puts a new

light on the mind-body problem. The issue becomes a matter of how
the ontology of one theory (folk psychology) is, or is not, going to be
related to the ontology of another theory (completed neuroscience);
and the major philosophical positions on the mind-body problem
emerge as so many different anticipations of what future research
will reveal about the intertheoretic status and integrity of folk
psychology.112
The major philosophical positions that Churchland is referring to are dualism,
reductive materialism (identity theory), functionalism, and eliminative materialism.
All of them have their respective stances to the possible fate of FP, and
Churchland continues:
The identity theorist optimistically expects that folk

psychology will be smoothly reduced by completed neuroscience,
and its ontology preserved by dint of transtheoretic identities. The
dualist expects that it will prove irreducible to completed
neuroscience, by dint of being a nonredundant description of an
autonomous, nonphysical domain of natural phenomena. The
functionalist also expects that it will prove irreducible, but on the
quite different grounds that the internal economy characterized by
folk psychology is not, in the last analysis, a law-governed economy
of natural states, but an abstract organization of functional states, an
organization instantiable in a variety of quite different material
112
substrates. It is therefore irreducible to the principles peculiar to any

of them.
Finally, the eliminative materialist is also pessimistic about
the prospects for reduction, but his reason is that folk psychology is
a radically inadequate account of our internal activities, too confused
and too defective to win survival through intertheoretic reduction.
On his view it will simply be displaced by a better theory of those
activities.113
As already stated numerous times, Churchland subscribes to EM, and thus
he considers it as the most likely possibility among all the positions mentioned. But,
what is Churchlands reason for favoring EM over the other positions? All the other
positions have no problems with FPs view of mind mainly because of its
explanatory and predictive success. 114 This leads us back to the question asked
earlier: If FP is a successful theory, why is Churchland insisting on its possible
displacement?
3. Considering Eliminative Materialism: Tracing Historical Parallels
[Folk psychology] gives us what is obviously a superficial gloss on a very

complex set of phenomena. 115
A theory with a relatively high amount of predictive power does not always
mean that it can also give an accurate ontology of nature. Indeed, the history of
science has shown this fact multiple times. For example, in the 18th century, an
113
Ibid., 56.
114
Given that folk psychology is an empirical theory, it is at least an abstract possibility
that its principles are radically false and that its ontology is an illusion. With the exception of
eliminative materialism, however, none of the major positions takes this possibility seriously. None
of them doubts the basic integrity or truth of folk psychology (hereafter, "FP"), and all of them
anticipate a future in which its laws and categories are conserved. This conservatism is not without
some foundation. After all, FP does enjoy a substantial amount of explanatory and predictive
success (Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, 6).
115
Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, 115.
indestructible fluid called caloric was presupposed to explain the phenomenon of
heat. But today, with the advancement of kinetic theory and thermodynamics, we
know for a fact that caloric fluid does not exist, and heat is fundamentally a
macroscopic manifestation of the random motion of atoms and molecules. 116
However, even though caloric is already obsolete, it is a fact that it became
prominent in the scientific community until the 19th century, all because it was
relatively effective in predicting the behavior of heat.117 Nonetheless, that predictive
success did not save it from committing an error about the nature of temperature.
Caloric theory of heat was eliminated simply because caloric fluid does not exist.
A more famous example of a theorys predictive success despite having a
mistaken ontology is Ptolemys model of the universe. This model was recognized
by the Catholic Church as the official doctrine for about 1400 years, 118 not just
because of religious and mystical reasons, but because it is indeed accurate in
predicting the movements of planets.119 But similar to the fate of caloric fluid, the
Ptolemaic model was eventually displaced by the Copernican model. Today, it is
116
Harry Varvoglis, History and Evolution of Concepts in Physics, (Switzerland: Springer
International, 2014), 2930; See also 4.5 Heat and Thermodynamics, specifically, 4.5.2 Phlogiston
and Caloric Fluids and 4.5.6 Thermodynamics Today.
117
[A] great deal of theoretical work was based on the hypothesis of caloric, such as the
derivation, in 1822, of the equation describing the propagation of heat in a solid body by Fourier
(Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, 17681830) and the calculation, in 1824, of the performance of an
ideal heat engine by Carnot (Sadie Carnot, 17961832), both considered successful, as they were
consistent with experimental results. Related to the caloric hypothesis was also the research work of
Laplace and Poisson, who successfully calculated, within the frame of this hypothesis, the speed of
sound in a gas, assuming that there is no exchange of caloric (i.e., heat) between the gas and its
environment (Varvoglis, History and Evolution of Concepts in Physics, 85).
118
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, (New York: Bantham
Books, 2010), 3942.
119
...Ptolemaic astronomy, though false, enjoyed such high degree of predictive success
(Rhonda Martens, Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy, [New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, Oct 29, 2000], 26).
now an established fact that the sun is the center of the solar system. The geocentric
ontology of Ptolemys model, one can say, was simply mistaken.
Another lesson that can be derived from the said examples is how certain
theories can be correct in their assumptions in a specific range of phenomena, while
being mistaken in the larger context of nature. This lesson is best illustrated in the
displacement of the Ptolemaic model. One can say that the geocentric model is
correct if the scope is limited to celestial motions within the solar system, but if we
go up in scale, into the galactic scale for example, the model breaks down
drastically. Indeed, if we adopt Einsteins theory of relativity, 120 it will be
unrealistic to assert that galaxies with around two billion times more mass than our
sun would revolve around the earth whose mass is only 1/330,300th of that very
sun. 121 In a sense, it can be said that the geocentric ontology of Ptolemy is a
superficial theory that only works when applied to a limited range of phenomena
in the universe, particularly our solar system.
Similar to the geocentric model, Churchland thinks that it may be the case
that FP is a theory that assumes a mistaken ontology, and only works because it is
applied to a small range of mental phenomena, as he writes:
FP is at best a highly superficial theory, a partial and

unpenetrating gloss on a deeper and more complex reality... [there is
a] possibility that FP provides a positively misleading sketch of our
internal kinematics and dynamics, one whose success is owed more
120
Somnath Datta, Introduction to Special Theory of Relativity, (New Delhi: Allied
Publishers, 1998), see 1.5&1.4 for the implications of a geocentric model to special theory of
relativity.
121
Numbers taken from Gerald D. Waxman, Astronomical Tidbits: A Layperson's Guide to
Astronomy, (Bloomington: Author House, 2010), 182&197.
to selective application and forced interpretation on our part than to

genuine theoretical insight on FP's part.122
For this reason, Churchland thinks that FP may also suffer the same fate as
obsolete scientific theories did, as he writes: [There is a possibility that folk
psychology] will be eliminated, as false theories are, and the familiar ontology of
common-sense mental states will go the way of the Stoic pneumata, the alchemical
essences, phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous aether. 123 This claim is not
without foundation. Churchland argues that there are several grounds to declare that
FP is lacking and fundamentally mistaken in most, or at least some, of its
assumptions about human nature. This fact can be seen in FPs lack of explanatory
power to account for the most fundamental aspects of cognitive activity as will be
shown below.
4. The Limitations of Folk Psychology
According to Churchland, the practical success of FP often leads us to focus
on what the theory can explain. But, if we shift our focus on what FP cannot
explain, it will be shown that FP is indeed seriously lacking as a theory of how the
mind works.124 Some of these unaccountable mental phenomena are as follows:
As examples of central and important mental phenomena that

remain largely or wholly mysterious within the framework of FP,
consider the nature and dynamics of mental illness, the faculty of
creative imagination, or the ground of intelligence differences
between individuals. Consider our utter ignorance of the nature and
122
123
Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, 114.
124
psychological functions of sleep, that curious state in which a third

of one's life is spent. Reflect on the common ability to catch an
outfield fly ball on the run, or hit a moving car with a snowball.
Consider the internal construction of a three-dimensional visual
image from subtle differences in the two-dimensional array of
stimulations in our respective retinas. Consider the rich variety of
perceptual illusions, visual and otherwise. Or consider the miracle of
memory, with its lightning capacity for relevant retrieval. On these
and many other mental phenomena, FP sheds negligible light.125
Indeed, these very mundane and common human abilities and activities are
left unaccounted for; commonsense knowledge has no relevant insight to tell about
how those phenomena are possible in the first place. Often, this very fundamental
and basic activities and abilities are considered a given and therefore taken for
granted, but science is already revealing that such mundane activities have complex
principles behind them. Neuroscience is now able to explain how sensory
experience arises, why emotions are felt, how is control of motor movement
possible, and, more importantly, neuroscience is slowly grasping how all these
phenomena work at the fundamental level.126 With experimental rigor along with
the aid of advanced technology, neurosciences, and other allied sciences, have
unlocked secrets behind the mind that commonsense theories can never hope to
reach.
It is important to remember that FP operates with language, particularly with
propositional attitudes. As has been illustrated earlier, FPs very principles are
125
Ibid., 67.
126
See Paul Churchland, The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical
Journey into the Brain, (Cambridge: MIT press, 1995); Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What
Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011); Paul
Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective, chap. 5, Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive
Neurobiology. Note that some of the details behind these cognitive activities will be covered in
another chapter.
linguistic or propositional in character. Churchland argues that these foundations
are not sufficient enough to unlock the most fundamental mechanics of cognitive
activity. Such insufficiency is perhaps best seen with the fact that FP cannot
account for the nature of learning at the most basic levels:
One particularly outstanding mystery is the nature of the

learning process itself, especially where it involves large-scale
conceptual change, and especially as it appears in its pre-linguistic or
entirely nonlinguistic form (as in infants and animals), which is by
far the most common form in nature. FP is faced with special
difficulties here, since its conception of learning as the manipulation
and storage of propositional attitudes founders on the fact that how
to formulate, manipulate, and store a rich fabric of propositional
attitudes is itself something that is learned, and is only one among
many acquired cognitive skills. FP would thus appear
constitutionally incapable of even addressing this most basic of
mysteries.127
Learning is only one of the few mental phenomena that seems to show that
cognitive activity is possible without the pretext of language. Indeed, many of the
cognitive activities an infant does seem to be pre-linguistic. For example, the fact
that babies can cry to inform their parents that they need milk is a complex
cognitive task, a task that needs knowledge of when it is necessary to drink milk, an
evaluation of how to get that drink, and the decision-making when to execute the
how gathered from the evaluation. This example suggests that cognitive activity
is already present before language is fully learned. Indeed, Churchland thinks that
this is the case, as he writes:
...language use is something that is learned, by a brain

already capable of vigorous cognitive activity; language use is
acquired as only one among a great variety of learned manipulative
127
skills; and it is mastered by a brain that evolution has shaped for a

great many functions, language use being only the very latest and
perhaps the least of them. Against the background of these facts,
language use appears as an extremely peripheral activity, as a
racially idiosyncratic mode of social interaction which is mastered
thanks to the versatility and power of a more basic mode of
activity.128
If language use is only one of the cognitive activities that humans learn,
[w]hy accept then, a theory of cognitive activity that models its elements on the
elements of human language? And why assume that the fundamental parameters of
intellectual virtue are or can be defined over the elements at this superficial
level?129
Churchland thinks that it is unlikely that the fundamental mechanics behind
cognitive activity is linguistic in nature. 130 Basically, Churchland is against the
language of thought hypothesis. 131 He thinks that the real laws that govern
128
129
Ibid.
130
Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, 123; Churchland,
Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, 18.
131
Churchlands opposition to the language of thought hypothesis and advocacy of a non-
lingual framework spans across multiple works and dialogues. The most prominent of this works are
his long debate with Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore, one of the leading advocates of the language of
thought hypothesis. Their debate spans across different works: J. A. Fodor, and E. Lepore, Paul
Churchland and State-Space Semantics, chap. 7 in Holism: A Shoppers Guide, (Oxford: Blackwell,
1992); Paul Churchland, Fodor and Lepore: State-Space Semantics and Meaning Holism, in
Robert N. McCauley, ed., The Churchlands and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers,
1996), 272277; J. A. Fodor and E. Lepore, Reply to Churchland, in McCauley, 1996: 15962; P.
M. Churchland, Second Reply to Fodor and Lepore, in McCauley, 1996: 27883; P. M.
Churchland, Conceptual Similarity across Sensory and Neural Diversity: The Fodor/Lepore
Challenge Answered Journal of Philosophy 95, no. 1 (Jan. 1998): 532; J. A. Fodor, and Lepore, E.
All at Sea in Semantic Space: Churchland on Meaning Similarity. Journal of Philosophy 96, no. 8:
381403 (1999). Paul Churchland, Neurosemantics: On the Mapping of Minds and the Portrayal of
Worlds, in K. E. White, ed., The Emergence of Mind, 11747 (Milan: Fondazione Carlo Elba,
2001). Basically, Fodor and Lepores main complaint about Churchlands attempt to establish a non-
lingual framework is the lack that it evokes, which a lingual framework does not seem to possess.
Churchlands continuous reply to Fodor and Lepores criticism arguably aided in the improvement
and development of Churchlands non-lingual framework over the years. The most recent form of
such framework will be discussed in Chapter IV.
cognitive activity cannot be found in forms of sentences or propositions, but rather
in complex kinematical states and configurations.132 Based on these assumptions,
Churchland concludes that:
[a] serious advance in our appreciation of cognitive virtue would

thus seem to require that we go beyond FP, that we transcend the
poverty of FP's conception of rationality by transcending its
propositional kinematics entirely, by developing a deeper and more
general kinematics of cognitive activity, and by distinguishing
within this new framework which of the kinematically possible
modes of activity are to be valued and encouraged.133
Churchland argues that if this new framework or new kinematics
successfully goes beyond folk psychology and unlocks the real secrets behind
cognition, it will be more powerful and more penetrating than the commonsense
framework of mind that we currently possess. For this new framework to be truly
more powerful and penetrating, Churchland insists that it must be founded on
neuroscience. 134 Churchlands neurophilosophy, one can say, is the beginning of
establishing that said framework.
C. Founding Neurophilosophy, toward a New Kinematics of Cognition
The attempt to establish a new framework always entails the question of
what methodology should be employed in its construction. Establishing a new
kinematics of mind is no exception to that. As previously mentioned, the rapid
development of neuroscience and computer science changed the landscape of the
132
133
Ibid., 16.
134
Ibid., 1&18.
debates about the mind. Led by these developments in the past half-century, there
emerged two prominent methodologies that aimed to unlock the underlying
kinematics of cognition. One is the computational approach, a top-down method
which embraced the philosophical premises of functionalism, and the other is
methodological materialism, a bottom-up method which embraced the premises of
either identity theory or eliminative materialism. 135 Considering the previous
discussion, it is evident that Churchland would adopt the bottom-up approach of
methodological materialism. To illustrate the relevance of his choice, a brief
comparison of both methods is in order.
1. The Question of Methodology
In previous sections, it has been illustrated how the mind can be
characterized as a software of the brain, its hardware. This analogy, as already
noted, is taken seriously by cognitive scientists and AI researchers, the proponents
of the computational approach, a methodology that adopted this premise and used it
as a guide to develop the kinematics of mind as will be described below.
135
The label for both methodology was derived from Churchlands description of the two
different methodologies employed in the research on the mind: 1) the top-down method starts with
our current understanding of what intelligent creatures do, and then asks what sort of underlying
operations could possibly produce or account for such cognitive activities. This approach is applied
by cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers study on the mind; and 2) the bottom-
up method starts with the workings of the nervous system then derives the nature of cognitive
activity from such workings. This approach is applied by neuroscience researchers, particularly
cognitive neurobiologists, study of the mind. See Matter and Consciousness, Methodological
Problem, 5.3 and 5.4.
1.1 Finding the Function of Mind, Cognitive Science and AI
The computational approach is the top-down method adopted by cognitive
scientists and classical AI 136 researchers to unlock the secrets behind the mind,
particularly conscious intelligence. These researchers, assuming the functionalist
manifestos, seek to find what can be called the functional organization of

137
conscious intelligence. Because of their assumption that any function is
realizable through any complex physical system, the task of knowing the mechanics
behind the mind becomes a question of how the function of mind can be realized
in a sufficiently complex digital computer. The proponents of the computational
approach are optimistic about such realization. This optimism, as will be shown,
has sufficient foundations.
Alan Turing, along with Alonzo Church, developed a concept of a machine
that is capable, at least in principle, of any computable function. This concept is
called the Church-Turing thesis, which gave birth to what is known as the universal
Turing machine. 138 This concept paved way for the establishment of the general
purpose digital computers that we are using today. Indeed, a computer, be it a
laptop, smartphone, or tablet, can do several tasks (e.g. reading ebooks, playing
136
Classical AI is a top-down approach that uses logical-symbolic (syntactic) techniques to
develop intelligent system. This approach is often contrasted with Nouvelle AI, a bottom-up
approach which uses biologically-inspired designs to achieve an emergent intelligent behavior. See
Francesco Gagliardi, Some Issues About Cognitive Modeling and Functionalism, in J.G.
Carbonell and J. Siekmann, eds., Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 4733, (Berlin: Springer-
Verlag, 2007), 6667.
137
138
Paul Churchland, On the Nature of Intelligence, in Paul Churchland, Neurophilosophy
at Work, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 116117. The cited article was first
published in S. Epstein, ed., A Turing-Test Sourcebook, ch. 5 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006).
games, listening to music, surfing the Internet); one just needs to have the
appropriate program or software to do such task. This is possible because all of
theseand almost all othercomputers deploy the same general purpose
architecture139 that was inspired from the concept of the universal Turing machine.
This architecture allows computers to execute a very specific task as long as they
are equipped with an appropriate program or software designed to do such task. For
example, one can only write a digital version of his or her academic paper if a word
processing program (e.g. Microsoft [MS] Word) is installed in that persons
computer. Or one can only surf the Internet if a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer,
Google Chrome or Firefox) is installed in that computer.
Besides these basic everyday tasks, a more developed version of the
universal Turing machine can do very complex and enormous tasks as well. In the
field of science, supercomputers are used to create climate models, forecast
weather, map the DNA of humans, and several others. 140 Thus, it seems evident
that, given enough processing power and memory, a general purpose computer can
indeed do any task when equipped with proper software.
Following this thought, is it possible to make a program that will
successfully simulate conscious intelligence in humans? If the assumptions of
139
The actual architecture used for general purpose computers was based on John von
Neumann architecture, which is called serial-processing. See Gerard ORegan, Giants of Computing:
A Compendium of Select, Pivotal Pioneers, (London: Springer-Verlag, Aug 19, 2013), 206207;
Stuart Hameroff, Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular Consciousness and NanoTechnology,
(Netherlands: Elsevier Publishers B.V., Apr 11, 1991), 4.
140
Marijana Despotovic-Zrakic, Veljko Milutinovic and Aleksandara Belic, Handbook of
Research on High Performance and Cloud Computing in Scientific Research and Education,
(Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global, Mar 31, 2014), 215, 309.
functionalism is correct, then it is certainly possible. A proponent of the
computational approach would insist that a general purpose machine with a
complex software inspired by the function of mind, coupled with enough
hardware capabilities, could, in principle, re-create the mind itself.141 Nevertheless,
however promising this possibility is, the attainability of such complex software
remains an empirical question.
1.2 The Difference between the Brain and a Digital Computer
Despite the promising idea that the brain might be very similar to a digital
computer, Churchland insists that there are several crucial differences between
them that makes their initial similarities almost irrelevant. One is the difference in
power of processing. As Churchland illustrates it,142 the speed of signal conduction
of neurons in a brain is about 100 hertz while a digital computer has a processing
speed of about 1,000,000,000 hertz (1 gigahertz). To put this massive difference
into perspective, assume that the brain can run at the same speed as a bicycle, about
10 meters per second (m/s). On the other hand, a computer can run around 1/3 the
speed of light, which is about 100 million m/s. This leads to the question of how a
massively slower brain can perform a task that a digital computer cannot.
141
[T]he Church-Turing thesis also entails that a universal computerwhich, plus or
minus a finite memory, is what any standard desktop machine amounts tois also capable, at least
in principle, of computing the elements of whatever marvelous function it is that characterizes the
input-output profile of a conscious intelligence. Hence the rationale for the original or classical
approach to creating an artificial intelligence: find/write the program that, when run on a universal
computer, will re-create the same input-output profile that characterizes a normal human
(Churchland, On the Nature of Intelligence, 117).
142
Churchland, Functionalism at Forty, 21.
According to Churchland, the answer to this question lies in the nature of
information processing method employed by both systems, which leads us to the
second crucial difference.
A general purpose computer described earlier runs a computing method that
is called the von Neumann architecture named after John von Neumann, its
founder.143 This style of processing is basically serial, which means it processes
information in a linear fashion. Churchland puts this in sharp contrast to the
processing architecture of the brain, which seems to employ what is called parallel
distributed processing (PDP). PDP-based architecture processes information
simultaneously, while the von Neumann architecture processes information one at a
time.144 Churchland further illustrates PDP in this manner: [T]he biological brain
is a massively parallel piece of computational machinery: it performs trillions of
individual computational transformationswithin the 1014 individual microscopic
synaptic connections distributed throughout its volumesimultaneously and all at
once.145
Thus, it would seem that the brain, despite its slowness in raw processing
speed, makes up for its lack by deploying parallel processing and relying on the
large number of neurons and connections (more on this in the preceding sections).
But, one may ask, is the difference in architecture actually crucial, crucial to the
143
ORegan, Giants of Computing, 206207.
144
John von Neumann, the founder of serial processing himself, also points out this crucial
difference between a brain and a computer. He asserts that the former executes task in parallel,
simultaneously; on the other hand, the latter executes task serially, that is, successively, one at a
time. See John von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain, (New Have: Yale Unversity Press,
1958), 5152.
145
Churchland, Functionalism at Forty, 21
point that a serial-style digital computer can never simulate the activities of the
brain?
It would seem that this is the case as shown in the following computer
experiment, where an attempt to simulate brain activity with a computer was
made. 146 The simulation was made though a Japanese supercomputer called K
which has 82,944 processors with about 750 million transistors each. It took 40
minutes for K to simulate 1 second of brain activity, despite the fact that such
activity uses only 1% of the number of connections a normal human brain uses. On
the other hand, a human being was tasked to simulate individual operations of a
computer chip. The person performed very poorly, about 0.01 million instructions
per second (MIPS) as compared with a normal modern laptop which performs about
tens of thousands of MIPS. From this, it can be concluded that a digital computer
performs about as poorly at simulating the brain as a brain does at simulating a
digital computer.147
For Churchland, this radical difference in performance is to be expected.
According to him, the brain is not a general purpose machine similar to a digital
computer, but a special-purpose biological machinery wired to do very specific
146
Randall Munroe, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical
Questions, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 2, 2014), 100101.
147
One, the pencil-and-paper Dhrystone benchmark, asks humans to manually simulate
individual operations on a computer chip, and finds humans perform about 0.01 MIPS. The other,
the supercomputer neuron simulations project, asks computers to simulate neurons firing in a human
brain, and finds humans perform about equivalent of 50,000,000,000 MIPS. [Basically,] our
computer programs are about as inefficient at simulating human brain activity as human brains are at
simulating computer chip activity (Ibid., 101).
cognitive tasks relevant to a human being. 148 Thus, it will perform very poorly
when given computational tasks employed by classical AI, which according to
Churchland is heavily syntactic or language-based.149 As already illustrated in the
previous sections, Churchland insists that the underlying kinematics of cognition is
not syntactic. Thus, for him, it is obvious that the computational approach will fail
to find the kinematics of mind through classical AI research, simply because it is
mistaken in assuming that the brain operates on sentence-like structures.150
Indeed, during the late 1970s the assumption that the mind operates on
sentence-like structures, and the top-down method that was employed along with it,
proved to be lacking, making classical AI research stagnate. 151 This is mainly
because it was plagued with seemingly unsolvable problems. One of the most
prominent problems is the frame problem or the robots dilemma. 152 It is the
problem of how one can write an effective program that will account for all the
actions of human beings, without being overwhelmed with the countless relevant
and irrelevant factors that is assumed in a specific intelligent action.
The frame problem can be illustrated by assuming that a robot that deals
with almost the same amount of information as humans exists. As we have seen in
148
Churchland, On the Nature of Intelligence, 118.
149
Paul Churchland, On the Nature of Theories: A Neurocomputational Perspective, in
Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 155156. The cited article was first published in Minnesota Studies
in the Philosophy of Science 14 (1989): 59101.
150
Paul Churchland, Plato's Camera, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 5.
151
152
The frame problem was first introduced in 1969 by AI researchers, John McCarthy and
Patrick Hayes. The nature of this problem and its philosophical implications was comprehensively
discussed by Dennett in his work: Cognitive Wheels: The Frame Problem in Artificial
Intelligence, in Daniel Dennett, Brain Children, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 181206.
the previous discussion on folk psychology, the background implications that
human beings deal with everyday is, one can say, countless. If such robot would
characterize each of its actions and its background implications in syntactic or
sentence-like structures, it would have to search and analyze an overwhelming
amount of sentences before it can make a genuinely intelligent act. The said robot
would have to search through its data bank of countless sentences in order to rule
out irrelevant factors and find the relevant factors that lead to a certain intelligent
action. Computationally speaking, the difficulty of such task, despite its ubiquity in
humans, poses a seemingly unsolvable problem for AI programmers.153 Currently,
there is no practical way to solve this problem. 154
For Churchland, it is only natural for classical AI researchers to encounter
this problem, precisely because the computational approach was mistaken in
assuming that human cognition is language-like at its core. As seen in the frame
153
Jerry Fodor illustrates how the quotidian human acts are always accompanied with a
global sensitivity to background knowledge. According to him, such global sensitivity cannot be
simulated by computers which use the classical concept of a universal Turing machine, unless they
does an extensive search on all on countless number of background assumptions. For Fodor, this is
the reason why classical AI cannot succeed when it attempts to simulate the mind. See Jerry Fodors
The Mind Doesnt Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), esp. chap. 2, Syntax and Its Discontents.
154
It can be said that such enormous task can be dealt with by using a faster computer with
more memory. In other words, one just needs to have a more powerful hardware to do such a
massive computational task. However, Churchland argues that such brute-force increase in
hardware capabilities is not only impractical but also misdirected. Churchland describes the
impracticality of increasing hardware capabilities in the following manner: The problem was rather
that equal increments of progress toward more realistic cognitive simulations proved to require the
commitment of exponentially increasing resources in memory capacity, computational speed, and
program complexity. Moreover, even when sufficient memory capacity was made available to cover
all of the empirical contingencies that real cognition is prepared to encounter, a principled way of
retrieving, from that vast store, all and only the currently relevant information proved entirely
elusive. As the memories were made larger, the retrieval problem got worse (Paul Churchland,
Functionalism at Forty, in Paul Churchland, Neurophilosophy at Work, [New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007], 20. The cited article was first published in Journal of Philosophy 102, no. 1
[2005]: 3350 [Emphasis added by the researcher]).
problem, it became a serious issue of how to achieve the complexity of everyday
human cognition in forms of sentences. This mistake, at least for Churchland,
makes it clear that assuming cognition operates in forms of sentences is a
misguided assumption. 155 For Churchland, this mistake springs from the heavily
top-down method employed by the computational approach.
1.3 Top-Down Approach versus Bottom-Up Approach
For Churchland, the computational approach committed a major
oversight.156 It ignored the brain, the very system that made the function that it is
looking for possible in the first place. This oversight is understandable because it
assumes the functionalist manifesto that the mind is realizable in multiple physical
systems. Thus, the computational approach also assumed that it can unlock the
secrets behind the mind without the need to examine the brain.157 In a sense, this
approach attempted to unlock the kinematics of mind, confident that its workings is
already roughly known at the outset, and all that is left is to fine-tune and simulate
that knowledge.
The problem with this assumption, if we apply EM, is that it ignores the
possibility that the default conception of mind is mistaken, or at the very least
lacking. Because the computational approach is top-downin a sense that it
assumes beforehand what the mind is then asks what is the kinematics that makes it
155
Ibid., 2324.
156
157
This assumption came from the functionalist-inspired argument that studies of the mind
can be methodologically autonomous from studies of the brain, as also alluded earlier. See
possiblea mistaken view of mind will prove to be detrimental to the goals of
classical AI research. Indeed, the assumption in classical AI research that cognition
can be characterized as a set of sentences at the most fundamental level brought
about the problems (e.g. the frame problem) that made the research stagnate in the
first place.
In order to avoid this problem, it would seem that a deeper understanding of
mind, beyond the syntactic view, must be attained. Churchland suggests that such
understanding can be attained by simply examining the very system that made the
mind possible in the first place, the brain.158 This approach entails the reverse of the
top-down method, which is methodological materialism, or simply the bottom-up
method. Churchland describes this method in the following manner:
The basic idea is that cognitive activities are ultimately just

activities of the nervous system; and if one wants to understand the
activities of the nervous system, then the best way to gain that
understanding is to examine the nervous system itself, to discover
the structure and behavior of its functional elements, their
interconnections and interactivity, their development over time, and
their collective control of behavior.159
Thus, the bottom-up method, when applied to the goal of uncovering the
kinematics of mind, would entail the examination of the mechanics behind the
brain. This thought inevitably leads to examining the very microanatomy of the
nervous system. Fortunately, as Churchland puts it, the brain is no longer a totally
opaque black box as it was half a century ago. With the advancement of technology,
158
159
modern neuroscience is beginning to unlock the secrets of such a black box. 160
Discovering the kinematics of mind bottom-up would require the exploration of that
very science.
2. Exploring Neuroscience, the Foundation for the New Kinematics of
Cognition
Neuroscience is a wide field that has several branching disciplines (e.g.
neurophysiology, neuropsychology, cognitive neurobiology, computational
neuroscience). However, despite the difference in methods and areas of study each
pursues, all of them adopt, as their foundational premise, the most basic facts about
how the nervous system works in general. Some of these facts, particularly the
neuroanatomy of the nervous system, will be explored briefly to help build up the
premises behind Churchlands neurophilosophy overall.
2.1 Overview of Neuroanatomy
The nervous system is composed of 100 billion neurons and each of these
can be divided into three basic parts: 1) neuron cell body (or soma), 2) dendrites,
and 3) an axon. Each basic part is composed of even more specific divisions along
160
Beyond conventional microscopy, an ever-growing armory of experimental techniques
and instrumentssuch as the selective staining of neurons and their connecting pathways, electron
microscopy, single-cell microelectrodes, multiple-array microelectrodes, genetically modified mice,
CAT scans , PET scans, MRI scans, fMRI scans, activity-sensitive florescent dyesnow provides
us with an overlapping set of windows onto the brains physical structure and its neuronal activities,
from the subcellular details of its molecular activities up to the molar-level behavior of its brainwide
neuronal networks. The brain is no longer an inaccessible black box (Churchland, Plato's Camera,
1314).
with connections with other neurons (See Figures 2.1 and 2.2). A neuron either
receives input from its dendrites or provides output through its axons. 161 These
inputs and outputs are signals 162 that are either received or relayed through
connections called synapses.
Figure 2.1163 Figure 2.2164

Basic schematic of a neuron Detailed schematic of a neuron
161
Dendrites are branchlike processes of the neuron that receive most electrochemical
inputs into a neuron...[while an] axon is a process beginning as a slight swell in the neuron called
axon hillock, which provides most electrochemical output of the neuron (Schoenberg et al.,
Neuroanatomy Primer: Structure and Function of the Human Nervous System, 91).
162
These signals are chemicals (e.g. dopamine, serotonin) called neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters are a group of endogenous chemicals responsible for signaling between neurons
and other cells (there is very little direct electrical connection between neurons). Thus, signaling of
the nervous system is a bioelectrochemical process affected by neurotransmitters (Ibid, 94).
163
Figure 2.1 taken from Charles Watson, Matthew Kirkcaldie, George Paxinos, The Brain:
An Introduction to Functional Neuroanatomy, (London: Academic Press, Sep 20, 2010), 3.
164
Figure 2.2 taken from Mike R. Schoenberg, Patrick J. Marsh, and Alan J. Lerner,
Neuroanatomy Primer: Structure and Function of the Human Nervous System, in Mike R.
Schoenberg and James G. Scott (eds), The Little Black Book of Neuropsychology: A Syndrome-
Based Approach, (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, Jan 11, 2011), 90.
A synapse is a narrow space between neurons where signals are relayed.165
This narrow space serves as a link between neurons, forming what are called
synaptic connections. As seen in Figure 2.2, multiple synaptic connections can be
made from a single neuron alone.166 But what is the relevance of having multiple
input-output connections to a neuron? These multiple inputs, as will be shown,
determines when the neuron will activate or fire its own signal.
By default, neurons are in a passive, non-active, or not firing state. A
neuron can activate or fire depending on the signals it receives from other
neurons.167 This signal is filtered by the nature of the synapses that connects a
neuron to other neurons. As mentioned above, a neuron receives several inputs from
different synapses. A synapse, in general, can either increase the likelihood of a
neurons activation (if it will fire) or reduce its likelihood. Respectively, the former
is an excitatory synapse and the latter is an inhibitory synapse. As a result, the
process becomes a balancing act between these two factors. In a sense, it is a
competition in which polarity (to activate or not to activate) will the neuron lead to.
165
Signals or neurotransmitters are relayed through a receptor of a dendrite from an axon of
another neuron, as seen in the smaller boxed figure located at the lower left of Figure 2.2. This
system is what basically makes up a synapse.
166
Several axon-dendrite synaptic connections can be made from a neuron, and it is the
most common type of synapse in the nervous system, but there are other types of synaptic
connections as well, for example, dendrite-dendrite and axon-soma connections (See Figure 2.2).
167
By default a neuron has a negative electric charge (about -70 millivolts, mV). The
amount of charge of a neuron is called resting potential, which basically represents a neurons
passive state. On the other hand, an action potential is a positive charge (of around +30mV) that a
neuron emits through its axon. Action potentials are often called spikes because they are an active
flow of electric discharge while resting potentials are the default passive states of a neuron. If the
default state of neurons is passive, when do action potentials happen? A neuron emits a positive
charge when its resting potential reaches a minimum electric charge of -50mV, called the threshold
potential. This threshold potential is reached through a deliberate balancing act between two
opposite class of synapses: excitatory and inhibitory. See Schoenberg et al., Neuroanatomy
Primer, 94. More on this presently.
If an excitatory synapse dominates the balance, the neuron will fire a signal. If
not, it will remain passive. Overall, this process, as Churchland puts it, is the site
of a competition between fire and dont fire inputs. 168 Thus, a neuron will
either activate, or not at all. This phenomena is commonly referred to as the all-or-
none principle or law of neurons.169
In sum, neurons are units that are capable of: 1) producing signals to
communicate with other neurons, and 2) processing those signals from several
different other neurons, which are filtered by different synaptic connections that
determines whether they will fire a signal or not.
Despite the seemingly simple nature of this fire or dont fire system, it is
actually very complex when placed in the context of the whole nervous system, and
even more in a real-time context. To illustrate this thought, it is important to point
out that neurons can communicate via signals not only to nearby neurons but also to
very distant ones. It is said that the longest link between neurons (via axons) can
span half the body length of an animal.170 Hence, multiple synaptic connections can
be made even across vast distances. Moreover, the process described abovethat
is, the process of determining if a neuron will fire or nothappens repeatedly in
milliseconds. The rate of firing can happen about 100 times per second, or even
more.171
168
169
Mitchell Glickstein, Neuroscience: A Historical Introduction, (Cambridge: MIT Press,
January 17, 2014), 6970.
170
Watson et al., The Brain: An Introduction to Functional Neuroanatomy, 2.
171
Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 204. To further illustrate the speed of this
process, consider how an average human can easily perceive that a light is flickering even if its
But besides the possible vast distance a neurons signals can reach, and its
rapid rate of firing, what is even more astonishing is the fact that there exists 100
billion of these neurons in a human being. That means that up to 100 billion signals
are fired by the human nervous system 100 times per second. Aside from the large
numbers of neurons, the depth and complexity of each firing is even more apparent
if one considers that there is a rough average of 3,000 synaptic connections per
neuron and an estimated total of 100 trillion synaptic connections all over the
nervous system. 172 All of these influence the fire and dont fire mechanism of
neurons illustrated earlier. As a whole, this system, composed of billions of neurons
and trillions of synaptic connections, form distributed, parallel and hierarchical
networks (more on this later).173 Such massively complex networks are what makes
human cognitive acts, or at least most of them, possible.
The above facts clearly shows how massive and complex the human brain is
as a system. This leaves us with no wonder why digital computers cannot keep up
with humans in specialized cognitive tasks that the brain was made for, despite a
digital computers supposed general purpose architecture and its massive advantage
in raw computational speed.
Nevertheless, even though we know the complexity of neurons and how
massive their operations are, this does not give us an immediate insight on how the
human mind works in general. According to Churchland, a proponent of the
flicker rate is about 10 times per second. This means that the brain is fast enough to easily
recognize visual cues and changes within 0.1 seconds. See Watson et al., The Brain: An Introduction
to Functional Neuroanatomy, 2., 5.
172
173
Schoenberg et al., Neuroanatomy Primer, 125.
computational top-down approach might say: Looking at the intricacies of the
biological brain, ran the argument, is akin to looking at the intricacies of a
computers hardware: it wont tell you where the real action lies, which is in the
peculiar program that the hardware happens to be running.174
Indeed, it is almost impossible, or at the very least impractical, to know how
a program works (for example MS Word) by looking at binary manifestations in the
digital computers electronic microchips. To put it bluntly, one cannot know the
functions of MS Word by looking at the enormous number of 0101010101 or
on/off signals in the logic gates of computer chips.175 Following this argument, it
would seem that aiming to find the kinematics of mind through analyzing neurons
is also futile. Fortunately, according to Churchland, the rise of modern cognitive
neurobiology and computational neuroscience already unlocked the resources
needed to form an account of cognition based on the mechanics of neurons.176 This
claim will be explored in the following section.
174
175
A logic gate is an electronic device that takes a binary signal as input and converts it into
a logical function of binary outputs. Most modern logic gates are implemented through transistors. If
there are about six transistors per logic gate, it would be impossible to look through an average
laptop, with hundreds millions of transistors, running MS Word, to know how the said program
works through an analysis of binary patterns. The presented argument insists that the same must be
true when analyzing neurons. (On logic gates and transistors: Julio Sanchez, and Maria P. Canton,
Microcontroller Programming: The Microchip PIC, [Florida: Taylor & Francis Group, Dec 19,
2006], see 5.3 Logic Gates and 5.4 Transistor-Transistor Logic; On transistors per logic gate count:
James L. Turley, The Essential Guide to Semiconductors, [New Jersey: Prentice Hall Professional,
2003], 25).
176
Churchland, Platos Camera, 5.
2.2 Computational Neuroscience, the Study of Artificial Neural Networks
Access to the secrets of biological networks in humans and also non-human
animals has been rapidly growing with the help of new technologies (e.g. Magnetic
Resonance Imaging [MRI], Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging [fMRI], or
electron microscopy). This enabled new experiments to be performed on the
nervous system. But, according to Churchland, an increase in the steady stream of
these very experimental data leads to an ever-expanding set of empirical

177
constraints on responsible cognitive theorizing. Besides the ethical
considerations that need to be accounted for in live human experiments, there are
other practical empirical limitations that prevent one from exploring the
possibilities in the nervous system. For example,178 it would be difficult to monitor
and modify a biological neural network without killing, damaging, or interfering
with the whole network. Furthermore, since the development of neurons in
biological creatures is an ongoing process that takes yearsone can say even a
lifetimean examination of and experimentation on their overall behavior in that
huge span of time would be impractical.
Nevertheless, there is another method of examination and experimentation
that can be done that is not constrained by these limits, which is the construction of
artificial neural networks in the field called computational neuroscience.179 Such
177
Ibid., 14.
178
Ibid.
179
[D]etailed anatomical and physiological data alone...are not enough to understand how
the nervous system works. It is the recognition of this fact that makes modeling studies a significant
part of mainstream research in neuroscience. The combination of theoretical methods, including
mathematical analyses and computer simulations, together with modern experimental techniques has
study, as will be shown, will be the foundation of Churchlands new kinematics of
cognition and his neurophilosophy overall. It is important to note, however, that
computational neuroscience, in comparison with classical AI, also uses digital
computers to simulate neurons, but it comes with two crucial differences: 1) The
approach will mostly be bottom-up, and 2) the architecture adopted by the
computers will not be the von Neumann-style serial processing; rather, it will be
parallel and distributed processing. 180 With this crucial difference, it is expected
that computational neuroscience will yield different results as compared with
classical AI. Churchland asserts that this is already the case, saying that
computational neuroscience already unlocked some of the secrets of cognition that
classical AI never reached. Why Churchland thinks so and how the study arrived at
such success will be topic of the proceeding pages.
2.2.1 Simulating Neurons
In Churchlands book, A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of
Mind and the Structure of Science,181 he illustrated how artificial neural networks
simulate fundamental mechanics of neurons. He first identified the essential factors
led to the emergence of a new discipline of computational neuroscience with the ultimate goal of
explaining how neural signals represent and process information in the brain. Modeling of neuronal
networks is a powerful tool that enables accomplishment of this goal by understanding how specific
parts of the nervous system perform certain operations (for instance, learning specific motor skills,
computing the direction of reaching movement, decoding spatial information, etc.) and is
complementary to traditional techniques in neuroscience research (Uwe Windhorst and Hkan
Johansson, Modern Techniques in Neuroscience Research, [Heidelberg: Springer Science &
Business Media, Jan 1, 1999], 689).
180
Ibid., 689690.
181
A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
that make up a neuron, particularly the input from dendrites, the output from axons,
and the polarity between inhibitory and excitatory synapses. Respectively, an
artificial network can simulate these functions in a neuron-like processing unit as
shown in Figures 2.3 and 2.4.
The simulation basically involves mimicking the fire and dont fire
mechanism of neurons. This is done by mathematically representing the process
through equations. Basically, these equations depict how the excitatory and
inhibitory synapses influence the rate of firing of a neuron. 182 Roughly speaking,

Schematic of an artificial neuron Basic schematic of a neuron
182
More technically, the mathematical representation works in this manner: Looking at the
input side of the neuron-like unit (Figure 2.3), it can be seen that E represents the total electric
charge inputted (or fired) into the soma of a real neuron. While the balancing of polarity (between
inhibitory and excitatory) in a neurons synapses is simulated through the combination of two
variables: the weight of synapse (Wi), and the strength of input (Si). Respectively, Wi (weights)
represents the nature of synaptic connection (its polarity), thus, it can either be positive (excitatory)
or negative (inhibitory); while Si (inputs) represents the amount of electric charge from another axon
of another neuron. On the other hand, in the output side of a neuron-like unit, strength of output (So)
represents how much is the action potential or spike the neuron itself will discharge.
183
Figure 2.32.4 and discussions taken from Churchland, On the Nature of Theories: A
Neurocomputational Perspective, in Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective, 159160.
the mathematical equations determine whether a neuron will fire or not by
combining, or more accurately squashing, all the values different synapses
represent; inhibitory synapses represented by negative numbers and excitatory by
positive ones.184 To put it simply, this mathematical process is basically similar to
adding negative and positive integers. Obviously, whether the equation yields a
positive or a negative result will determine if the neuron will fire or not. The
resulting value of this equation is generally referred to as the synaptic weight of a
neuron, which represents the degree of polarity a neurons synaptic connections
yields.
Nevertheless, the actual factors that determine what will be combined or
squashed together are not given in a single neuron, as those will also be affected
by other connected neurons (via the signals they emit). Moreover, other neurons are
also in this same situation. In other words, some crucial factors are not determined
by looking at a neuron in isolation. Thus, even if the neuron-like unit successfully
mimics a biological neuron, it still needs to be embedded in a network of neuron-
184
The meaning behind the term squashing is derived from the name of a mathematical
function used in artificial networks: non-linear squashing function. It is non-linear because the
transformation of input yields either an S-shaped (sigmoid function) or a staircase-shaped (step
function) graph. These functions are applied to simulate the similarly non-linear threshold reaching
rate in neurons. This means that, to continue the discussion in the above footnote, the output (S o) is
not determined simply from the summation of the all the inputs (Si) and weights (Wi) received;
rather, it is determined through squashing (a mathematical function) that accounts for the
complexity of how threshold potentials are reached. In a previous footnote, it has been said that
reaching the threshold potential determines whether the neuron will fire or not. Roughly speaking,
one can say that the squashing function simulates the rate of firing of a neuron or simply how
often the neuron will fire. See Churchland, Platos Camera, 4344; Neurosemantics: On the
Mapping of Minds and the Portrayal of Worlds, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 146, this cited article
was first published in in K. E. White, ed., The Emergence of Mind, pp. 11747 (Milan: Fondazione
Carlo Elba, 2001); On the Nature of Theories, in Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective,
160161.
like units in order to unlock its general mechanics. As Churchland puts it, 185
looking at a single neuron and its synaptic connections one-by-one is similar to
peering at an 18th-century newspaper photo through a microscope one black dot at
a time. Or, to put it in more modern terms, it is similar to merely looking at a high-
definition (HD) picture pixel by pixel, ignoring the overall image. Apparently,
almost no relevant information can be revealed from this method.
What needs to be done, according to Churchland, is to focus on the overall
system of synapses and neurons, and only then will the role of each tiny neuron and
synapse be revealed. Indeed, looking back at the above analogies, the role of each
dot in the old-fashioned newspaper or of each single pixel in a computer can only
be uncovered when the entire newspaper or image is seen. The same is true for each
neuron and synapse. This thought leads the discussion of how neurons work
collectivelythat is, in the context of neural networks.
2.2.2 Simulating Neural Networks
When constructing an artificial neural network in computational
neuroscience, it is important to consider its biological plausibility.186 Thus, the main
aim is to simulate biological neural networks as accurately as possible. But the
question is how can one simulate a massive 100-billion unit neural network? As
stated in the previous discussion, the supercomputer K did poorly at simulating
even 1 second of a very small part of human brain activity. Hence, it would seem
185
186
Windhorst and Johansson, Modern Techniques in Neuroscience Research, 689.
impossible, at least with current technology, to simulate the network as a whole.
This leads us to the option of examining smaller parts of that massive network first.
But where to begin? Which area of the massive networks in the brain is worth
examining first? Churchland asserts that we must begin at the primary levels of that
massive network which constitute the beginning of cognition: the senses.
For Churchland, 187 neural networks are similar to ladders, in a sense that
each layer of neurons can be considered a rung in an upward direction of
processing. At the bottom-most area of those ladders lies a population of neurons
called sensory neurons, as distinguished from motor neurons and interneurons.188
These are neurons that are directly connected to or within the sensory organs,
examples of which are the rods and cones in the retina of the eye or the hair
cells in the cochlea of the ear.189
These sensory neurons then send an upward signal to a second rung of post-
sensory neurons (e.g. LGN and MGN) in the ladder-like network. Then this second
rung projects a signal to another higher rung (e.g. into the primary visual or
auditory cortex). That higher rung, in turn, projects to an even higher rung. These
upwards projections go on and on, as shown Figure 2.5.
In the previous discussion on neuroanatomy, it has been said that the brain is
composed of parallel, distributed, and hierarchical networks. If neurons are ladder-
187
General discussions on the ladder-like nature of neural networks taken from Churchland,
Platos Camera, 2.1 The Basic Organization of the Information-Processing Brain, 3538.
188
Motor neurons are units directly connected to muscle cells, while interneurons are
neuron-to-neuron connections, which constitutes most of the other neurons in the nervous system.
See Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 205207.
189
Ibid., 35.
Figure 2.5190
The ladder-like structure of the primary
visual and auditory pathways
like, one may say that raw sensory stimuli are transmitted to sensory neurons at the
bottom of the network hierarchy, then such stimuli are further processed or
transformed as they go through a higher rung in the ladder. This transformation is
known to be done in parallel and simultaneous transmissions, and are considered
distributed because the initial stimuli are processed as they branch out to several
different neurons. Now, one may ask, what does this transformation actually do
to the raw sensory stimuli initially given at the bottom of the ladder? What happens
to the stimuli as they go up the ladder of neurons? Answering this question
unfortunately leads us back to the challenge of simulating an overwhelming number
of neurons, because, in biological neural networks, each rung in the ladder-like

191
network contains thousands of neurons. Nevertheless, computational
neuroscience has already shown that merely simulating a small number of neurons
in an artificial neural network (by connecting neuron-like units) is enough for us to
190
Figure 2.5 taken from Churchland, Platos Camera, 36.
191
draw some significant insights on how neurons work collectively, and, as
Churchland sees it, several insights about cognition can already be drawn from
these artificial networks.192
One example of such networks, as discussed by Churchland, is the face
recognition network. With more than 4,000 neurons and roughly 300,000 synaptic
connections, the network learned to distinguish male faces, female faces, and
non-faces from each other (Figure 2.6). Moreover, that network, through training,
was eventually able to name and identify specific known faces across several
Figure 2.6193
Face recognition network
192
Churchland cites several artificial neural networks made by different scientists across his
works. One of the most cited of those networks is Garrison W. Cottrells Face Recognition
Network. Examples of Churchlands work that discusses one or both of these networks are: Platos
Camera, see 2.5: More on Faces: Vector Completion, Abduction, and the Capacity for Globally
Sensitive Inference; The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, see 3. Vector Processing and 4.
Artificial Neural Networks; Neurophilosophy at Work, 98103; Matter and Consciousness, 7.5 AI
Again: Computer Models of Parallel Distributed Processing. The proceeding discussions on artificial
networks in this chapter will based on these sources.
193
Figure 2.6 taken from Paul Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from
Propositional Attitudes, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 99.
photograph samples. The word learned is important to emphasize here, precisely
because the face network was not pre-programmed to distinguish between the types
of faces at the outset; rather, it was trained to eventually distinguish them.
Training in this context means feeding the network a variety of images of faces
until it accurately recognizes among these faces.
At the beginning of the training, the face networks recognition performance
was poor. But, as time progressed and continuous input was fed to the network, it
slowly adjusted the weights of the synaptic connections across the neuron-like units
in the middle layer with the sole goal of reducing the error of its recognitions.194
Eventually, the face recognition network was able to perfectly recognize the gender
and identity of the faces presented within the training sample. And, when it comes
to faces outside the training sample, the network never failed to differentiate
between a face from a non-face even when given samples it never encountered
before. Furthermore, the network recognized, with 98% accuracy, the identity and
gender of faces it already knows, even in completely new photographs of these
faces. Also, the network was able to recognize with 81% accuracy the gender of
photographs of new people totally outside the training sample. All of this shows
194
This error-reducing training is done through a process called back-propagation of
errors. This is often called a supervised learning style of training artificial neural networks to do a
specific cognitive task. It is said to be supervised because the network is given a goal and is
informed when its respective adjustments of synaptic weights leads to less errors in reaching that
goal. It is important to note, however, that no further information is given to the network. Thus, its
solutions to reduce error are discovered by the network itself. Churchland distinguishes back
propagation from Hebbian Learning which is often called unsupervised learning. This distinction is
significant to the topic of actual learning in biological creatures. The difference between these two
types of learning procedure will be discussed in the footnotes of the following chapter.
that the network did not merely memorize the faces it saw; rather, it genuinely
found what differentiates the respective types of faces.
In a sense, as Churchland puts it, the network found the internal pattern or
abstract organization behind faces, appearing to have learned a reliable
category of male faces, female faces, and non-faces to the point that it can
recognize the pattern of a specific category even in faces it has never seen
before.195 This abstract insight is derived solely and originally from raw sensory
inputs of images. No prior information on what identifies and differentiates faces
was given to the network. Thus, it is understandable why the network was not able
to initially discern any kind of order from the random images of faces it was
presented. But with training, the network was able to categorize the random sets of
images into abstract male, female, or non-face prototypes through a laborious
process of adjusting its synaptic weights.
Besides the face recognition network, there are other artificial networks that
can do other cognitive tasks using almost the same process described above. There
is a network that successfully reconstructed the known pattern or system for human
color perception.196 Another network, also modeled on our primary visual pathway,
195
196
L. M. Hurvich, Color Vision (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 1981); A. Clark, Sensory
Qualities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); and P. M. Churchland and P. S. Churchland,
Recent Work on Consciousness: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Empirical, Seminars in Neurology
17, no. 2 (1997): 17986; reprinted in Churchland and Churchland, On the Contrary (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 15976. As cited in Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism
Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 95.
unlocked the underlying pattern of how humans determine the shape of objects by
its shading, a classical problem that baffled visual psychologist.197
However, one may ask, can artificial networks also reliably uncover abstract
patterns that are not visual and auditory in nature? Such networks exist. One of
these networks is called EMPATH, another version of the face recognition
network. 198 Through a similar training procedure, it was able to recognize eight
principal human emotions in distinct human faces. Another network, called
NETtalk,199 was able to read printed English sentences out loud, a task filled with
ambiguity and irregularities particularly on the appropriate use of phonemes.
Although NETtalk did not understand the meaning of the words it is reading, it was
able to distinguish the proper phonetics used in certain words such as the difference
between the phoneme of c when used in cats and city, or the phoneme of a
when used in have and save. The discovered rule is based on a complex
categorization of the phonemes as seen in Figure 2.7. What is illustrated here is a
79-category framework that is organized into a hierarchical structure, with vowels
and consonants being the highest category. It is important to note that NETtalk was
not taught to ultimately distinguish vowels from consonants, or even organize the
197
S. Lehky, and T. J. Sejnowski, Computing Shape from Shading with a Neural Network
Model, in E. Schwartz, ed., Computational Neuroscience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988),
452454. As cited in Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional
Attitudes, 95.
198
G. Cottrell and J. Metcalfe, EMPATH: Face, Emotion, and Gender Recognition Using
Holons, in R. Lippman et al., eds., Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 3 (San
Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1991), 17. As cited in Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism
Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 9596.
199
Rosenberg, C.R., and Sejnowski, T. J., "Parallel Networks that Learnt o Pronounce
English Text," in the journal Complex Systems, vol. 1 (1987). As cited in Churchland, The Engine of
Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 325, see also NETtalk: A Network that Reads Aloud, 8491
phonemes in hierarchical manner; it discovered these categories simply by adopting
the same training procedure done with the other networks discussed earlier.
Again, it would seem that artificial neural networks can indeed generate complex
categories from raw sensory inputs. But this leaves one to wonder how these
networks discover these categories in the first place. It has been said that the
network gradually adjusts the synaptic weights of its neuron-like units to reduce its
errors. However, the question remains on how simple synaptic adjustments can lead
to complex categorizations as shown earlier. Fortunately, since the networks above
are artificial, it can be examined with relatively few problems as compared with real
Figure 2.7200
A hierarchical category of phonemes
spontaneously generated by NETtalk
200
Figure 2.7 taken from Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 90.
biological networks.201 However, it would seem that a linguaformal analysis alone
would prove insufficient to understand how these networks work. As Churchland
puts it, it is difficult or even impossible to articulate in language how the networks
form these complex categories. 202 Indeed, the network operates not through
traditional syntax or logic, but through a different procedure, as will be shown in
the next section.
3 Toward a New Kinematics of Cognition
[T]he acquired microstructure of the brain holds out some

much-needed explanatory resources, but the price of using them is a
reconception of our modal, subjunctive, and counterfactual
knowledge, a reconception that moves us away from the
linguaformal framework of Folk Psychology and classical logical
theory, and toward the activation-vector-space framework
appropriate to the brains basic modes of operation.203
Physical science, since the time of the Greeks, has gone beyond language
and logic to uncover the secret laws of nature.204 After a long period of mythology,
particularly the association of cause and effect in nature with the passions of the
gods, there came a gradual shift to a new idea that the universe is actually governed
by consistent principles, by laws of nature that can be deciphered. This shift can be
traced back to the legend of Pythagoras discovery of the first mathematical
201
202
Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 33 and 144.
203
Churchland, Platos Camera, 18 [emphasis added by the researcher].
204
Proceeding discussions on the development of scientific and mathematical models taken
from Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, see chap. 2, The Rule of Law, 1534; Varvoglis,
History and Evolution of Concepts in Physics, see chap. 1, Physical Sciences and Physics, 310, and
chap. 5, Physics of the 20th Century, 105120.
formula, (ca. 580 BC - ca. 490 BC)205 and Euclids formulation of the basic tenets
of classical geometry (ca. 325 BC - ca. 265 BC). 206 Perhaps the first fruit of
Pythagoras and Euclids labor was seen through Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310 BC -
ca. 230 BC), who was the first to argue through a complex geometrical analysis that
the earth is not the center of the universe.207
These Greek mathematicians are only three of those who instigated a
reconception of nature through mathematics. All these developments gradually led
to the creation of modern models such as Copernicus heliocentric planetary
system, Isaac Newtons three laws of motions and his law of gravity, Einsteins
theory of relativity, and finally quantum theory, which was developed by multiple
physicists such as Richard Feynman, Werner Heisenberg, and Ervin Schrdinger.
These mathematical theories yielded conceptions of nature that FP, by itself,
may have never uncovered. Indeed, the counterintuitive assumptions of Einsteins
model about time-space, 208 and quantum theorys uncovering of a field of
205
It is said that Pythagoras discovered the first mathematical formula to explain the
relationship between string length and the pitch of the sound they produce. When applied to real
musical instruments, this explains why lower-pitched string instruments have thicker strings, while
higher-pitched ones have thinner strings. Being one of the first attempts to explain a phenomena
through numbers, it proved revolutionary. This is perhaps why the famous mathematical theorem
(Pythagorean Theorem) that explains angles of a right triangle was named after him. See Hawking
and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 1819.
206
Ana Irene Ramrez Galarza and Jos Seade, Introduction to Classical Geometries,
(Basel: Springer Science & Business Media, May 2, 2007), see chap. 1, Euclidean geometry, 158.
207
His argument was based on a complex geometrical analysis that was done through
measuring the earths shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. With this analysis, and belief that
smaller objects must orbit more massive ones, he concluded that the sun is much larger than the
earth. See Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 21.
208
The counterintuitive nature of Einsteins model is seen when one examines the concept
of relative time. This removes absolute reference frame in time or absolute simultaneity in time. This
is not merely a difference in human subjective time, but in objective time, in a sense that two
spaceships that are millions of kilometers apart may experience a massive lag in time even though
their clocks are initially synchronized. See William Lane Craig, Time and the Metaphysics of
subatomic particles full of paradoxes and uncertainties, not only defies our common
209
intuitions but also challenges classical logic. This strongly implies that
mathematics uncovered an aspect of nature that common sense, or even logical and
lingual analysis, cannot fully grasp.
What is evident when we examine the above scientific-mathematical models
is the power of human tools, such as algebra and geometry, to give a penetrating
grasp on the fundamental workings of nature. Without the aid of these tools,
civilization is perhaps left solely with FP to devise a theory of nature. According to
Churchland, history tells us that such endeavor only brought about superficial views
on nature, as he writes:
The presumed domain of FP used to be much larger than it is

now. In primitive cultures, the behavior of most of the elements of
nature were understood in intentional terms. The wind could know
anger, the moon jealousy, the river generosity, the sea fury, and so
forth. These were not metaphors. Sacrifices were made and auguries
undertaken to placate or divine the changing passions of the gods.
Despite its sterility, this animistic approach to nature has dominated
our history, and it is only in the last two or three thousand years that
we have restricted FP's literal application to the domain of the higher
animals.210
Churchland further insists that similar to how the old folk psychological
assumption that nature is moved by mental states of the gods grew obsolete and was
Relativity, (Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media, 2001), see chap. 3 Time Dilation and
Length Contraction, 4764, and chap. 8, The Elimination of Absolute Time, 149170.
209
It can be said that understanding quantum mechanics is one of the greatest intellectual
puzzles of our time. Mathematicians, such as Jon von Neumann and Garret Birkhoff, state that
quantum mechanics does not conform to the tenets of classical logic, thus a new logical structure is
needed to make sense of the logically problematic nature of quantum mechanics, which can be
realized, both the mathematicians argue, through building quantum logic. See Kurt Engesser, Dov
M. Gabbay, and Daniel Lehmann, eds., Handbook of Quantum Logic and Quantum Structures,
(Netherlands: Elsevier, Aug 11, 2011), viiviii.
210
replaced with mathematical physics, there will come a time when human mental
states, as applied to human nature through FP, will meet a similar fate.
As mentioned in a previous section, Churchland thinks that FP only gives a
superficial grasp on the workings of mind and human nature in general. For him, a
new framework is needed, one that is founded on a matured neuroscience. The
construction of such a framework, Churchland insists, is already beginning. Indeed,
as illustrated in this chapter, neuroscience has gone far in its quest to uncover the
fundamental mechanics of the nervous system, from the basic structure of neurons
to its overall workings as seen in artificial neural networks. Churchland argues that
this development has already yielded the rough outlines of a competing conception
of cognitive activity, an alternative to the sentential or propositional-attitude
model that has dominated philosophy for the past 2,500 years. 211 According to
him, such conception of cognitive activity will be based on vector algebra and
high-dimensional geometry, which constitutes what he calls the
neurocomputational perspective.212
3.1 Toward a Neurocomputational View of Cognition
In the previous subsection, it has been shown that artificial neural networks
generate complex categories through gradual adjustment of the synaptic weights of
its neuron-like units. How this process is achieved and what it actually yields can be
understood if the networks are analyzed from a mathematical perspective.
211
212
Ibid., 24.
Particularly, Churchland adopts a neurocomputational perspective, or what he
specifically calls the activation-vector-space framework.213
In that framework, a firing of a neuron is treated as a vector, a unit that
has a certain direction and magnitude. Each of these vectors are then transformed as
they go through a rung of neurons. This transformation is often viewed as an
activation, thus, vector transformation in a rung of neurons is seen as an
activation vector. Each of these transformations are determined by what
Churchland calls an activation pattern, which represents the summation of the
matrix of synaptic weights in the said neuron rung (See Figure 2.8).
Figure 2.8214
Coding in an elementary network
In the previous examples of artificial networks, it has been shown that
training is fundamentally the adjustment of synaptic weights. From the
213
Churchland uses the terms activation vector, activation space, and activation-vector-
space to refer to the phenomenon of neural firings in the brain. An extensive application of these
terms can be found in several of his works as early as A Neurocomputational Perspective (1968),
and up to his latest work Platos Camera (2012). In general, he interprets cognitive activity, or the
workings of the mind, as a form of activation-vector-space in the brain. This thought will be
expounded more throughout the chapters.
214
Figure 2.9 taken from Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from
Propositional Attitudes, 97.
activation-vector-space perspective, that training is the gradual change of activation
pattern to yield an activation vector that corresponds to complex categories. These
categories can range from face recognition to a 79-phoneme categorical hierarchy,
as shown in the previous discussion. Each category is realized through a certain
level of activation.
Hence, a specific activation level corresponds to a certain representation.
For example, a vector with 0.7, 0.3, 0.5 magnitude can correspond to a female face,
or a vector with 0.1, 0.2, 0.1 can correspond to a non-face (See Figures 2.8 and 2.9
for reference). 215 Taken together, each of these representations form what
Churchland calls an activation space (See Figure 2.9). In the figure above, the
Figure 2.9216
A simplified activation space
of possible human faces
215
These numbers are simplified fictional examples and do not represent real numbers in
actual artificial networks.
216
This figure, Churchland reminds us, is merely a simplified three-dimensional activation
space of the supposed 80-dimensional space of the actual face recognition network discussed above.
This figure gives an immediate visual sense on how activation spaces are formed in actual artificial
networks. See Churchland, Platos Camera, 7, Figure 2.9 taken from 8.
activation space for faces can be seen as a general conceptual framework for faces.
In a sense, Churchland thinks that activation spaces constitute conceptual
frameworks.217
However, as already illustrated, synaptic configurations that yield activation
patterns, which then form activation spaces, are not given immediately. Certainly, it
is learned through the continuous exposure to sensory inputs and the gradual
synapse-adjusting process described earlier. Applying the activation-vector-space
framework learning can be geometrically represented in a sense that learning here
becomes an activity of forming, or, in Churchlands term, sculpting218 of activation
spaces until it captures the abstract organization of sensory inputs. As Churchland
phrases it, an activation space is a hard-earned configuration of weighted synaptic
connections, 219 which is a culmination of the matrix of inhibitory and excitatory
synapses. Such acquired configuration is what enables artificial networks to have a
conceptual framework for faces or phonemes, for example. Figuratively, the weight
of synapses is what constitutes the shape of activation spaces and also the nature
of the specific conceptual framework it adopts. Such shape, in turn, is formed by
the gradual adjustment of synaptic weights through continuous exposure to varied
sensory inputs.
217
Churchland, Platos Camera, 56; a large portion of the book is dedicated to showing
that conceptual frameworks are activation spaces. Churchland also explicitly states several times
that activation spaces are conceptual frameworks, in Neurophilosophy at Work, see 3233, 100102;
for a detailed discussion on the dynamics of activation spaces and conceptual frameworks see
Neurosemantics, in Ibid., 126160.
218
Churchland often refers to a fine-tuned synaptic configuration as sculpted-activation-
space. The term was first extensively used in his latter work: Neurophilosophy at work, and was
thoroughly applied and expounded on in Platos Camera.
219
Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 98.
Thus, overall, the phenomenon of synapse adjustments in artificial networks
yields conceptual frameworks through sculpting activation spaces, while it yields
representations through transforming sensory inputs into activation vectors, by
passing through those sculpted spaces. In a sense, as Churchland puts it, conceptual
frameworks, or enduring representations, are basically activation spaces, and
fleeting representations are activation vectors.220
Now, if neuron-like units accurately simulate biological neurons (as
illustrated in Figures 2.3 and 2.4), would it mean that the general mechanics of
artificial neural networks correspond, at least roughly, to the general mechanics of
biological neural networks? If this is the case, can we say that human representation
and conceptual frameworks operate in the same manner? Churchland insists that
this is the case. For him, the basic kinematics of cognition in general is founded on
these very dynamics and kinematics of neurons.
3.2 Through the Landscape of Activation Spaces, a Brief Account of Cognition
According to Churchlands activation-vector-space framework, neural
phenomena is the dynamics of activation vectors and dimensional kinematics of
activation spaces.221 For him, this is where the fundamental kinematics of cognitive
activity is founded, which is beyond sentences and propositional attitudes, and leads
into the landscape of activation spaces. He writes:

220
221
Churchland argues that cognition is fundamentally a high-dimensional neuronal
kinematics in general, and vector-processing dynamics in particular. See Platos Camera, 201202.
A brief and comprehensive summary of this view can be seen in his work: What Happens to
Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional Attitudes and Neurosemantics.
One can conceive of the brains dynamical activity as a

single moving point in the brains all-up neuronal activation space,
a point in ceaseless motion, a point that spends its time, marble-like,
rolling merrily around the almost endless hills and valleys of the
conceptual landscape that the basic or structural learning process has
taken so long to sculpt. This landscape analogy is accurate enough,
in that it rightly suggests that ones unfolding cognitive state tends to
favor the valleys (the acquired prototype regions or categories) and
to slide off the hills (the comparatively improbable ridges between
the more probable valleys).222
This landscape of activation space in the brain is much more massive and
complex than the simplified face network activation space illustrated earlier (Figure
2.9). According to Churchland, the brain is a 100-billion-dimensional neuronal-
activation space, 223 with each neuron corresponding to one dimension of that
space. Raw sensory inputs are transformed by this high-dimensional activation
space into innumerable complex categories or prototypes. It can range from
frameworks for faces, phonemes, speech, to more complex frameworks such as

224
social knowledge or scientific theories. Churchland cautions that such
frameworks are not families of predicate-like elements or sentence-like general
commitments. He insists that, in fact, they are not linguaformal at all; rather, they
are high-dimensional sculpted activation spaces that are acquired through a
continuous immersion to and interaction with the world. 225 These hard-earned
sculpted spaces are what enables a person to learn how to skillfully navigate the
overwhelmingly complex human reality.

222
223
Ibid., 248.
224
Churchland conceives the practice and knowledge of science and morality as a complex
dynamism in activation spaces. This thought will be expounded on a latter chapter.
225
Churchland, Platos Camera, viiviii. The possible issue of why scientific theories are
not linguaformal will be also discussed in a latter chapter.
In sum, human cognition is a process of activating certain points in the vast
activation space of the brain, and the shape of that space is what determines the
pattern of the transformations of activation vectors.
Applying the above thoughts to a practical example, activations in the brain
are perhaps a process of transforming a sensory input of an apple into an activation
space for fruits, and the yielded activation vector from that space is further
transformed into the higher activation spaces for food, nourishment, and
ultimately to the sustenance of life. However, such linear hierarchical processing is
not isolated, as there could be a parallel transformation on an entirely different
activation space. An activation space for the price of the apple, for example, may
further triggers activation spaces for basic arithmetic, and even a more complex
economic perception of ones own finances. On the other hand, another activation
space for beauty may also be triggered, as one sees the shiny color and beautiful
shape of the apple.
The point above brings us back to the general architecture of the brain,
particularly its hierarchical, parallel, and distributed nature. In such a network,
sensory information is processed in parallels, and distributed through hierarchies of
activation spaces. As seen in the apple example, a person can perceive it as an
object of nourishment, of beauty, or merely as price tag, all at the same time. It is
important to note, however, that activation points (or simply which activations
spaces are triggered) are not solely determined by sensory inputs alone, as
Churchland writes:
[O]nes inner cognitive narrative is a specific trajectory

through such an antecedently sculpted space. But even given such a
well-informed space, the path of that cognitive trajectory is not
dictated by ones sensory experience alone. Far from it. At any point
in time, your next activation point, within your global activation
space, is always dictated (1) partly by your current sensory inputs,
(2) partly by the already acquired profile of your background
conceptual framework (that is, by the lasting configuration of your
synaptic connections), but also, and most importantly in the present
context, (3) by the concurrent activation-state of your entire
neuronal population, a complex factor that reflects your cognitive
activity immediately preceding the present computational
interaction.226
Indeed, experience tells us that we do not only react to what we perceive with our
senses, but we also impose our very own categories and perceptive biases on
objects. Following Churchlands framework, it means that we perceive objects with
activation spaces already in place, spaces that have been sculpted through the years
of our lives. One may notice that this assertion is vaguely Kantian, in a sense that
our rational and empirical grasp of objects cannot escape any human framework. In
the Kantian framework, this means that specific a priori intuitions or judgments are
presupposed in all human cognition, which implies that perception is possible only
through a priori frameworks, specifically intuitions of space and time. 227 On the
other hand, in Churchlands framework, specific activation spaces are presupposed
226
Ibid., 19.
227
In Immanuel Kants revolutionary work, Critique of Pure Reason, he isolated the
foundational a priori frameworks that make human cognition possible. In the section on
Transcendental Aesthetic, he argued that time and space are a priori intuitions that is presupposed by
humans when perceiving objects. While in Transcendental Logic, particularly in Transcendental
Analytic, he argued that understanding presupposes categories (Of Quantity, Of Quality, Of
Relation, and Of Modality) that makes all rational judgments possible. See Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. Max Muller, (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & CO.,
LTD, 1922), see I. Elements of Transcendentalism, First Part. Transcendental Aesthetic,1539; and
Second Part. Transcendental Logic, First Division. Transcendental Analytic, 52237.
in all human cognitionthat is, all cognition is only possible because of the
sculpted activation spaces already in place. This is seen through artificial networks,
which show that even the perception of faces or phonemes are realized through a
specifically sculpted activation space, or a hard-earned synapse-generated
conceptual framework. Indeed, the networks were, at first, unable to even perceive
the distinction between faces (as seen in the face recognition network) before the
laborious synapse adjustment training. Only after that training, specifically the
shaping or sculpting of an appropriate activation space, can perception of faces be
made. Loosely speaking, the same can be said for humans.228
Indeed, Churchlands view is vaguely Kantian in the sense discussed above.
In fact, Churchland himself pointed out similarities of his activation-vector-space
framework to Immanuel Kants portrait of human cognition.229 Nevertheless, there
are radical differences that seem to separate Churchlands view of cognition not
only from Kants, but also from the general view of mind that traditional
philosophy has built.
The first difference is the number of abstract spaces that constitutes human
cognition. For Churchland, human cognition is not only made possible by two
umbrella abstract a priori frameworks as construed by Kant, namely: possible
human experiences and possible human judgments, as shown in Figure 2.10.
228
The training process in artificial networks and in biological neural networks is
differentiated by Churchland as stated in a previous footnote. It is important to add, however, that he
thinks only the method of reaching a proper configuration of synapses is different, but the method of
cognizing, that is, through a sculpted activation space, is the same. This thought will be elaborated in
the proceeding chapter.
229
Churchlands comparison of his own framework to Kant can be seen on Platos Camera,
1 Introduction: A Fast Overview, Some Parallels and Contrasts with Kant, 13
Rather, as Churchland puts it, cognition constitutes many hundreds, perhaps even
thousands, of internal cognitive spaces, each of which provides a proprietary

Kants portrait of human cognition The multiple-maps portrait of human cognition
canvas on which some aspect of human cognition is continually unfolding, as
shown in Figure 2.11. 231 That being the case, the supposed singular lingual
framework adopted when reading is possibly a different activation space from
writing and speech. Indeed, there are people who can speak, but cannot write, and
also people who can read but are unskilled in writing. That may mean that there are
separate spaces for each of these three cognitive skills. This segregation and
seeming independence of frameworks or activation spaces can be seen in the
makeup of the brain itself (Figure 2.12).
As demonstrated by people who experience brain damage in certain areas of
the brain, very specific cognitive abilities can be disabled depending on the area of
230
Figure 2.10 and 2.11 is taken from Ibid., 2&3.
231
Ibid., 2.
damage or lesion in it. 232 A widely known condition called aphasia impairs a
persons ability to speak (this is generally seen in people who experience stroke,
where bursts or blocks in blood vessels damage certain areas in the brain,
Figure 2.12233
Known specialized and local areas
in the biological brain
particularly lesions in the temporal lobe). People with aphasia, although they cannot
speak, still possess basic motor control of their mouth and larynx, which enables
them to produce non-lingual sounds. Furthermore, they are also able to understand
speech. This suggests that the ability to utter verbal or lingual sounds is in a
different area of the brain (or, from the neurocomputational perspective, in a
different activation space or groups of spaces), as compared with speech
comprehension and motor ability of uttering sounds.
A more severe case of this condition, called global aphasia, also impairs
speech comprehension leading to the inability of a person to use and understand
232
Discussions on brain lesions and their corresponding effect on cognition taken from The
Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, I. 7 The Brain in Trouble, 151184.
233
Figure 2.12 taken from Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 129.
language completely. Although patients with global aphasia are incapable of using
language, research shows that such impairment do not affect their non-linguistic
cognitive abilities.234 The said research is done by subjecting global aphasic patients
to non-verbal tests of intelligence. The tests revealed that these patients demonstrate
non-linguistic cognitive abilities. This suggests that cognition in general is
independent, or at least not entirely reliant, on language use and comprehension.
This gives further ground to the claim repeatedly emphasized by Churchland, that
language is not the fundamental element of cognition.235
Certainly, the brain is filled with non-lingual cognitive abilities such as
shape and color recognition, visual acquisition, memory consolidation, and even
234
Through Global Aphasia Neuropsychological Battery (GANBA), researchers have
concluded that globally aphasic patients demonstrate[s] a diversity of patterns of cognitive
performance (Edith Kaplan, Roberta Gallagher and Guila Glosser, Aphasia-Related Disorders, in
Martha Taylor Sarno, ed., Acquired Aphasia, [San Diego: Academic Press, 1998], see Nonlinguistic
Cognitive Abilities in Aphasic Patients, 330332). See also Martin L. Albert, Lisa Tabor Connor,
Loraine K. Obler, Neurobehavior of Language and Cognition: Studies of Normal Aging and Brain
Damage Honoring Martin L. Albert, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), Beyond
Language Evaluation.
235
Churchland illustrates this point by also referring to aphasia, and describes the point
mentioned above in more detail: [T]he articulation, manipulation, evaluation, and eventual fixation
of propositional attitudes is not a game that nonhuman animals have ever learned to play, nor, most
likely, ever could learn to play. In what, then, does their general knowledge consist? We must ask
the same question of ourselves, because when humans suffer the isolated loss of their acquired
capacity for the expression, manipulation, comprehension, and fixation of propositional attitudes
as happens in global aphasiathe bulk of their cognitive capacities remain robustly intact. This
stroke-induced neuropathology, long familiar to neurologists, involves massive destruction to the
left-side cortical regions surrounding and including Brocas and Wernickes areas. These areas are
vital for the production of grammatical speech and for the comprehension of grammatical speech,
respectively. Their joint destruction leaves a patient who is unable to comprehend speech, either
spoken or written, and unable to produce either as well. This deficit is not a superficial perceptual or
motor deficit. Such patients can still sing snatches of coherent speech, if the song was learned before
the stroke. And they can discriminate both voiced phonemes and printed letters as well as you or I.
Their deficit is evidently deeper. They have lost their system for expressing, deploying, and
manipulating propositional attitudes in the first place. They are out of the propositional-attitude
business entirely. And yet they can still play a game of chess, cook a dinner, appreciate an unfolding
football game, drive a car across the state, or shop for the weekend groceries (although the shopping
list must be iconic). Such people retain a rich conceptual framework, a rich appreciation of both
natural and functional kinds (Churchland, What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from
Propositional Attitudes, 93).
motor skills as seen in Figure 2.11. This brings us to another notable distinction,
particularly the view that even more fundamental practical skills such as motor
initiation and motor coordination are also sculpted activation spaces, as Churchland
writes:
Consider also the possibility that the human brain devotes

every bit as much of its cognitive activity to the production and
administration of coherent motor behavior (walking, swimming,
speaking, piano playing, throwing strikes, making a [sic] dinner,
running a meeting) as it does to the perceptual and judgmental
activities of typical concern to traditional philosophies. And note
the possibility that such proprietary cognitive spaceswhose
neuronal basis is located, for example, in the frontal cortex, the
motor cortex, and the cerebellumcan successfully represent the
complex motor procedures and action procedures listed above, by
means of the muscle-manipulating trajectories of the collective
neuronal activities within those spaces. Note also that such
trajectories and limit-cycles within sundry sensory spaces can
equally well represent complex causal processes and periodic
phenomena, as externally encountered in perceptual experience
rather than as internally generated to produce bodily behavior.236
Indeed, the thought that motor skills are also acquired sculpted activation
spaces is demonstrated in a babies who gradually learn to walk as they grows up. In
a sense, babies gradually sculpt their activation spaces for motor movement, along
with training their muscles, to the point that these enables them to walk. Mothers
would attest to this, as they remember the day when their children were finally able
to walk after months of trying. Certainly, such skills, as experience also teaches us,
are learned as we grow up in the world.
One might find it counterintuitive, or at the very least inappropriate, to
group practical skills, such as motor movement, with more abstract conceptual
236
frameworks, such as arithmetic or moral perception. But, it is important to
remember that conceptual frameworks from a neurocomputational perspective are
no longer sets of sentences founded on a certain logic; rather, they are neural
phenomena indifferent to our self-imposed distinction between abstract factual
knowledge and empirical practical skills, as Churchland writes:
[T]he neurocomputational perspective... makes it

unexpectedly difficult to draw any clear or principled distinction
between these two superficially different kinds of knowledge
factual knowledge versus practical skillsthe one kind, truth-
bearing; the other kind, not. A distinction that initially seems plain to
uninformed common sense tends to disappear entirely when one
confronts the realities of neuronal coding and world navigation...237
Thus, following this perspective, one can say that human cognition, and human
skills in general, are all fundamentally activations in the high-dimensional spaces of
the brain. Such spaces, as already discussed, are slowly sculpted as one interacts
with the world. Thus, human cognitive knowledge and skills are not static
throughout ones life. Indeed, it is possible for a child who once struggled to walk
to become a world tennis champion at his or her physical prime (usually 2035
years old), or a child who once struggled to do arithmetic to win a Nobel Prize in
physics during adulthood. This thought leads us to the second major distinction
between Churchland and Kants framework: the plasticity of human cognition.
Churchland asserts that cognition is not stuck in a frozen conceptual
prison as shown in the Kantian framework. Churchland writes:
[Activation spaces are] not fixed by some prior decree, either

divine or genetic, but is rather shaped by the extended experience of
237
Ibid., 32.
the developing animal, to reflect the peculiar empirical environment

and practical needs that it encounters, and the peculiar learning
procedures embodied in the brains ongoing business of synaptic
modification. These internal spaces may thus be plastic to varying
degrees, and may hold out the promise of an enormous range of
conceptual and perceptual possibilities for one and the same species
of creature, in stark contrast to the frozen conceptual prison
contrived for us by Kant.238
Thus, in sum, Churchlands view of conceptual frameworks is different
from Kants because it includes several other conceptual frameworks, and these
frameworks can range from perceptual apprehension and conceptual judgment, to
motor cognition and practical skills. Moreover, these frameworks are plastic; they
are not innate and fixed, in a sense that they are learned and developed gradually.
This thought brings us to the major difference that distinguishes Churchlands
account of cognition, not only from Kants, but also from the general view of
traditional philosophy: a dynamic view of cognition.
3.3 Beyond the Concept of Mind, toward a Dynamic View of Cognition
What is described above is an account of cognition that has gone beyond the
concept of mind which is depicted as mental states, a fixed frozen entity that
constitutes human cognition and rationality. In contrast, it is a dynamic view that
depicts cognition as a complex kinematical neural phenomena, a dynamics and
kinematics of vast firings of neurons in the hard-earned sculpted landscape of
238
Ibid., 2.
activation spaces in the brain. Such novel view of cognition can perhaps be
compared with Einsteins novel concept of gravity.239
Newton initially thought of gravity as a force, an attractive force exerted by
bodies in absolute space. Einstein argued that this is not the case. Through a radical
geometrical reconception, he asserted that gravity is a result of curvature in space.
In this view, an object curves the fabric of space relative to its mass; thus, a
heavier object curves space more deeply, resulting in a stronger gravitational pull.
What is revolutionary about Einsteins view is not only his radical reconception of
gravity, but also his new view of space itself. Initially, early Greek atomists viewed
space as absolute nothingness, a state that makes change possible. 240 Newton
adopted this view as his background framework for creating his laws of motion.
Gravity on this score is merely another force that is realized in absolute space.
Einstein overturned this view, and asserted that space itself can change, and is not
an absolute fixed entity of nothingness. For him, space is similar to a rubber sheet
that can be shaped by the mass of objects in it. In turn, space when curved, as would
a rubber sheet, affects those objects; the lighter objects slide into heavier objects
because of the curves in the sheet. According to Einstein, such curvature is what
constitutes gravity.
Similar to how Einsteins radical view of space changed the general view of
gravity, Churchlands neurocomputational perspective instigates a change in the
239
Proceeding discussions on Einsteins view of gravity taken from Jay Kennedy, Space,
Time and Einstein: An Introduction, (McGill-Queen's University Press MQUP, 2003), see Part II
13 General relativity: is space curved?
240
Ibid., 139.
general view of cognition. Similar to how Einstein identified gravity with curvature
in spaces, Churchland identified cognition with activation points and trajectories in
activation spaces. Although Churchlands geometrical view of cognition is more
philosophical and less scientific as compared with Einsteins scientifically and
mathematically established view of gravity, it is a novel account that promises to
give a scientifically informed grasp of cognitive activity. Certainly, Churchlands
framework is a radical reconception of cognition, for it compels us to review our
initial assumptions about human nature. As Churchland puts it: [I]f we hope to set
standards for...cognitive activity as is conducted within this novel kinematical and
dynamical framework [the activation-vector-space framework], we are going to
have to rethink our normative assumptions from scratch.241
Indeed, Churchlands intent to rethink cognition from scratch is seen
throughout this chapter. His bold eliminative materialist stance on the possible
elimination of folk psychology, his assertion of the displacement of sentences as the
foundation of cognition, his advocacy of knowing the nature of cognition bottom-
upall these point to a novel framework of cognition, and one that is founded on
current neuroscience research. This is a framework that radically reconceived
cognitive activity from a static immaterial or irreducible mind to a dynamic neural
activity in the massively complex brain. This bottom-up neuroscientific
reconception is what constitutes neurophilosophy. As Georg Northoff defines it,
neurophilosophy is the examination of the implications of neuroscientific facts on
241
Churchland, Platos Camera, 203 [bracketed entry added by the researcher].
our current philosophical views. 242 Certainly, neuroscience, as illustrated in this
chapter, has several significant insights to give to philosophy with regard to the
nature of cognition. Indeed, it enabled Churchland to construct a new view of mind,
particularly a neurocomputational perspective of cognition. This is basically
Churchlands brand of a naturalistic view of human cognition. Evidently, by
displacing the concept of mind and grounding cognition to neural phenomena,
human cognitive activity becomes entirely explainable through natural facts.
But, aside from human cognition, how would neuroscience affect our
overall view of human nature? Churchland thinks that the impact already is and can
be even more substantial. 243 He insists that it will bring new answers to the old
problems of philosophy regarding human nature. Indeed, as seen in the discussions
in this chapter, Churchlands framework shows how the classical mind-body
problem is basically an obsolete problem in the face of overwhelming evidence on
how the brain, a physical system, can generate supposedly immaterial states or
tasks. Now, how can Churchlands naturalistic framework address philosophical
issues aside from the mind-body problem?
In line with the main aim of this thesis, the next question that needs to be
asked is what Churchlands framework can tell us about our current understanding
242
Northoff, Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem, See 1.4.1 Defining
Neurophilosophy, 2527.
243
Churchland illustrates the impact neuroscience will bring to philosophy in his article
Into the Brain: Where Philosophy Should Go from Here, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 232238.
The cited article was first published in Topoi 25 (2006): 2932, a special issue on the future of
philosophy.
of morality. The researcher asserts that it will provide answers, from a naturalistic
standpoint, to moral issues such as:
Is morality innate or acquired?
Is moral knowledge an objective and valid form of knowledge
Is moral progress possible or not?
The answer to these questions, especially the last one which is central to this thesis,
will be the topic of the proceeding chapters.

CHAPTER III
Moral Learning: The Neural Foundations
of Moral Character
If one aims to evaluate morality through Churchlands neurophilosophy, one
needs to re-evaluate it from scratch. Similar to how cognition was reconceived
through a neuroscientific bottom-up approach, morality would have to be examined
in the same manner. In this chapter the nature of morality will be discussed. It will
attempt to answer the question: What are the neurophilosophical grounds that make
morality possible?
A. The Nature of Learning: Sculpting the Landscape of the Brain
A bottom-up examination of the nature of morality would first entail an
examination of how morality is developed in a person. Applying Churchlands
neurocomputational perspective, such development, at least at the most
fundamental level, is heavily dictated by neural phenomena. In the last chapter, it
has been shown that learning fundamentally constitutes the gradual adjustment of
synaptic weights. But the details of how such adjustment happens was only
explored briefly. However, accounting for the development of morality the bottom
up would require a relatively detailed knowledge of how neurons adjust their
synaptic weights. Developmental neuroscience, fortunately, has a biologically
realistic model of how neurons gradually adjusts themselves to produce the

remarkable features and capacities of a human being. Such model, as will be shown
in this chapter, is crucial in the development of morality.
1. Hebbian Learning as the Fundamental Mechanism of Learning
In 1949, Donald Hebb, in his landmark work The Organization of
Behavior, 244 developed a neuropsychological theory of how neurons enable
biological creatures to learn. The theory consists of a neuropsychological postulate
that provides a simple mechanism on how neurons adjust their synaptic weights.
Hebb construed that postulate in this manner:
Let us assume then that the persistence or repetition of a

reverberatory activity (or "trace") tends to induce lasting cellular
changes that add to its stability. The assumption can be precisely
stated as follows: When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a
cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some
growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells
such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.245
This postulate basically implies that when two neurons connected to one another
fire simultaneously in several repeated occasions, their strength or rate of firing will
increase. Thus, if a group of neurons are repeatedly triggered to fire together, those
neurons would consequently fire stronger the next time they fire together. The
244
Donald O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory,
(London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002 [1949]). Hebbs theories in the cited book have set
the foundation for not only neuroscience but also for psychology and AI research. The reason for the
strong influence of the theory is that it gives a simple account of how neurons can reflect a higher
process, especially the phenomenon of learning in cognitive creatures. It is said that Hebbs account
is one of the first theories that bridges the gap between the brain (neuroscience) and the mind
(psychology). See Richard E. Brown and Peter M. Milner, Foreword to The Organization of
Behavior, F8, F12F13. The importance of this discovery will be further shown in the proceeding
pages.
245
Ibid., 62.
process that allows for an increase in strength is an enhancement of synaptic
connection, as Hebb writes: When one cell repeatedly assists in firing another, the
axon of the first cell develops synaptic knobs (or enlarges them if they already
exist) in contact with the soma of the second cell. 246 Overall, Churchland
illustrates this process in this way: [R]oughly, whichever subset of synapses
happen to sing together, when and if they do sing, subsequently have their
individual voices made permanently louder, and for that very reason.247 Crudely,
Hebbs postulate can be summarized as: Neurons that fire together, slowly wire
together. 248 This postulate is called Hebbian learning and is a well-established
principle in neuroscience. 249 As to how this process leads to learning will be
explored in the succeeding pages.
In the previous chapter, it has been illustrated how neural networks are, at
the very bottom of the ladder, receivers of sensory inputs, as reflected through
sensory neurons. Thus, a certain sensory stimuli activates or fires a corresponding
group of neurons (certain colors or images trigger specific neurons for example).
Following Hebbs postulate, if a certain sensory input is repeated continuously, the
246
Ibid., 63.
247
248
Wire here corresponds to an increase of synaptic weights or establishment of new
connections. See Churchland, Into the Brain, 235.
249
In general, Hebbian learning is a recognized synapse adjustment theory. Specifically, a
widely accepted Hebbian learning style neural learning method, supported by experimental
evidence, is called Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity. For more information account as to why
Hebbian learning is currently the most biologically realistic learning procedure, see Nikola Kasabov,
ed., Springer Handbook of Bio-/Neuro-Informatics, (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, Nov 30, 2014), 37.4
Learning in SNN, and 37.5052; Lee Newman and Thad Polk, The Computational Cognitive
Neuroscience of Learning and Memory: Principle and Models, in Mark Guadagnoli, eds., Human
Learning: Biology, Brain, and Neuroscience: Biology, Brain, and Neuroscience, (California:
Elsevier Ltd., 2008), 81;
respective neurons activated by such repetition will form a network of neurons that
is specifically sensitive to that input. They are sensitive in the sense that such a
network will have stronger synaptic connections for that specific sensory input,
yielding to what Churchland calls preferred stimulus. 250 For example, a sensory
input of a face, when continuously exposed to a creature, will become clearer as
more inputs of faces are received by the creature. This is precisely because the
creatures network of neurons that is continuously exposed to faces will detect the
temporal coincidences (meaning patterns of sensory inputs that are triggered the
most) that are displayed by faces, which will make it specifically sensitive to the
sensory patterns displayed by the faces (See Figure 3.1). As a result of this acquired
preferred stimuli, the network will also be sensitive to anything that roughly
resembles a face, because the network is not only sensitive to a particular type of
face, but to anything similar to a face. Thus, one can say that the network now
recognizes the patterns of faces in general.
Figure 3.1251
250
Discussions on preferred stimulus taken from Churchland, Platos Camera, 158165.
251
Ibid., 160.
Making a neuron preferentially sensitive to a specific input
As one may see, this ability to recognize patterns of faces would evidently
be similar to the face recognition network discussed in the last chapter (Figure 2.6).
Indeed, they are similar in two ways: 1) Both networks have the ability to recognize
the pattern of faces, and 2) both networks learned their recognition abilities by
252
gradually adjusting their synaptic weights. In the previous discussion of
252
There is, however, a crucial difference between those two networks in their method of
adjusting their synaptic weights. The face recognition network and other networks presented in the
last chapter adjust their synaptic weights through an error-reducing procedure called back
propagation. As previously noted, the network adjusts its weights with the goal of reducing its errors
in recognition. The problem with this error-adjusting procedure is that it is biologically unrealistic.
This is precisely because, as Churchland writes: That brute-force artificial technique [back-
propagation] requires that the correct behavior for a mature network be known in advance of any
learning activity, in order that subsequent synaptic changes can be steered by the explicit goal of
reducing the degree of error that separates the student networks actual behavior from the optimal
behavior that this supervised technique seeks, stepwise, to impose upon it. But biological creatures
have no such advance access to the right answers, and they have no means of applying such
information, to each synapse one-by-one, in any case (Churchland, On the Nature of Theories,
183188; Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 42; Platos Camera, 157). For this
reason, back-propagation is often called supervised learning while Hebbian learning is often called
unsupervised learning (For a comprehensive summary of the difference between Hebbian learning
and back-propagation See Ben Coppin, Artificial Intelligence Illuminated, [London, Canada: Jones
& Bartlett Learning, 2004], 285).
This however does not serve as a ground to invalidate Churchlands overall framework. As
may already be evident, the only unrealistic part in back-propagated artificial networks is its method
of synapse adjustment. The configuration made by those networks is not radically different from the
configurations of biological networks. As Churchland puts it, while the method of adjustment is
unrealistic, the configuration attained through such adjustment is still realistic, as [w]hat the brain
displays in the way of hardware is not radically different from what the [back-propagated] models
contain, and the differences invite exploration rather than disappointment (Churchland, On the
Nature of Theories, 187). For this reason, even if the method of synaptic adjustment in artificial
neural networks does not accurately depict the adjustments in biological neural networks,
Churchlands neurocomputational account still stands, as he states, in a much recent work (2007
[1998]): Our artificial learning technologies are currently a poor and pale reflection of what goes
on in real brains, but in both casesthe artificial networks and the real brainsthose gradual
synaptic readjustments lead to an appropriately structured high-dimensional similarity space, a space
partitioned into a hierarchical family of categorical subspaces, which subspaces contain a central hot
spot that represents a prototypical instance of its proprietary category (Paul Churchland, Toward a
Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 44; the cited article
was first published in Topoi 17 (1998): 114). Thus, the theory that synaptic configuration are
activation spaces remains viable. Precisely because, in both cases back-propagation and Hebbian
learning, learning is the gradual adjustment of synaptic weights that yields a specific synaptic
configuration that may better convey ones perspective of the world. This learned synaptic
Churchlands activation-vector-space framework (or neurocomputational
perspective), learning at the neural level is the process of sculpting of activation
spaces; it is a synapse adjustment toward an appropriate shape (or synaptic
configuration) that enables neural networks to gain cognitive abilities (the ability to
recognize faces in the previous example).
It has been discussed in the previous chapter how artificial neural networks,
when exposed to several sensory inputs, eventually gain a certain cognitive skill
through synapse adjustment (from recognizing phonemes to recognizing emotions
through facial expressions for example). What Hebbian learning provides us is the
biologically realistic method on how such synapse adjustments happen in the first
place. More specifically, Hebbian learning tells us that such process follows the
principle: Neurons that fire together, slowly wire together.253
As already illustrated, this principle allows networks to learn solely through
exposure to sensory inputs, as Churchland writes: Hebbian-trained networks are...
fiercely empirical in their learning habits: it is the frequently repeated patterns of
raw perceptual input that gradually come to dominate the networks highly selective
neuronal responses within the layers above the input layer.254 Thus, according to
Churchland, Hebbian learning allows networks to learn through raw statistics of a
creatures sensory experience.255 The more exposed a neural network is to a certain
experience or act, the more it wires synapses for such activation. In time, this
configuration, as already repeated several times, is basically a sculpted activation space in

Churchlands neurocomputational framework.
253
Churchland, Into the Brain, 235.
254
Ibid., 161.
255
Ibid., 164165.
eventually leads to synaptic configurations that enables neural networks to gain
remarkable cognitive abilities which are roughly shown in the artificial neural
networks discussed previously. This process is what Churchland calls Hebbian-
induced sculpting of activation spaces,256 in the sense that synapse adjustment (or
sculpting of activation spaces) is driven by the Hebbian principle.
In general, what makes Hebbian learning a widely accepted principle, is that
its raw statistics account of learning evidently reflects in higher-level learning in
everyday life. Indeed, as experience teaches us, almost all learning processes
require continuous exposure to and immersion in the world. The more one is
exposed to and immersed in a particular task, the better one becomes at it. This
kind of learning process reflects in very simple tasks such as uttering words or
writing them, and also in complex specialized tasks such as singing an opera song
flawlessly or writing an academic book. Children need years of experience and
practice to master the basics of writing and speech, while musicians and academics
also need years to master their specialized knowledge and skills. Hebbian learning
accounts for this gradualness of learning, and it also explains why such a slow
process requires immersion to and experience in the field that one aims to learn.
Indeed, at the very fundamental level, as Hebb has shown, neural networks simply
become more efficient the more they are exposed to a certain sensory experience.
Thus, overall, Hebbian learning is a model that provides a powerful neuroscientific
grounded framework that can explain the general phenomenon of learning. Now,
256
Churchland refers to the sculpting activation spaces as Hebbian-induced in Platos
Camera, 178&245.
the question is how does Hebbian learning affect our overall concept of human
nature?
2. Human Nature, Is It Innate or Acquired?
The claim that human nature is innate goes back to the ancients. As Plato
tells us, learning is merely remembering the innate knowledge of the soul bestowed
upon human beings since birth. 257 This issue of the possible innatism of human
nature becomes more complex in the modern era. Rationalist philosophers such as
Descartes argue that some ideas (e.g. God) cannot be derived from experience
alone, so at least some of them must be innate. 258 On the other hand, empiricist
philosophers such as John Locke argue that every idea is originally derived from
257
The boy slave in Platos story in the Meno was illustrated to have no prior knowledge of
geometry. But he quickly learned mechanisms behind shapes all by himself after Socrates gave him
a geometric test. It is depicted in the story that the slave learned them so naturally as if merely
recalling something he has possessed and has known all his life. For Plato, this demonstrates that
innate knowledge exists and the only task of the human person is to recall it through the processes of
anamnesisrecalling the all-encompassing knowledge of the soul. Plato, Meno, trans. George
Maximilian Antony Grube , 85eI-3 in John M. Cooper, ed., Plato Complete Works, (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 870897.
This is sometimes contrasted with Aristotelian theory of perception (ideogenesis), which,
for medieval scholastics, shows that innatism may be false. Medieval scholastics, through Aristotles
framework, established a theory that explains the origins of ideas. Such theory characterizes ideas as
ultimately forms derived from sensory experience. Whether such knowledge are sensible forms (e.g.
heat, color, or hardness) or intelligible forms (e.g. body, apple, dog) they are once derived from
experience, which is deemed to be the cause of knowledge. This theory assumes that all the forms
that constitutes all human knowledge is abstracted from the external world, thus the human mind
is, at birth, similar to a blank tablet (tabula rasa), a blank slate that needs experience of the world to
build itself. This debate on whether human nature is innate or acquired continue on to the modern
period. See Robert Marrihew Adams, Where Do Our Ideas Come From? Descartes vs. Locke,
in Stephen P. Stich, ed., Innate Ideas, (California: University of California Press, 1975), 7274, sec.
II, 7478; and sec. III, 7882.
258
Descartes asserts that some ideas cannot be derived from experience such as the idea of
God or a straight line. He thinks that the limits of the senses cannot possibly generate those ideas.
Thus, he asserts, that these ideas must be innate. See Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy,
esp. Meditation Three, in Cress, trans., Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy,
6980.
experience, complex ideas being derived from sensory simples that are inner
copies of the world gathered through firsthand sensory experience. 259 Hence, in
this account, the human mind is a tabula rasa at birth; all concepts are acquired
through experience.
For Churchland, both of the accounts stated above are inadequate. 260 He
asserts that they both lack explanatory power. He also thinks that both contradict
the current discoveries of science. Instead, Churchland proposes an alternative
scientifically-informed account of the origins of human nature that does not lean to
any of the polarities shown above, and is not limited to knowledge or concepts
alone. His account can be illustrated in the following hypothetical scientifically-
informed account of human growth.
2.1 Forming the Human Person, a Neurocomputational Account
When a male infant is first conceived in a mothers womb, there is one thing
that is already determined. Compressed in the double-helix DNA of his genomes,
the data of how the infant would be like, even before he is born and becomes
conscious of himself, is already imprinted in his being. However, these
predetermined traits only encompass how the infants physical structure is
259
Locke critiques the overall premise of innatism and asserts that the mind is a blank slate,
and all ideas are originally derived from experience, with simple ideas being firsthand and derived
from sensations, and complex ideas being derived from those simple ideas. See John Locke, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding eds. Kenneth Winkler, (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1996
[1689]), esp. BOOK I. Of innate notions.
260
Churchland argues that concatenative empiricism (e.g. Lockes framework) and blanket
nativism (e.g. Descartes framework) are stick figure theories and are plagued by explanatory
poverty. See Platos Camera, 1416.
designedhow his organs are formed, how his body is shaped, and even how his
brain is structured.261 Certainly, almost all of his basic biological design is already
determined even before he sets foot on this planetbut only the design. This design
will be shaped and will gradually change as the infant grows in the environment.
Inevitably, the very first environment he is born in is inside his mothers womb.
A few months after being conceived, the infant develops his first cognitive
abilities.262 Such abilities are the most basic building blocks for the senses such as
touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell. Thus, even if he is still inside his mothers
womb, the infant is already capable of experiencing pain, seeing very dim lights,
hearing faint sounds (such as his mothers voice or her heartbeat), and even
distinguishing a small spectrum of taste and odor. Besides the development of the
body parts crucial for such sensory abilities, the process is also accompanied by the
development of the earliest sensory neurons along with the wiring or formation of
synaptic connections. Hence, one can say that the infant, even before birth, is
already sculpting the activation spaces of his developing brain.
Five to eight months after conception, his basic senses are established, and
his small body already formed. Because of his increased awareness (through his
developed senses) of his body and environment, he slowly becomes capable of
moving his body at will. Even though he is still inside his mothers womb, he
261
Churchland expresses that biology and even the structure of the brain is determined by
genetics. But its development is epigenetically determined, meaning, it changes beyond the original
structure that the genome specified (more on this later). See Neurophilosophy at Work, 138139;
Platos Camera, 15&224.
262
Discussion of the pre-natal development of senses taken from Brigit Arabin, The
Development of Senses, in Malcolm I. Levene and Frank A. Chervenak, eds., Fetal and Neonatal
Neurology and Neurosurgery, (Philadelpia: Elsevier Limited, 2009), see chap. 8, sec. I, 111127.
already attempts to explore his bodys capabilities. He moves his tongue and mouth
and sometimes even sucks his thumb or fists. Thus, he unintentionally trains and
slowly sculpts his activation spaces for the most fundamental motor and cognitive
skills he will later use after being born. 263
After nine months of pre-natal growth, the child is finally born. 264 The
moment he is brought outside his mothers womb, he will cry, perhaps because of
the sudden change in environment that his biology is not yet accustomed to. All he
has seen in his mothers womb are very faint lights, so he has not seen light with
such intense brightness before and it may be painful for his eyes. At the moment, all
he sees are scattered spectrums of light because his neural networks in the visual
cortex are not yet sufficiently wired to receive light and distinguish its different
spectrums effectively. He feels a sensation of touch but he does not conceive that
someone is holding him because he has no ability to recognize patterns through the
shadings or lightings of the objects in front of him. Although he can perceive
colors, he does not have the ability to effectively distinguish them to see the details
of his environment.
263
Ones prenatal motor and proprioceptive experience with ones own face, lips, and
tongue may give one a leg up on the postnatal visual processing of postnatally encountered faces
for those visual faces are homomorphic structures subject to homomorphic behaviorsbut the
knowledge involved here is still epigenetic, even if acquired while still in the womb. The fact is,
infants are highly active in the late stages of pregnancy: they move their tongues and mouths, and
even suck their thumbs and fists (Churchland, Platos Camera, see footnote at 12).
264
The post-natal account that will be told is based on Churchlands premise that grasp of
sensations is also a hard-earned synaptic configuring that takes months and even years to sculpt. He
supports this argument by citing how artificial neural networks (as previously discussed in 2.2.2
Simulating Neural Networks) needs training to even begin to distinguish the most basic sensory
discriminations. See Platos Camera, 1314 for Churchlands explicit statement on this matter. It is
important to note, however, that the account that will be presented is highly conjectural and serves as
an illustration of Churchlands view of the origins of knowledge.
Eventually, through an intense and repeated look at his surroundings, his
neurons connect, synapses are formed, and finally his brain is trained or sculpted
enough to visually perceive the environment sufficiently. But the task is far from
finished; though he can effectively see shadings and spectrums of colors, everything
is blurry. He looks at a brown figure in front of him. It has a distinct light and color
from the background. After looking at this brown figure several times, he finally
makes out the figure because he has developed a network of synapses able to
discriminate from the brown figure and the non-brown figure. At this point he
develops a representation and a concept of a face which he can discriminate as a
brown shape that has distinct parts, each with different shading and colors.
The detailed account above only covers how the childs visual perception is
slowly trained after birth, but a similar lengthy struggle is required for the other
senses as well. Describing how all these processes develop in detail can be lengthy
to illustrate. But the main point is that evidently the infant initially struggles to
perceive his environment effectively, and he needs to gradually adjust to his
environment by slowly wiring his neurons, or sculpting appropriate activation
spaces. As shown previously, the senses are not initially built to effectively perceive
the environment; senses actually need to be sculpted even before birth. Moreover,
even at the moment the child is born, it is shown that he is still initially unskilled at
perceiving the environment, and needs time and exposure to effectively grasp it. If
such basic and fundamental cognitive skills are acquired, can one say that other
cognitive skills are also acquired?

Churchland states that everything besides our biological make-up, which is
formed by genetics, is acquired after birthor more accurately, learned through
sculpting the activation spaces in the brain. 265 The effective perception of color,
sound, pressure, smell; the ability to move; the ability to recognize faces; the ability
to sharply distinguish sounds which eventually lead to recognition of words spoken;
the ability to utter and mimic the sounds spoken which contributes to the ability to
speak language; and the ability to associate the sounds spoken with images recorded
in memory, which eventually leads to the forming of worded categoriesall these,
and much more, are traits that one acquires by wiring or sculpting the landscape of
the brain through constant experience in and interaction with the environment. It is
evident that Hebbian learning can explain how these basic abilities are gradually
learned by an infant. Indeed, having the hardware (e.g. eyes or ears) to perceive
and navigate through the environment is simply not enough; sculpting the
appropriate activation spaces in the brain to use those hardware effectively is also
needed for a child to begin to sufficiently grasp the world. As seen in the
development of a child, it takes years to sculpt those spaces. Undeniably, even
common sense tells us that a child takes at least five years to have sufficient
command of his senses, to have sufficient motor control and to have a command of
language, and even more years to develop more advanced skills and knowledge
appropriate for an adult. For example, it would take even more years for that same
child to further enhance his command of language to be an English teacher or
265
further enhance his motor skills to be a professional tennis player. Overall, it is
evident that it takes years of continuous exposure to and interaction with the world
for an infant to learn to grasp or perceive the world, and navigate his way through
it.
Hebbian learning explains why this learning process is lengthy and requires
several experiences and exposures to the world. Furthermore, Hebbian-style
adjustment can lead one to grasp the world without a prior framework or knowledge
already in place, as Churchland writes: [Hebbian learning] offers an account of
learning that needs no antecedent conceptual framework in order to get an opening
grip on the world. On this account, our concepts emerge gradually as an integral
part of our growing understanding of the objective, lawlike relations that unite them
and divide them. 266 This is because, as already stated earlier, Hebbian-style
learning allows the neural networks to learn from experience and immersion in the
external world alone.
Thus, if learning is indeed governed by Hebbian learning, it would seem that
almost all our perception, cognition, language, and even all our concepts are
acquired; nothing comes before them except our biological design. But it is hasty to
declare that innatism is false, and that the brain is a tabula rasa, even if this almost
seems to be the case. A closer analysis of human neurobiology would show that the
situation is not totally black and white.
266
2.2 Nature or Nurture?
It is important to remember that the design of human biology is
predetermined by ones genome even before birth. Besides the biological make-up
of our body, the structure of the brain is also predetermined. As already shown in
the last chapter, there are localized areas in the brain, each specializing in certain
cognitive tasks (Figure 2.12). Thus, the areas such as the visual cortex, motor
cortex, and somatosensory cortex indicate that a certain population of neurons are
built to shape an activation space for a particular cognitive task. This even extends
to face recognition which seems to have specific neurons built to do such a task, as
Churchland writes: Of course, the sheer existence of a neuronal population primed
to take on the job of parsing faces is likely something that is genetically specified.
After all, each of us has an inferotemporal cortex (the presumed region of the
human brain that supports facial recognition), and all normal infants fixate on
facelike stimuli from birth.267 However, as Hebbian learning dictates, neurons can
only wire synapses when exposed to the environmental stimuli. Thus, even if there
is a certain population of neurons genetically determined to do a particular
cognitive task, such neurons need to be sculpted to effectively do such a task, as
Churchland states:
But the adult structure of that space [activation space for

faces], its idiosyncratic dimensions, and its internal similarity-metric
are all features that are epigenetically determined. By far the greater
part, and perhaps even all, of what anyone knows about faces has its
origins in ones postnatal experience with faces. Such an antinativist
conclusion, concerning the neuronal and synaptic basis of the brains
267
Ibid., 12.
representational spaces, is appropriate for almost all of the many

spaces that the brain comprehends.268
That being the case, there are inevitably innate activation spaces, but such
spaces still need to be sculpted for them do their task sufficiently. Now, the
question is: What activation spaces are innate? Churchland states a rule that helps in
distinguishing the spaces that are genetically determined, and those that are totally
acquired:
There is a rule here that cannot be too far wrong.

Specifically, the greater the distance between a given neuronal
population and the bodys sensory neuronsas measured by the
number of distinct synaptic connections that have to be traversed for
an axonal message to get from the one population to the otherthe
exponentially greater is the likelihood that the target population
embodies a representational space that has been structured by
learning.269
As stated in the above quote, activation spaces that are farther from sensory
neurons are less likely to be genetically predetermined. In the previous chapter, it is
shown that neural networks are structured in a hierarchical, parallel, and distributed
manner. Applying Churchlands neurocomputational framework, the higher the
hierarchy of an activation space in the ladder of transformation, the more likely that
it is acquired through experience. For example, when one perceives an apple, it
triggers an activation space for taste and color which are genetically innate, but if
one has never encountered an apple, or even a fruit before, that person would not
have an activation space for fruits or an apple. The example shows that all other
activation spaces that are far removed from senses are most likely acquired
268
Ibid.
269
Ibid.
(activation spaces for food and life, to state another example). Thus, with the
exception of genetically specified activation spaces that also need to be sculpted,
other activation spaces are entirely acquired.
Overall, the relation of synaptic adjustment to the process of learning, and to
the question of what is innate and acquired can be loosely summarized in the
following manner, as Churchland writes: During learning and development in
childhood... connection strengths, or weights as they are often called, are set to
progressively more useful values. These adjustments are steered in part by factors
that reflect one's genetic heritage (one's nature), but they are steered most
dramatically by the unique experience that each child encounters (one's nurture).270
The account sketched previously runs in contrasts to both accounts of
Descartes and Locke stated earlier. For Churchland, Descartes assertion that
complex abstract concepts (e.g. God) are innate is impossible.271 Certainly, there
are genetically determined activation spaces for basic sensory perception, and one
can argue that there can be genetically determined activation spaces for abstract
concepts as well, but abstract concepts such as God are far removed from sensory
input; they are formed high up in the hierarchy of activation spaces. Following
Churchlands framework, high-level activation spaces require several synaptic
configurations already in place below them. In general, as Churchland puts it,
superordinate concepts that unite particular instances or objects are acquired after
270
Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 56.
271
already acquiring certain entry-level concepts.272 For example, one cannot have a
concept of an animal if one does not have a concept first of specific animals such as
a bird, dog or horse. Or, one cannot have an activation space for food, if one does
not have enough activation spaces for several specific instances of food.
Furthermore, one cannot even have specific experiences of food such as an apple, if
one has no activation space that can effectively taste and visually distinguish that
apple. What more for the concept of God? How many prior sculpted activation
spaces does that concept need to even be conveyed to a person?
It is easy to see that one can only grasp the concept of God if one has a
sufficient grasp of language and other related high-level concepts about the
world. This is shown in the fact that a five-year-old boy who is just beginning to
grasp the world is unlikely to understand the concept of God even if he can say or
write the word for it. In Churchlands framework, high-level concepts, or higher
spaces in the neural transformation ladder, simply cannot be conceived without
prior fundamental activation spaces (e.g. spaces for the senses) in place below
them.273
As already illustrated in this section, fundamental activation spaces need
years to sculpt. Furthermore, several configured synapses are needed for high-level
272
Churchland, Neurosemantics, 148.
273
High-level concepts are learned via another process Churchland calls second-level
learning or dynamical learning. It is in the second level where high-level concepts are made and
developed. This second level is contrasted to what he calls first-level learning or structural learning
that is characterized by slowly grasping the fundamental and background structure of the world. This
distinction will be developed more in this chapter. The essential insight here is that Churchland
thinks that second-level learning can only be possible if the first level is already in place. See
concepts to be conceived; most likely, this would require trillions of synaptic
connections to be already in place. Indeed, an adult who can grasp high-level
concepts has already wired 100 trillion synaptic connections. Even a two-year-old
child, who can barely grasp high-level concepts, has already established trillions of
synaptic connections at a very early age.274 That being the case, it would seem that
high-level concepts can only be innate, if a specific configuration for trillions of
synaptic connections is already determined beforehandthat is, a certain synaptic
configuration must be genetically predetermined even before birth. However,
Churchland argues that genetics seems to show that it is impossible to store or even
compress a specific configuration for 100 trillion synaptic connections into the
human genome, as he writes:
Conceivably...synapses might be fixed genetically, as

concept nativism will be bound to claim against concept empiricism.
But it is difficult to see how we could have very much in the way of
innate concepts, for that would require the genetic specification of
the individual weight-valueseach one differentof many trillions
of distinct synapses. The difficulty here is starkly arithmetic: there
are roughly 100 trillion or 1014 synaptic connections in a normal
human brain, but there are only about 10 billion or 109 functional
base-pairs or letters in the human genome. ...[E]ven if the entire
genome were somehow devoted to the specification of synaptic
weights, and at the improbably generous rate of only one base-pair
per synapse, the genome must still fall short of the information-
storage capacity required by at least five orders of magnitude. In
274
A two-year-old child develops 50% more synaptic connections than an adult (around
100 trillion for an adult, thus around 150 trillion for a two-year-old). However, that number
gradually decreases as the child grows up. Researchers assert that such reduction is caused by
synaptic pruning, a process that only preserves connections that are essential or used more often. In
a sense, unused synaptic connections are lost. See Robert Weis, Introduction to Abnormal Child and
Adolescent Psychology, (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2014), 43. Churchland and other
neuroscientists associates this process to what is called anti-Hebbian learning, which postulates the
reverse of Hebbian learning: inessential synaptic weights gradually reduces until it disappears
entirely. See Churchland, Platos Camera, 168.
fact, the situation is even worse than this, because the functional unit
here is not the single base-pair of nucleotides. It is the sequence of
base-pairs adequate to construct a specific protein, and such
sequences are typically 103 base-pairs or longer. Barring information
compression once more (random structures, recall, are
incompressible), the genome must therefore fall short of the capacity
required by at least eight orders of magnitude.275
Besides this overwhelming gap in raw numbers, Churchland also points out
the fact that 99% of the human genome is similar to mices genome.276 This even
lessens the possibility that a pre-configured synaptic weights corresponding to the
bestowed abstract concepts can be encoded in the human genome, precisely
because the remaining 1% that differentiates us from mice must certainly contain
the genetic code for the abstract human concepts that rationalists champions as
innate. Even if one assumes that 99% of the genome we share with mice can
contain the configuration for those complex abstract concepts (although this is
unlikely), it would seem innatism of abstract concepts is improbable, if not
impossible, at least from Churchlands interpretation of genetics and neural
formation.
On the other side of the spectrum, Churchland also argues that Lockes
assertion that all complex abstract concepts are derived from sensory simples is also
impossible.277 In the first place as Churchland often states, sensory perception is not
composed of sensory simples that are mere copies of sensations; rather, they are
275
Churchland, Neurosemantics, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 138139.
276
277
Ibid., 1516, 87.
made possible by hard-earned synaptic configuration, a sculpted activation space
that takes years to form, as Churchland writes:
Empirical research on the neuronal coding strategies

deployed in our several sensory systems reveals that, even in
response to the presumptively simplest of sensory stimuli, the
sensory messages sent to the brain are typically quite complex, and
their synapse-transformed offspringthat is, the downstream
conceptualized representations into which they get codedare more
complex still, typically much more complex. The direct-inner-copy
theory of what concepts are, and of how we acquire them, is a joke
on its face, a fact reflected in the months and years it takes any
human infant to acquire the full range of our discriminatory
capacities for most of the so-called simple sensory properties. (It
takes time to configure the brains 1014 synapses, even to
comprehend the simple properties at issue.)278
That being the case, sensory simples cannot be the most basic building
blocks of complex concepts and knowledge in general, for they are also formed
through the synapse adjustment process that is driven by Hebbian learning. On this
score, learning is simply not built upon a basic material.279 In contrast, learning is
a dynamic process that requires interaction with the world. As illustrated in this
section, biological neural networks slowly sculpt activation spaces through repeated
278
Ibid., 15.
279
Churchland illustrates why, on his neurocomputational account, it would be impossible
for concepts to be built upon sensory simples despite the brains hierarchical structure, as he writes:
[A] mature conceptual framework does indeed display a hierarchical organization of some sort. But
developmental facts indicate that the classical view at issue cannot be quite right. Children learn to
discriminate faces, from other things and from each other, substantially before they can do the same
for eyes, noses, mouths, or ears. And they subsequently learn, in turn, to discriminate eyes, from
other things and from each other, substantially before they can do the same for pupils, eyelashes,
irises, or lenses. Entry-level or basic-level conceptsthose that children learn firstare seldom
if ever the so-called simple concepts favored by Locke and Hume. In general, the first-learned
concepts are what those historical authors would have called highly complex ideas, such as cookie,
dog, face, bird, and shoe. Only later do children begin to acquire a family of subordinate concepts,
such as robin, sparrow, and crow to fine-tune their antecedent concept bird; or spaniel, lab, and
husky to fine-tune their antecedent concept dog. And even more slowly do they develop a framework
of superordinate concepts, such as animal to unite birds, dogs, and horses, or clothing to unite shoes,
socks, and pants (Neurosemantics, 147148).
exposure to sensory inputs. Hebbs postulate states that such sculpting is guided
solely by the repeated patterns displayed by the external world. The human person
with that very Hebbian-sculpted biological-neural network learns almost all basic
knowledge and skills through this process. This process differs from the Lockean
account in a sense that even sensory simples are also derived from two intricate
factors needed to effectively make sense of that input, which are sensory input and
the biology that receives and interacts with it (e.g. the brain and other sensory
organs). Evidently, these factors are partly predetermined genetically (epigenetic),
particularly the design of a persons biology and thus the structure of his or her
brain. This design constitutes the foundation for the most basic cognitive abilities
such as sensory perception and motor movement. But only these foundations are
predetermined, for such foundations must be further sculpted through Hebbian
learning.
Another significant difference of Churchlands framework from Descartes
and Lockes is that his account of genetically-driven-acquisition of human nature is
not limited to the innatism or acquisition of concepts and discursive knowledge, but
also extends to practical skills such as motor movement, as pointed out in the
previous chapter (See Figure 2.11). Furthermore, as shown in the previous
neurocomputational account of human growth, learning is basically Hebbian-
induced sculpting of activation spaces to develop a panoply of basic perceptual
skills, such as visual perception, and motor skills, such as walking, in an infant.
This process inevitably leads to more advanced or higher knowledge and skills as
that infant becomes an adult. In this sense, it is not merely learning basic or
advanced discursive knowledge; it is also learning the practical knowledge and
skills needed to sufficiently grasp and navigate through the physical world. As
already pointed out in this chapter, Hebbian learning is what allows an initially
struggling infant to be adept at grasping and navigating through the physical world.
This is a process that is partly genetically driven and mostly environmentally
driven.
In summary, Churchlands neurocomputational account of learning
explicitly shows that human nature is partly genetically predetermined, and mostly
shaped by experience in the environment. To put it simply, the human persons
nature is predetermined through biology, then nurtured or post-determined
through experience in the world. Again, such an account does not subscribe to
blanket innatism or to complete empiricism of human nature. Evidently, in
Churchlands framework, the question of what is innate or acquired, or what is
nature or nurtured in a human person cannot be answered with black-and-white
conclusions.
A problem naturally emerges from the above account of human nature,
however. Evidently, attributing human nature to factors such as biology, genetics,
and experience makes learning an entirely materialistic phenomenon. This
obviously takes transcendent factors (such as the immaterial cogito, the soul, or
even God) out of the equation. Moreover, this seems to even take human language
out of the equation since learning is driven by a non-linguistic kinematics of neural
phenomena. The problem with such accountthat is, equating human nature to a
biologically emergent acquired knowledge and skillis that it blurs the line
between human nature and the nature of higher animals in general (mammals for
example). As such, there is also the possibility that animal character emerges
from the same type of neural phenomena.280
If the fundamental element of cognition lies in activations in high-
dimensional neural spaces, and not in transcendent factors and even human
language, then how do we distinguish human cognition from animal cognition? As
Churchland puts it, [U]pon reflection...[b]aboon troops, wolf packs, and lion prides
all show penetrating social perception and intricate social reasoning on the part of
their members. And yet, lacking language entirely, all of their cognitive activity
must be fundamentally nondiscursive. Why should humans, at bottom, be any
different?281 In a neurocomputational sense, why would two animals with the same
Hebbian-sculpted network be different?
Indeed, Churchland speaks of his neurocomputational account of human
nature as something that locates us on a continuum with all of our evolutionary
brothers, because the human neuronal machinery, overall, differs from that of
other animals in various small degrees, but not in fundamental kind.282 Thus, it is
280
In Churchlands argument for shifting the fundamental foundation of cognition to neural
activations, he often asserts the fact that animals display a level of non-lingual intelligence that he
often attributed to complex neural phenomena. See Neurophilosophy at Work, 6466, 9194. Platos
Camera, 5&18.
281
282
evident that other higher animals can also develop their character through
sculpting their activation spaces.
Nevertheless, despite the similarities, it is also evident that there are
fundamental gaps between a human and an animal. Even though chimpanzees
(whose DNA is 99% similar to ours) can express emotions, communicate with basic
language or symbols, and even use tools in their daily lives, they cannot, unlike
humans, create art to express their emotions, write academic papers to communicate
complex mathematical symbols or highly complex concepts, or construct and use a
general-purpose computer to execute several highly specific tasks.283 These gaps in
knowledge can be easily dismissed by assuming that our brain is more complex
than theirs. In the same way that a jellyfishs neural make-up is simpler than a
chimps, a chimps neural make-up is also simpler than ours. While this is true, this
gap does not give any light to how an earlier human (a primitive caveman for
example), with basically the same biology as ours, can radically be different from a
modern human. Daniel Dennett puts this point bluntly by stating that there is a
difference between homo sapiens that are more in line with primates and homo
sapiens that can be considered persons. 284 This difference, Churchland asserts,
lies in culture and the collective social activity of humans. This socio-cultural factor
283
A comprehensive illustration of how chimpanzees can be compared with human persons
can be found on N. N. Ladygina-Kohts, Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child: A Classic 1935
Comparative Study of Ape Emotions and Intelligence, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
284
Daniel Dennett illustrates how primitive homo sapiens became persons through cultural
symbionts in Freedom Evolves, (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), see chap. 6, The Evolution of
Minds esp. 170180.
is what distinguishes us from other animals. How such factor is implemented in us
is what, for better or for worse, makes our moral character.
B. Learning in a Social World, the Emergence of Moral Character
Hebbian learning has taught us that the brain can and will establish an
accurate grip of the structure of the world it resides in. But one may argue that such
type of perception and action only constitutes what a creature perceives and
what that creature does; it apparently does not involve a moral dimensionthat
is, what the creature ought to perceive and how it ought to act. This brings us
back to the classic is-ought problem introduced by David Hume.285 Leaving the
normative-descriptive issue for a moment (these will be discussed in succeeding
chapters), the question is how can Hebbian-sculpted networks learn to grasp the
moral dimension of the environment it resides in? Ultimately, how do humans
eventually acquire their moral character? For Churchland, the foundations of our
moral character are grounded first and foremost on basic social skills and
knowledge.
285
The is-ought problem is derived from Humes famous passage: In every system of
morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarkd, that the author proceeds for some
time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations
concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprizd to find, that instead of the usual
copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an
ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as
this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, tis necessary that it shoud be
observd and explaind; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems
altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely
different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend
it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention woud subvert all the vulgar systems of
morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations
of objects, nor is perceivd by reason (Treatise of Human Nature, [London: Penguin Books, 2004
(173940)], 436).
1. Hebbian Learning in the Human Social World
Humans, and even animals, are born in what Churchland calls a social
space. Similar to how a creature is forced to grasp the physical structure of the
world through Hebbian learning, it will also be forced to grasp the social structure
of the world it resides in, as Churchland writes:
[A] creature lives in a world not just of physical objects, but

of other creatures as well, creatures that can perceive and plan and
act, both for and against ones interests. Those other creatures,
therefore, bear systematic attention. Even nonsocial animals must
learn to perceive, and to respond to, the threat of predators or the
opportunity for prey. Social animals must learn, in addition, the
interactive culture that structures their collective life. This means
that their nervous systems must learn to represent the many
dimensions of the local social space, a space that embeds them as
surely and as relevantly as does the local physical space. They must
learn a hierarchy of categories for social agents, events, positions,
configurations, and processes. They must learn to recognize
instances of those many categories through the veil of degraded
inputs, chronic ambiguity, and the occasional deliberate deception.
Above all, they must learn to generate appropriate behavioral outputs
in that social space, just as surely as they must learn to locomote,
grasp food, and find shelter.
In confronting these additional necessities, a social creature
must use the same sorts of resources used elsewhere. The job may be
special, but the tools available are the same. The creature must
configure its synaptic weights within some special neuronal
populations so as to represent the structure of the social reality in
which it lives. Further, it must learn to generate vectorial sequences
that will produce socially acceptable or socially advantageous
behavioral outputs... Social and moral cognition, social and moral
behavior, are no less activities of the brain than is any other kind of
cognition or behavior.286
Indeed, a human being is born in a world which is not only physical but also
highly social. Even a two-year-old baby who is still developing a physical grip of
286
reality, already has a social grip of the surrounding environment. Such social grip
is very limited compared to an adults, but there is already a certain level of
sophistication involved in it, as Churchland writes: [I]nfants can discriminate a
smile from a scowl, a kind tone of voice from a hostile tone, a humorous exchange
from a fractious one. And even an infant can successfully call for protection, induce
feeding behavior, and invite affection and play. 287 This social grip constitutes
complex, but fundamental, knowledge and skills on socialization. As one may
already have inferred, such knowledge and skills are also developed from the
gradual sculpting of activation spaces. Following Hebbian learning, social
activation spaces also take years to sculpt. The acquired ability to know the
emotional state of ones parents from merely hearing their voice or seeing their
faces, the acquired ability to display an appropriate motor movement to induce a
certain behavior from ones parentsthe knowledge and skill involved in such acts
are the basic building blocks of socialization, and, as will be shown in this section,
the basic building blocks of morality.
Another notable fact about the development of social activation spaces is the
fact that it starts during the early stages, along with the development of sensory and
motor activation spaces. Indeed, a baby already has an inkling of when to cry even
before learning to walk. This emergence of social competence before the mastery of
physical perception and motor control leads us to the possibility that a social grip of
287
Ibid., 131.
reality is not secondary, in terms of learning order at least, to a physical grip of
reality. Indeed, Churchland insists that this is the case, as he writes:
[W]e should be wary of the assumption that perception is

first and foremost the perception of purely physical features in the
world. And we should be wary of the correlative assumption that
behavioral output is first and primarily the manipulation of physical
objects. We should be wary because we already know that humans
and other social animals are keenly sensitive, perceptually, to social
features of their surroundings. And because we already know that
humans and social animals manipulate their social environment as
well as their purely physical surroundings. And above all, because
we already know that infants in most social species begin acquiring
their social coordination at least as early as they begin learning
sensorimotor coordination in its purely physical sense.288
This early attainment of social competence leads one to wonder if there are
genetically innate activation spaces for social perception and action, as seen in
activation spaces for the senses and motor movement (e.g. visual cortex and motor
cortex). Back in 1995 when the existence of social areas in the brain was yet to be
confirmed, Churchland already insisted that there must be an area of the brain
principally built for social perception and action.289 Now, it is a well-established
neuroscience fact that portions of the temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex, cingulate
cortex, and amygdala make up what neuroscientists collectively call the social
brain. 290 The social brain is associated with several fundamental functions for
human interaction such as: 1) agency, or recognizing the difference between oneself
and the other, 2) sensitivity to the feelings of others through facial and motor cues,
288
Ibid., 130131.
289
This declaration can be found on Ibid, 131132, which was published on 1995.
290
David L. Clark, Nash N. Boutros and Mario F. Mendez, The Brain and Behavior: An
Introduction to Behavioral Neuroanatomy, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), See
Temporoparietal junction and the social brain, 6667; Medial prefrontal cortex, default brain,
network, and the social brain 9798.
and 3) empathy, or the ability to adopt the perspective of others, and more. 291 It is
also established that damages in some parts of the social brain only affect social
function, and does not affect other cognitive and intellectual abilities.292 Patients
with lesions in the social area of the brain exhibit normal cognitive capacity in
activities that do not involve heavy socializing; however, they find it difficult to
choose suitable friends, partners, or activities, and their choices lead to financial
losses, losses in social standing, and losses to family and friends.293 This suggests
that social ability and intellectual ability can be independent from one another. To
take this thought further, the brain seems to be genetically designed to have a
mostly, or at least partly, independent partition for grasping the physical dimension
of the world, and another for grasping its social dimension.
In a neurocomputational sense, what the neuroscience facts discussed seem
to show is that the social brain is a set of activation spaces that are genetically
preset for social functionality. But similar to other genetically innate activation
spaces, it needs to be sculpted through Hebbian learning to attain a synaptic
configuration appropriate for the social world one is living in. 294 As Churchland
291
Ibid., 67, 98. Further parts and function of the social brain are described as follows: The
amygdala stores expectations based on past experience (pre-judgment). The mirror neurons from
various areas of the brain react to actions of others reflecting their movements and sensations. The
posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) monitor others to
determine social importance of their gaze and movements. The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and
subgenual cingulate cortex (sgACC) account for mentalizing, i.e., thoughts and emotions of self and
others and how these may impact on actions taken by self or other. The temporal pole helps to apply
general knowledge of social situations to the current social situation (Ibid., 99).
292
Ibid., 101.
293
Ibid.
294
A comprehensive account of the interplay between genetic and environmental factors on
ones social functions can be found on Michael Pluess, Suzanne Stevens, and Jay Belsky,
Differential Susceptibility: Developmental and Evolutionary Mechanisms of Gene-Environment
may put it, the shape or configuration of those social activation spaces are
epigenetically determined. As Hebbian learning requires, one needs continuous
exposure to and immersion in a social environment to learn those social prototypes,
as Churchland writes:
[C]onsider a social introduction, an exchange of pleasantries,

an extended negotiation, a closing of a deal, a proper leave-taking,
and so on. All of these mutual exchanges require, for their
recognition as well as for execution, a well-tuned...[neural] network.
And they require of the network a considerable history spent
embedded within a social space already filled with such prototypical
activities on every side. After all, those prototypes must be learned,
and this will require both instructive examples and plenty of time to
internalize them.295
Another important point that Churchland stresses is that the design of our
brain also devotes an area for socialization as much as it devotes areas for physical
cognition. Moreover, the development of both areas runs almost in a parallel
manner in an infant, showing the brain devotes as much time and resources in
developing both, as Churchland writes:
What I do wish to suggest is that, in learning to represent the

world, the brains of infant social creatures focus naturally and
relentlessly on the social features of their local environment, often
slighting physical features that will later seem unmissable. Human
children, for example, typically do not acquire command of the basic
color vocabulary until their third or fourth year of life, long after
they have gained linguistic competence on matters such as anger,
promises, friendship, ownership, and love. As a parent, I was quite
surprised to discover this in my own children, and surprised again to
learn that the pattern is quite general. But perhaps I shouldnt have
Interactions, in Maria Legerstee, David Haley, and Marc Bornstein, eds., The Infant Mind: Origins
of the Social Brain, (New York: Guilford Press, 2013), 7796; and Ariel Knafo and Florina
Uzefovsky, Variation in Empathy: The Interplay of Genetic and Environmental Factors, Ibid., 97
122.
295
been. The social features listed are far more important to a young
child 's practical life than are the endlessly various colors.
The general lesson is plain. As social infants partition their
activation spaces, the categories that form are just as often social
categories as they are natural or physical categories. In apportioning
neuronal resources for important cognitive tasks, the brain expends
roughly as much of those resources on representing and controlling
social reality as it does on representing and controlling physical
reality.296
If one acknowledges the possibility that social activation spaces are
genetically designed as much as sensory and motor activation spaces, the insight
that social learning happens almost parallel to other forms of learning completely
makes sense. This affirms the possibility that human beings are genetically driven
to be social.
Overall, the fact that humans are born with genetically innate activation
spaces primed to be sculpted for social functions, and the fact that we are immersed
and exposed to a social world throughout our lives, gives an explanation why
almost every human being can grasp the intricate social structure we reside in. As
Churchland puts it, [o]ne need only read a novel by someone such as Henry James
to appreciate the intricate structure of human social space and the complexity of
human social dynamics. More simply, just recall your teenage years. Mastering that
complexity is a cognitive achievement at least equal to earning a degree in physics.
And yet with few exceptions, all of us do it.297 Indeed, unless one suffers from
problems in ones social brain, or one is isolated from society, one will learn the
knowledge and skills needed to socialize. It has been briefly illustrated how a
296
Ibid., 131.
297
Ibid., 127128.
person can possibly be affected by deficits in the social areas of the brain. But what
about humans isolated from society? The answer to this question can be seen in
what some people call the forbidden experiment: the case of the feral child.298
The feral child, also known as the wild child, is a human person that was
separated from society from the moment of birth, or at a very young age, and was
left to grow in a jungle or any place isolated from society. This situation is much
like in Tarzan; unfortunately, the depiction of a wild child in the fictional cartoon
by Walt Disney is nowhere near the real feral child. While there are several
accounts of a feral child that can be attributed to mere legends or rumors, there are
some actual documented cases.299 One well-documented modern account of a feral
child is the story of Genie. Her story can be summarized as follows:
In 1970, [a] feral child was found in California. Genie was 13

and had spent her life strapped to a potty chair in a dark room. She
was rarely spoken to by her blind mother and mentally unstable
father. Her only source of stimulation was a raincoat hung on a hook
in front of the chair, which Genie could reach out and play with as
she sat alone. When Genie was found, she had the mental capacity of
an average one-year-old child. Scans of her brain revealed no
obvious abnormality or retardation, so the deficiency is presumed to
be the result of her years of isolation.
Although Genie's physical health improved dramatically, her
cognitive improvements were not as spectacular. After nearly five
years of intensive work, her language skills were still equivalent to a
small child's. While Genie has learned to do many things herself, 13
years of social isolation have [sic] meant that she must live in a
group home for developmentally disabled adults (Rymer 1993).
298
Roger Shattuck, The Forbidden Experiment, the Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1981).
299
Perhaps the most famous documented case of a feral child was Victor of Aveyron,
during the enlightenment (around 1799). In fact, Jacques Rousseau took Victors case as supporting
assumption of his state of nature theory. See Douglas Keith Candland, Feral Children and Clever
Animals: Reflections on Human Nature, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 1819, 372.
[The cases of feral children] illustrate both the power and

limitations of socialization. Individuals who lack appropriate early
socialization to overcome years of isolation means that there are
limits to the plasticity of the human brain.300
Accounts of feral children illustrate what has been stressed throughout this chapter,
that we learn and acquire almost everything we know about the world through brain
sculpting. Evidently, social knowledge and skills, language, and perhaps even
rationality, are not given to humans freely; they need to be learned through
interacting with the environment and socializing with people. Without those traits a
human person may simply be an irrational and amoral animal, at best an untaught
infant, as illustrated in the case of Genie. Indeed, following Hebbian learning, this
would make sense. For Hebbs law dictates that one must have a repeated exposure
to a certain situation or environment to effectively learn from it. Social isolation
deprives one of experiences normally given to a child. In Genies case, 13 years of
social isolation did not let her grow beyond the social and cognitive skills of a one-
year-old. Even if Genie, and humans in general, have a preset activation space for
social function, the lack of experience prevents one from sculpting that space to a
proper shape, and so it prevents one from learning the most fundamental social
skills described earlier. As will be shown below, those knowledge and skills are
what constitutes a persons moral character. Only with those social functions
already in place can we begin to be moral. Indeed, to put it bluntly, Genie cannot be
considered to have any kind of moral character. In this sense, moral character
300
Edward E. Brent, and J. Scott Lewis, Learn Sociology, (Burlington: Jones & Bartlett
Publishers, 2014), 101.
requires a person first to live in a proper social environment, and from there acquire
moral character.
2. Moral Learning, the Acquisition of Moral Character
How do we become moral beings? is a question that baffled philosophers
since ancient times.301 Although the innate moral character (e.g. whether humans
are good or evil) of the human person was a largely debated topic in ancient times,
during the modern period (perhaps from the moment Hume drew the line between
is-ought), philosophical discussions of morality shifted away from ontology. This
led to the formation of deontological types of morality as seen in Kants ethical
system, and more modern meta-ethical perspectives on morality. 302 Thus, in the
modern period, the discussion of factual aspects of morality was mostly left to
social scientists, while philosophers and ethical theorists focused on
epistemological issues of ethics and the meaning of morality.303
301
Chinese philosophers such as Mengzi and Xunzi gives us penetrating insights on how a
human person becomes moral. Mengzi assumes that human nature has inherent seeds of goodness
that needs to be cultivated or nurtured to make a person moral. On the other hand, Xunzi assumes
that human nature has an innate insatiable desire for material gratification, thus a human being must
be cultivated or nurtured to control such desire to finally become a moral person. Crudely
summarized, Mengzi thinks that human nature is innately good, while Xunzi thinks that human
nature is innately evil, but both think that such innate nature must be cultivated to make a human
person truly moral. Discussion of Mengzis and Xunzis view of human nature (Xing) taken from
Vincent Shen, Chen Daqi (Chen'en Ta-ch'i), in Antonio S. Cua, eds., Encyclopedia of Chinese
Philosophy, (New York: Routledge, 2013): 2931, esp. 31; Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the
Axial Age: A Reconstruction under the Aspect of the Breakthrough Toward Postconventional
Thinking, (New York: State University New York Press, 1993), see Grounding of Morals, esp. 202,
214.
302
Wilfrid J. Waluchow, The Dimensions of Ethics: An Introduction to Ethical Theory,
(Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), Many Dimensions of Ethical Theory 1330, The Deontological
Ethics of Immanuel Kant, 173188.
303
Theodore C. Denise, Sheldon P. Peterfreund, and Nicholas P. White, Great Traditions in
Ethics, (California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996), see Nature of Ethical Theory, 57.
Churchlands neurocomputational framework invites us to revisit the
ontological issues surrounding morality. This leads to the question of what moral
insights can be derived from the nature of Hebbian-sculpted networks. Again, the
answers will be found by adopting Churchlands bottom-up neuroscientific
reconception, this time as applied to morality.
Previously, it was pointed out that basic social knowledge and skills
constitute the basic building blocks of morality. Certainly, for Churchland, morality
is ultimately founded on knowing the structure of social space and how to best
navigate ones way through it.304 As illustrated earlier, social knowledge and skill,
although genetically preempted, is something that takes years to master. Thus, if
morality is founded on a mastery of socialization, moral character is something
that would take years to acquire. Again, this thought can be seen in the development
of a child.
What does it mean to be moral? A growing seven-year-old girl may yet to
have a definitive discursive answer to this questionin fact, it may not even cross
her mind.305 But surely she will know what it means to socialize. She would know
what actions are acceptable and unacceptable in her social circle. Such knowledge
304
These direct quotes about the constitution of morality can be seen in his early work
1989: Paul Churchland, Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge, in Churchland, Neurocomputational
Perspective, 300; and also in a much recent work 2007: Churchland, Toward a Cognitive
Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, 44.
305
Similar to the previous depiction of human growth, this account of how a child attains
his/her moral character, although to some extent scientifically-informed, is conjectural and only
serves to illustrate Churchlands view of moral learning.
needs a prior intricate grasp of the social space she is living in. 306 Generally, it
entails having a form of agency of oneself, and knowing who other people are.
Practically, it entails knowing the subtle changes in facial expression, tone of voice,
and motor movement of the people she is living with. She must have learned these
skills when she was just an infant. The changes in expression, intonation, and
gestures of her family are something that she already observed thousands of times
even before she learned to walk. But now, she will not only interact with her
immediate family, but also with her friends, neighbours and schoolmates. This
widens her so-called social space beyond the familial space and adds another
dimension to it. Hence, she does not only need to know how to interact with people
properly like she would with her family, but she also needs to know the social
rules in a certain social space. Certainly, she must act differently in school for
example, not only because she is socializing with different people, but also because
she is socializing in a different social context. This kind of intricate multi-context
socializing requires certain highly developed skills, as Churchland writes:
In childhood, one must come to appreciate the high-

dimensional background structure of social spaceits offices, its
practices, its prohibitions, its commerceand one must learn to
306
By the time infants reach their first birthday, they are already equipped with some of
the rudimentary precursors to social and moral behavior. At a most basic level, they understand who
people are, and differentiate between humans and other animate and inanimate objects (Thompson,
2006). Additionally, young infants possess at least some understanding of anothers goals and
intentions (Woodward, 2008, 2009). From these findings, it is clear that by the first birthday, if not
sooner, children are already beginning to understand who people are and, more importantly, what
makes them specialtheir actions, desires, and intentions. Infants are not, however, limited to
simply understanding whoand whathumans are, they are also predisposed to orient towards, and
interact with, other humans. This early social orientation is the core root of social and moral
cognition, as it binds the infant into the social world as an active social agent (Melanie Killen and
Michael T. Rizzo, Morality, Intentionality and Intergroup Attitudes, Behaviour 151 [2014]: 337
359, 341).
recognize its local configuration swiftly and reliably. One must also
learn to recognize ones own current position within it, and the often
quite different positions of others. One must learn to anticipate the
normal unfolding of this ongoing commerce, to recognize and help
repair its occasional pathologies, and to navigate its fluid structure
while avoiding social disasters, both large and small. All this
requires skill in divining the social perceptions and personal interests
of others, and skill in manipulating and negotiating our collective
behavior.307
In Churchlands framework, the social knowledge and skills discussed
earlier above are what constitute morality.308 In a neurocomputational sense, that
would mean that moral activation spaces are built upon the more basic social
activation spaces, as Churchland writes: [Moral activation spaces] constitute our
acquired knowledge of the structure of social space, and how to navigate it
effectively.309 That being the case, the sculpting of moral activation spaces is built
upon more basic social activation spaces.
Following this thought above, it is evident that only at the highest level of
socialization can intricate moral knowledge and skill be born. For Churchland,
morality is fundamentally a refined social ability, as he writes: Moral virtues are
the various skills of social perception, social reflection, imagination, and reasoning,
and social manipulation that normal social learning produces. 310 In this sense,
307
Churchland, Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, 47.
308
In Churchlands moral works or moral chapters of his work, morality always
presupposes a social knowledge and skill already in place. See The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the
Soul, See The Neural Representation of the Social World, 123150; Churchland, Toward a
Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, esp. 44, 4748; Rules, Know-How, and the Future
of Moral Cognition in Neurophilosophy at Work, 6174, this article was first published in Moral
Epistemology Naturalized, R. Campbell and B. Hunter, eds., Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl.
vol. 26 (2000): 291306, esp. 6467.
309
Churchland, Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, 44
310
Ibid., 47.
moral virtue is a set of social skills that one acquires as one grows up in society.
Following Hebbian learning, moral virtue would be a set of skills that must takes
years to sculpt, as Churchland writes:
Being skills, moral virtues are inevitably acquired rather

slowly, as anyone who has raised children will be familiar. Nor need
their continued development ever cease, at least in individuals with
the continued opportunities and the intelligence necessary to refine
them. The acquired structures within ones neuronal-activation
spacesboth perceptual and motorcan continue to be sculpted by
ongoing experience and can thus pursue an ever deeper insight into,
and an effectively controlling grasp of, ones enclosing social
reality.311
Because moral virtue is a set of skills, it must come in degrees and it can
also come with different social skill sets. Inevitably, each person would have a
different profile and degree of skills depending on their physiology and the
environment they grew up in. According to Churchland, this unique acquired
individual profile of social skills is what defines a persons moral character. 312 In a
sense, moral character is the result of the culmination of all the social skills one has
acquired; it is a culmination of ones moral virtue. Evidently, moral character must
be unique to each individual. The moral character of a saint would surely be
different from the moral character of a criminal. More evidently, there are factors
why the moral character of a criminal and a saint differ so much from each other,
or, in general, varies from person to person.
In Churchlands framework, moral character can radically be changed first
by deficits in areas of the brain, especially in the social areas. As described earlier,
311
Ibid.
312
Ibid., 4748.
damage in social areas of the brain can incapacitate the basic social skills of a
person. Following Churchland, impairment of social skills also impairs ones moral
virtue, which will ultimately affect a persons moral character. This opens the
possibility that occasional failures (at least from societal standards) in the
development of moral character can ultimately be linked to brain deficits.313 Thus,
some criminals may simply be people who had incurred or had in born problems in
some areas of their brain (more on this in Chapter V). However, as may already be
evident, brain deficit is only one factor that affects a persons moral character, as
Churchland writes:
There is no suggestion...that all failures of moral character

can be put down to structural deficits in the brain. A proper moral
educationthat is, a long stretch of intricate socializationremains
a necessary condition for acquiring a well-formed moral character,
and no doubt the great majority of failures, especially the minor
ones, can be put down to sundry inadequacies in that process.314
Apparently, the shape of a childs moral character is determined by social
experience. Such shape is sculpted first by learning basic social prototypes that
make social experience possible. After that early developmentsome estimates say
it is around two years after birthit would be a process of learning moral
prototypes that characterize a certain social situation and action. 315 At this point, a
child would be able to roughly distinguish what is merely social, or practiced by
313
Ibid., see sec. 9, Moral Pathology, 4851.
314
Ibid., 50.
315
Developmental research shows that toddlers, around two-three years old, can make
moral judgments that take into account the following: 1) the difference between social norms
(conventional rules) from moral rules, and 2) the intention of the people in a given situation. See
Larisa Heiphetz and Liane Young, A Social Cognitive Developmental Perspective on Moral
Judgment, Behaviour 151 (2014): 315335, 320321;.
convention, from what is moral. 316 Learning this distinction and morality overall
will require exposure to a social environment. Moral learning, then, would be the
acquisition first of basic social skills and knowledge and then an acquisition of
moral knowledge and skills after; it is fundamentally social learning at the most
basic level. Churchland himself defined moral learning as a process driven by social
experience, as he writes: [W]hat factors drive moral learning? They are many and
various, but in general they arise from the continuing social experience of
conducting a life under the existing moral framework. That is, moral learning is
driven by social experience, often a long and painful experience... 317 Similar to
how it would be impossible for Hebbian-sculpted networks to grasp the physical
patterns of the world without sensory experience, morality cannot be conceived in a
person without social experience. As already shown in this section, social
experience is only possible with basic social skills and knowledge, particularly with
sculpted social activation spaces already in place. Certainly, it would seem
impossible to socialize without having a sense of agency, empathy, and all the
more the fundamental sensitivity (through facial cues, intonations and motor
movements) to the feelings of others. Without the ability to socialize, a person
cannot be moral, as cruelly shown in the case of the feral child, Genie. Thus, for
316
Research findings suggest that toddlers, as early as two years old, are able to distinguish
between moral transgressions and conventional transgressions. Based on these findings, Killen and
Rizzo conclude that [t]he results of this study support the claim that moral and conventional events
are conceptually unique and distinct in their origins, and that this distinction is evident in toddlers by
the second year of life. See Morality, Intentionality and Intergroup Attitudes, 344348, direct
quotation from 346.
317
Churchland, Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge, 302.
morality to develop, a certain form of nurturing is needed. Specifically, it requires
guidance from a parental figure, as Churchland writes:
[M]oral learning will be a matter of slowly generating a

hierarchy of moral prototypes, presumably from a substantial
number of relevant examples of the moral kinds at issue. Hence the
relevance of stories and fables, and above all, the ongoing relevance
of the parental example of interpersonal behavior, and parental
commentary on and consistent guidance of childhood behavior. No
child can learn the route to love and laughter entirely unaided, and
no child will escape the pitfalls of selfishness and chronic conflict
without an environment filled with examples to the contrary.318
Beyond parental guidance, a persons moral learning will inevitably also be
influenced by institutions and society in general. What one is taught in school
during ones formative years, what work ethic one learns in ones workplace in
adulthoodall these and many more social factors affect moral learning, and thus,
shapes a persons overall moral character. In a sense, the social environment we
live in is what shapes our moral character; it is what makes us moral.
Now that it has been established that moral character first requires social
learning, the question is how are high-level moral knowledge and skills learned,
after acquiring the appropriate social requirement (perhaps, at least eight years after
birth)? Social skills, as shown earlier, are a genetically driven sculpting of social
activation spaces. But what about moral activation spaces? How are they sculpted,
after being formed by more basic social activation spaces?
As one develops ones moral character, one also forms what can be called a
moral sense. With that sense, one will be able to skillfully discriminate the moral
318
implications of a specific prototypical social situation. From a neurocomputational
perspective, this discrimination is possible because an activation space for moral
discrimination has been formed and sculpted to do such task. Similar to how an
infant with a well-sculpted activation space for faces can distinguish the difference
between a female and male face in an instant, an adult with a well-sculpted moral
activation space can distinguish evil acts from good acts in an instant (Figure
3.2). In a sense, ones moral perception is basically founded on sculpted activation
space, as Churchland writes:
[T]he suggestion here advanced is that our capacity for moral

discrimination also resides in an intricately configured matrix of
synaptic connections, which connections also partition an abstract
conceptual space, at some proprietary neuronal layer of the human
brain, into a hierarchical set of categories, categories such as
morally significant versus morally nonsignificant actions; and
within the former category, morally bad versus morally
praiseworthy actions; and within the former subcategory, sundry
specific categories such as lying, cheating, betraying,
stealing, tormenting, murdering, and so forth [See Figure
3.2].319
Other than skillful moral perception, a person with a well-formed moral
character is also capable of acting in a moral context. Moral acts, from a
neurocomputational perspective, would be a modified form of motor movement,
in a sense that moral activation spaces in a higher hierarchy affect the lower and
fundamental activation spaces for motor movement. 320 This activation from above
319
Ibid., 43.
320
Churchland also compares moral acts with motor-neuron activation patterns in Ibid., 44.
would modulate the more basic motor movements to execute a planned activation
trajectory of muscle movements to fulfill a moral act. 321 Such modulation would
Figure 3.2322
A (conjectural) activation space
for moral discrimination
give a moral context to a supposedly purely physical movement, because the
movement was made to achieve a certain moral aim. For example, the simple motor
321
In Churchlands framework, human action is actually made possible by what he calls
recurrent modulation or projection in neural networksrecurrent in a sense that the network not
only transforms information upwards into the neuronal processing ladder, but also downwards. This
downward transformation is essential for several reasons, but the most basic reason why downward
movement drastically changes how the network works is because it enables a higher rung of neurons
to transform the vectors of the lower rung below them. This means that an activation space higher in
the hierarchy can influence lower activation spaces before they go up in the processing ladder. Being
able to relay information downwards opens the possibility for each activation space to be influenced
by any activation space above or below. It allows the network to activate spaces that are initially not
prompted by sensory input, thus generating actions prompted by the network itself. This process
allows neural networks to execute motor movements and even elicit imaginative activity. Discussion
based on Churchland, On the Nature of Explanation: A PDP Approach, in Churchland, A
Neurocomputational Perspective, 197230; more extensively in The Engine of Reason, the Seat of
the Soul, See Recurrent Networks: The Conquest of Time, 97122; also in Churchland, To
Transform the Phenomena: Feyerabend, Proliferation, and Recurrent Neural Network, in P.M.
Churchland and P.S. Churchland, On the Contrary, 289303; He also applies the recurrent network
premise to consciousness: Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland, Recent Work on
Consciousness: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Empirical, in On the Contrary, 159176, and
Churchland, Catching Consciousness in a Recurrent Net, in Neurophilosophy at Work, 117, first
published in A. Brook and D. Ross, eds., Daniel Dennett: Contemporary Philosophy in Focus,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 6481; He also discusses the topic more recently
and arguably most extensively in Platos Camera, see chap. 3&4.
322
Figure 3.8 and 3.9 taken from Churchland, Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the
Moral Virtues, 4344.
movement to push a child out of harms way of an incoming truck is essentially
moral because of the aim to save the child from injury or death. Such an act may
perhaps be driven by multiple moral activation spaces, such as the right to life or
simply the duty to protect a child from pain or death for example. As may already
be evident, the sculpting of these moral activation spaces were only made possible
because of high-level social experiences, and such experiences require sculpted
social (and perhaps even non-social) activation spaces already in place. Certainly,
one cannot have a concept of right to life or even the duty to protect the other,
without having a prior grasp of what duty is and what life is. All the more, one
cannot even begin to grasp the value of the other without a sense of agency and
empathy.
Overall, the account above shows that moral character is something that is
founded on sculpted activation spaces; the more basic social activation spaces at the
lower level, the more moral activations spaces at the higher level. This may lead
one to ask if moral activation spaces, like social activation spaces, are somehow
genetically specified as well. As illustrated earlier, Churchland thinks that higher-
level activation spaces (the ones farther from sensory neurons) has a lower chance
of being genetically specified. While Churchland was adamant about the existence
of an area of the brain primed for social function (as seen in the discussion of the
social brain), he did not mention anything about a neuronal population
epigenetically primed to be shaped for moral function, at least from what the
researcher has read so far.

At its current state, neuroscience has not yet found a specific area for moral
function in the brain. 323 This leads to the possibility that there is no genetically
predetermined neuronal population built for moral function at all. Reviewing the
discussion of morality so far, this would make sense, since moral skill and
knowledge is grounded first on basic social skills and knowledge. Thus, it would
seem that morality is a high-level skill and knowledge that is totally acquired from
the world, unlike the social, sensory, and motor skills discussed earlier. Similar to
how high-level concepts such as God are learned after acquiring a well-established
grasp of the physical world (as shown in the previous sections), moral concepts and
moral skills are learned after acquiring a well-established grasp of the social world.
Would this mean that human beings are innately amoral? Perhaps. But even if a
specific moral area in the brain is never found, we are at least certain that humans
are genetically driven to be social beings, seeing that our brains are designed to
devote areas for social function.
In summary, the acquisition of moral character illustrated above is
fundamentally an acquisition of social knowledge and skills, and of moral ones
after. Churchland puts this account in sharp contrast with the traditional Western
view of moral character as one who has acquiesced [to] a set of explicit rules
323
While neuroscience is successful in finding the social and emotional areas in the brain,
and enumerating their plausible relation to morality, current neuroscience is still unable to discover a
specific place in the brain that can serve as the center for morality or moral cognition. See Liane
Young and James Dungan. Where in the Brain Is Morality? Everywhere and Maybe Nowhere,
Social Neuroscience, 2012, 7 (1): 110.
324
imposed from the outsidefrom God, perhaps, or from Society... For
Churchland, [a] relentless commitment to a handful of explicit rules does not make
one a morally successful or a morally insightful person. The price of virtue is a
good deal higher, and the path thereto is a good deal longer. It is much more
accurate to see the moral person as one who has acquired a complex set of subtle
325
and enviable skills: perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral. Certainly, as
illustrated throughout this chapter, learning even the most basic perceptual,
cognitive and behavioral skill is something that takes years. Hebbian learning
shows how and why such a process takes so long. Morality, being grounded on the
Hebbian sculpting of activation spaces, is no exception to that; it is hard-earned
knowledge and skill that is earned through living in society.
As one may already recognize, this neurocomputational account of morality
as a set of Hebbian-sculpted skills and knowledge resembles the virtue ethics
advocated by Aristotle in the ancient period. 326 In fact, Churchland himself
acknowledges this, as he writes:
This [that morality is fundamentally a set of skills] was in

fact the view of Aristotle, to recall another name from antiquity.
Moral virtue, as he saw it, was something acquired and refined over
a lifetime of social experience, not something swallowed whole from
an outside authority. It was a matter of slowly developing a set of
largely inarticulable skills, a matter of practical wisdom. Aristotles
perspective and the neural network perspective here converge. From
this perspective, the traditional question posed by the moral skeptic,
namely, Why should I be moral?, looks peculiar and
324
325
Ibid.
326
Aristotles virtue ethics is illustrated in his work: Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C.
Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011).
uncomprehending. As well ask, Why should I acquire the skills of

swimming? when one is a fish. In both cases, the short answer is,
Consider, dear creature, the environment in which you have no
choice but to live. To be sure, this answer leaves open the question
of exactly what motor skills will make one the best possible
swimmer, and likewise the question of exactly what social skills will
make one the maximally successful social agent. But that is as it
should be. Only experience can answer that questionone's own
experience, and the accumulated experience of all mankind.327
Thus, it seems evident that for Churchland, morality is a naturally acquired
skill that one inevitably learns as one lives in a social world. The problem with this
account of moral learning, as Churchland himself points out, is the question of
whether this process amounts to the learning of Moral Truth, or to mere
socialization.328 Indeed, throughout this chapter, morality is described mostly as a
non-discursive or inarticulable social skill. Evidently, it is not a set of rules or
maxims to be followed but a set of hard-earned skills. Now, while it is true, as
quoted above, that only experience would tell us the best moral skills and social
skills to apply in everyday life, experience alone would never tell us if a certain
moral insight or ultimately our moral knowledge is valid and true. That is a matter
of semantics and epistemology, and tradition tells us that such pursuit requires
language and logic.
So far in this thesis, it has been shown that Churchland is adamant about
displacing language and logic as the fundamental elements of cognition. As shown
in this chapter, morality is not a discursive concept, but is a skill realized through
neural phenomena. But this type of morality consists only of its practical
327
328
dimension, and not its theoretical dimension. Is the theoretical dimension of
morality essential in Churchlands philosophy? Certainly it is, because, in
Churchlands framework, theory serves as a ground for regulating and improving
the practical skills learned by a human being. 329 In a sense, theory serves as a
further refinement of activations in ones brain. But only when a theory is truly
penetrating and equipped with actual explanatory power can it truly improve ones
practical endeavors. Moreover, only when such theory is improved upon or
replaced with a more penetrating one can progress actually happen.
Certainly, this is already the case in scientific institutions. Science
continuously builds upon or replaces its existing theories all for the sake of having a
more penetrating grasp of our complex universe, as seen in how Copernicus
replaced Ptolemys model, or how Einstein replaced Newtons concept of gravity.
Now, the question is, does this scientific progress apply to morality? Ultimately, is
moral progress possible? Now, before one can answer that question, one must first
ask if moral theory can actually give a penetrating grasp of moral reality. This is a
highly disputed topic that often leads to moral skepticism or relativism. Churchland,
on the other hand, thinks that from a neurocomputational perspective, moral
theories are as valid as scientific theories, thus, he advocates a form of moral
realism. The reason why Churchland holds this view will be discussed in the next
chapter.
329
Ibid., 303. More on this in the next two chapters.
CHAPTER IV
Moral Realism and the Development
of Moral Knowledge
Churchlands concept of moral progress hinges on the nature of moral
knowledge. His view of moral knowledge, however, is radically different from how
it is traditionally conceived. Such radical difference is what constitutes his overall
argument for moral progress. This chapter will illustrate and clarify Churchlands
overall view of moral knowledge to set the preliminary ground for the discussion of
moral progress in the next chapter.
A. Reconceiving Moral Knowledge
Traditionally, moral wisdom, or morality in general, is described as a
conviction to follow a set of rules or principles. Thus it is often associated with
abstract rules or a priori principles conceived through pure reason. In a sense,
morality is ascribed to a discursive rule-system that one must embody, as
Churchland writes, Some moral theoristsnotably Kantians, contractarians, rule
utilitarians, and Christiansportray such discursive rule-system as the primary
embodiment of moral wisdom. That is, they portray moral knowledge as being
primarily a theoretical achievement. 330 For Churchland this view is mistaken,
because in reality, most of the time we practice morality without checking if we
330
Paul Churchland, Flanagan on Moral Knowledge, in Robert N. McCauley, ed., The
Churchlands and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 304305.
follow a certain rule or principle; rather, we simply know how to be moral, without
much discursive contemplation. 331 Now, one may wonder, how can this be
possible? Moral knowledge is supposed to be a discursive thought-out set of
sentences. Contrary to this view, Churchland argues that discursive moral
knowledge is different from non-discursive moral knowledge. The latter is what
actually makes up most of our moral wisdom in the individual level, while the
former is not constitutive of our morality but fulfills an entirely different role. The
reason why Churchland holds this view lies, again, on neurocomputational grounds.
1. The Non-discursive Nature of Morality
Moral theorists generally view principles and rules as abstract entities
separate and independent from empirical reality. While this separation is logically
or philosophically sound, some thinkers argue that such separation is actually an
illusion, as John Dewey remarks: For practical purposes morals mean customs,
folkways, established collective habits. This is a commonplace of the
anthropologist, though the moral theorist generally suffers from an illusion that his
own place and day is, or ought to be, an exception. 332 In line with Dewey, 333
331
This is a general premise held by Churchland in his discussion of morality. See Ibid.,
304305; Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, 6367; Churchland,
The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 292293. The details of his argument will be discussed
in the succeeding pages.
332
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology, (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922), 75. Dewey traces this tendency to separate moral principles
from empirical reality to Plato. He argues that morality must not be grounded solely on moral
principles but must also be guided by empirical reality (that is, social reality in general or habits and
customs of people in particular). See Ibid., esp. sec. V, Custom and Morality, 7583. Churchlands
view is similar to Deweys view, although Churchland includes neuroscience in his discussion. More
on this in the present chapter.
Churchland also thinks that this distinction is actually empirically superficial,
precisely because it assumes a mistaken premise about the nature of cognition in
general, as Churchland writes:
According to that tradition, to be moral is to have embraced,

accepted, or otherwise internalized a specific set of behavior-
guiding rules, which stored rules are then deployed in appropriate
circumstances as a salient part of the internal cognitive mechanisms
that actually produce intentional behavior... What goes unnoticed in
this highly general perspective on moral philosophy...is that it
surreptitiously presupposes a background theory about the nature of
cognition, a theory that we now have overwhelming reason to
believe is empirically false, a theory for which we already possess
the outlines of a neuronally based and mathematically embodied
alternative, specifically, the vector-coding, matrix-processing,
prototype-activating, synapse-adjusting account held out by
cognitive neurobiology and connectionist AI.
What changes does this new cognitive perspective require?
Several. First and foremost, it requires us to give up the idea that
our internal representations and cognitive activities are essentially
just hidden, silent versions of the external statements, arguments,
dialogues, and chains of reasoning that appear in our overt speech
and print. That conception is an old and venerable one, to be sure,
for it is the constituting assumption of our dear beloved folk
psychology. And it is also a natural one, for, how else should we
conceive of our inner activities, save on the model of outer speech,
our original and (until recently) our only empirical example of a
representational/computational system? How else indeed? But in
fact there are other ways, and ignorance of them has been our
excuse for far too long.334
In the quote above, Churchlands inclination to apply an eliminative
materialist critique on superficial folk psychological assumptions can be seen. As
shown in Chapter II, the critique mostly consists of dethroning language as the
333
One of Churchlands notable commentators and critics states that many Deweyan points
are similar to Churchlands and can serve as an extension of his overall concept of morality. See
Owen Flanagan, The Moral Network, in Robert N. McCauley, ed., The Churchlands and their
Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 192215, 207.
334
Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, 6364.
fundamental unit of cognition, and ultimately grounding cognition on neural
phenomena. Being a general critique of cognition, it covers moral cognition as well.
In this sense, moral cognition in general is not grounded on language but also on
neural phenomena. But how then can morality be conceived if language is not its
basis?
First, Churchland thinks that moral cognition depends on the ability to
recognize and discriminate countless of numbers of prototypical social situations, as
illustrated in the last chapter. This is largely parallel to a persons ability to
recognize and discriminate prototypical physical objects and events such as
...observing that the sky is threatening, that a banana is ideally ripe, that the cars
engine is still cold, that Mary is embarrassed, that the lamb chops on the grill are
ready, that the class is bored, that an infant is overtired, and so forth.335
Churchland continues: These are sorts of immediate and automatic
discriminations that one learns to make, and on which ones practical life depends...
But they are not the result of applying abstract general principles, nor the result of
drawing covert discursive inferences... They represent the normal and almost
instantaneous operation of a massively parallel network that has been trained over
time to be sensitive to a specific range of environmental features.336
Churchland groups these types of automatic and instantaneous physical
discrimination with social and moral discrimination in general, as he writes:
335
336
Ibid.
The discrimination of social and moral features is surely an

instance of the same process... Children learn to recognize certain
prototypical kinds of social situations, and they learn to produce or
avoid the behaviors prototypically required or prohibited in each.
Young children learn to recognize a distribution of scarce
resources such as cookies and candies as a fair or unfair
distribution... They learn to recognize that a found object may be
someones property, and that access is limited as a result. They
learn to discriminate unprovoked cruelty, and to demand or expect
punishment for the transgressor and comfort the victim... They
learn to recognize these and a hundred other prototypical
social/moral situations, and the ways in which the embedding
society generally reacts to those situations and expects them to
react.337
In Chapter III it has been shown that in Churchlands framework, a person
becomes social and moral at very early stages, at a point that the mastery of
language is still very minimal. The reason for this is because we learn to be moral
not through slowly following the discursive rules of the social world, but because
we acquire a set of fundamental social and moral skills that is learned through the
Hebbian sculpting of activation spaces. As Churchland points, those fundamental
skills are not learned through some linguaformal discursive lesson, as in knowing
that for a certain situation A, you must follow specific rule B; rather, it is learned
through continuous exposure to and practice in the world. This repeated experience
becomes meaningful, as shown in the previous chapter, because of the nature of our
Hebbian-driven neural system that allows us to eventually be adept at grasping the
patterns and prototypes in the physical and social world. Furthermore, as
Churchland states, the skill attained in such learning is automatic and immediate in
its execution, and does not require rational contemplation. For example, one can
337
Ibid.
automatically and immediately discriminate between cruelty and kindness. Overall,
these skills are essentially a practical know-how that can be difficult, if not
impossible, to fully explain in language. Churchland states that these type of
intricate skills are essentially non-discursive.338
Now, one can argue that these non-discursive skills only cover basic social
skills, and does not include moral knowledge or complex social skills. After all,
basic moral perception (such as recognizing cruelty) are original and primitive
skills. However, for Churchland, even those supposedly more complex types of
moral cognition are also essentially driven by non-discursive foundations, as he
writes:
Oh, very well, one might reply, a tad impatiently, so a

nondiscursive form of cognition underlies all of the more advanced
forms; but dont we leave that original and primitive form behind
when we enter the domain of morality and complex social
cognition?
Not at all. We can see this vital fact immediately by looking
at all of the other social mammals on the planetbaboon troops,
wolf packs, dolphin schools, chimpanzee groups, lion prides, and so
onand by observing in them the same complex ebb and flow of
thoughtful sharing, mutual defense, fair competition, familial
sacrifice, staunch alliance, minor deception, major treachery, and the
occasional outright ostracism that we see displayed in human
societies. Most important for the present issue, none of these other
instances of complex social order possesses a language, or any other
form of external cognitive scaffolding, on which to off-load
some of their social/moral cognition. Their social cognition is
conducted entirely within the more primitive and nondiscursive form
of cognition we have here been discussing.339
338
Churchland illustrates that immediate and automatic perception to be non-discursive and
essentially inarticulable in several occasions See Ibid., 6465; Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge,
299; The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, 144.
339
The reason why higher animals, particularly mammals, can also have a
sophisticated social structure is already evident as they also share a cognitive
machinery similar to our brains, as Churchland explains:
When, in a comparative spirit, we examine the brains of terrestrial

creaturestheir large-scale anatomies, their filamentary
microstructures, and their physiological and electrochemical
activitieswe find a striking conservation of form, structure, and
function across all vertebrate animals, and especially across the
higher mammals, and most especially across the primates, humans
included. The basic machinery of cognition is the same in all of us,
and it has nothing to do with the structure of declarative sentences,
with the rule-governed drawing of inferences from one sentence to
another, or with the storage and deployment of rules of any kind.340
Indeed, for Churchland, the reason why social sophistication can also be seen in
some non-human animals is because they also have the same cognitive machinery.
Specifically, this may mean that mammals also have social areas in their brains.341
As shown in the previous chapter, having a specific social area drives a creature to
learn sophisticated social skills as early as one learns other basic recognition and
motor skills.
Equipped with social activation spaces, a primate, for example, will
eventually learn the social structure of its intricate social world. Indeed, research
shows that primate societies show a form of organization, stratification, and
340
Ibid., 6465.
341
Primates brains have been found to have a specific area devoted to recognizing different
emotions and movements in faces, and in some experiments it has been shown that they demonstrate
infant-parent attachment. See Adam S. Smith, Kelly Lei, and Zuoxin Wang, The Neurobiology of
Social Attachment, in Dennis S. Charney, Eric J. Nestler, Pamela Sklar, Joseph D. Buxbaum, eds.,
Neurobiology of Mental Illness, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013): 11121126, esp. 1112
1113, 1123.
rankings in their social group.342 Although their conception of the social world is
not as complex as ours, it cannot be denied that they exhibit intricate social
sensibility and social skills even if they are deprived of human language. For
Churchland, this clearly shows that complex social cognition can be achieved
without the use of language or application of discursive rules. But Churchland
insists that it is not only non-human animals that are capable of complex social and
moral cognition without language and rules. He further argues that the same is also
true for humans in society, as he writes: [S]ocial cognition [in animals] is
conducted entirely within the more primitive and nondiscursive form of cognition
we have here been discussing. And so, quite evidently, is the greater part of social
cognition in human society as well. Typically, it is only when something goes
wrong with our well-oiled social interactions that we bring into play the discursive
scaffolding of rules and moral argument and laws and court procedures. 343 In this
342
This social organization in primates can be especially seen in mating behavior. Aside
from having a practice of monogamy, different types of polygamy can also occur in primate
societies such as polyandry, in which females have several male partners, while the male only has
one; or polygyny, which is the reverse of polyandry and constitutes the typical harem concept.
Another is polygnandry, in which each primate has several possible partners. Often these mating
patterns are influenced by a respective ranking in a specific primate society, which is decided
through several social conflicts. The highest-ranked primate in a certain society is often determined
by their social power which comprises of raw fighting ability, possession of valuable
commodities, difference in knowledge, and leverage and other ecological and genetic factors.
However, dominant relationships are not always linear, varying from individualistic to nepotistic,
from egalitarian to despotic, and from intolerant to tolerant. Each variation shows a different
implementation on the dominance level of high-ranking primates, resulting to different social
attitudes a specific primate may take in a different form of society. A primate in an egalitarian
society, for example, will not be intimidated by higher-ranking primates, although he or she
acknowledges that such higher-ranking primate has more social power than him or herself. For
more detailed accounts on the development and mechanisms behind primate societies, see John C.
Mitani, Josep Call, Peter M. Kappeler, Ryne A. Palombit, Joan B. Silk, The Evolution of Primate
Societies, eds., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), discussion taken from 197198, 270,
474.
343
sense, morality as conceived in language and logic is only prevalent when we talk,
discuss, and argue about morality. That being the case, the discursive aspect of
morality is not the fundamental aspect of being moral.
For Churchland, our moral constitution is fundamentally non-discursive.
This very non-discursive constitution is something is attained through years of
immersion in a social environment, as seen in Chapter III. In this sense, for
Churchland, our moral constitution is embodied in our hard-earned configuration of
synaptic weights that we took several years to gain. Without this constitution moral
rules are useless, as Churchland elaborates:
Rules are useless unless the capacity for reliable perception

of their categories is already in place, and such perception depends
utterly on the inarticulable processes of vector coding and prototype
activation. Moreover, as neural-network models have taught us, a
perceptually competent network embodies a great deal of knowledge
about the general structure of its perceptual environment, knowledge
that is embodied in the configuration of its myriad (in humans, 1014)
synaptic connections, knowledge that is largely or entirely
inarticulable by its possessor. There is no hope, to repeat the point,
that we can capture the true substance of any humans moral
knowledge by citing some family of rules that he or she is
supposed to follow, nor is there any hope of evaluating that
persons character by evaluating the specific rules within any such
internalized family. At the level of individual human cognition, it
simply doesnt work that way.344
Moral knowledge, then, is the culmination of wisdom one attains throughout
ones life. As such, it is something that cannot be articulated by the one who has it.
From this perspective, equating moral knowledge to a set of linguaformal rules is
limiting. Besides the fact that our social and moral recognition and discriminative
344
Ibid.
knowledge are immediate and automatic and do not seem to involve lingual
contemplation, our lingual definitions of objects and situations in general are often
inadequate to address their underlying complexity. As Churchland argues:
[O]ur moral concepts show the same penetration and

supraverbal sophistication shown by nonmoral [physical] concepts.
One's ability to recognize instances of cruelty, patience, meanness,
and courage, for instance, far outstrips ones capacity for verbal
definition of those notions. Ones diffuse [sic] expectations of their
likely consequences similarly exceeds [sic] any verbal formulas that
one could offer or construct, and those expectations are much the
more [sic] penetrating because of it.345
From the discussions above, it can be concluded that for Churchland, moral
knowledge, at the individual level, is a culmination of moral and social perceptual
skills learned as one grows up in society. And this culmination is realized through
the 100 trillion synaptic connections, and not through the application of some
lingual rules, to repeat a quote: [Knowledge] is embodied in the configuration
of...myriad synaptic connections... There is no hope...that we can capture the true
substance of any humans moral knowledge by citing some family of rules that he
or she is supposed to follow, nor is there any hope of evaluating that persons
character by evaluating the specific rules within any such internalized family.346
In sum, from a neurocomputational perspective, our moral knowledge is
founded on the moral and social activation spaces in our 100-billion-dimension
neural landscape, and not on our lingual and abstract conception of the world.
345
346
Churchland points out that this view of morality has a certain argumentative
advantage, as he writes:
Attempting to portray either accepted rules or canonical

desires as the basis of moral character has the further disadvantage
of inviting the skeptics hostile question: Why should I follow those
rules? ...If, however, we reconceive strong moral character as the
possession of a broad family of perceptual, computational, and
behavioral skills in the social domain, then the skeptics question
must become, Why should I acquire those skills? To which the
honest answer is, Because they are easily the most important skills
you will ever learn.347
Indeed, as stated previously, the need to learn morality is similar to the need
for fish to learn how to swim; we are required to learn to be moral to effectively
swim through our vast social world, as much as fish are required to learn how to
swim through the vast oceans.
Now, this view of moral knowledge, and morality in general, instigates the
following question: Does language and discursive rules contribute anything to our
overall moral knowledge? If moral knowledge is the culmination of inarticulable
skills, what, then, is the role of the discursive elements of morality? While it is
empirically likely that moral knowledge is founded on a panoply of non-discursive
skills and abilities, its discursive dimension cannot be denied. Experience tells us
that moral rules and discursive moral concepts evidently shape the way we conceive
morality, or at the very least, the way we think about it. If Churchland denies that
morality is fundamentally discursive, what is the role of the discursive dimension of
morality?
347
Churchlands focus on the non-discursive character of morality is precisely
why some critics think that he is focusing solely on brain activity and denying
entirely the importance of language to moral knowledge.348 To clarify, Churchland
is not denying the importance of the discursive dimension of morality, or even the
importance of logic and language in general. Indeed, it may seem to be the case
because he has been adamant about displacing language as the fundamental unit of
cognition. But his latter works show languages significance and its importance.349
For him, discursive elements, particularly language, actually have an exceptionally
significant role, though its role is different from what tradition has previously
taught us.
348
The main problem I find in Churchlands neurobehaviorist assumption is not that all
knowledge involves brain activity, but that all knowledge and behavior is a simple result of brain
activity. In my view ethics is not only about facts but also, and mainly, about values and moral
decisions, which although having a corresponding brain activity, are not fully determined by it alone
but also by normative arguments that are a part of the interpersonal dialogue and which have
themselves an influence upon brain activity. Brain activity makes moral evaluations and decisions
possible, but ultimately do not fully explain them. Clearly, Paul Churchland is making here a serious
confusion between correlation and causation. The fact that there is a correlation between brain
activity and moral reasoning and behavior does not necessarily mean that it is brain activity that
causes all moral behavior (Alfredo Dinis, Has Neuroethics Killed Moral Philosophy? On Paul
Churchlands Neurobehaviorism, Analyses / Anlises, Proceedings of the 2nd National Meeting for
Analytic Philosophy, ENFA 2 [October 2004]: 8090, 85).
349
In Churchlands most detailed work on morality, found in The Engine of Reason, the
Seat of the Soul (1995), he denies that language and discursive rules are the fundamental aspect of
morality. As seen in this chapter so far, he thinks that morality is driven by non-discursive elements
that is powered by neural phenomena. But in his latter works, for the first time in Rules, Know-
How, and the Future of Moral Cognition (2000) and in more detail in Platos Camera (2012), he
stresses the importance of language and discursive rules in shaping the knowledge of the human
person. The details will be discussed in the proceeding pages.
2. Redefining the Role of Language and Discursive Rules
Ever since the linguistic turn, as Rorty calls it,350 philosophy has enriched
the role and meaning of language in philosophy in particular, and to rational
thought in general. This enrichment, or even revolution, in language and thinking is
driven by the movement known as analytic philosophy. This movement constitutes
several landmark figures in philosophy such as Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege
at its early stages, and Ludwig Wittgenstein at its latter stages. 351 The influence of
these prominent figures is almost inescapable to a contemporary philosopher like
Churchland. As Keeley writes, Churchland is a product of a zeitgeist of his
generation of philosophers... One apparently inescapable influence in their time was
the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.352 Keeley states that because of Churchlands
subscription to eliminative materialism and thereby his rejection of the traditional
view of language, the influence of Wittgenstein and the analytic movement in
general can be barely seen in his philosophy. 353 Thus, it is understandable why
350
The term was popularized through a book edited and co-authored by Richard M. Rorty
titled, The Linguistic Turn, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1967]).
351
Overview of analytic philosophy taken from Barry Dainton, A Different World, in
Barry Dainton and Howard Robinson, eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy,
(London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), xixvii.
352
PMCs [Churchlands] own work barely mentions Wittgenstein, resulting in the
impression that what we have in Churchlands philosophy is...stripped of most of its Wittgensteinian
elements... What is this influence of Wittgenstein that fails to appear in the work of Churchland?
First and foremost, Wittgenstein is deeply concerned with language. Human, natural language is
where philosophy begins and ends for Wittgenstein... Churchland rejects this idea of the priority of
language and the strong emphasis it places on ordinary language. Indeed, it ought to be the first
lesson of a thorough-going eliminative materialism: while it seems natural to think of language as
the beginning of philosophyhow else could we pose questions, after all?we ought not take that
centrality for granted (Keeley, Introduction: Becoming Paul M. Churchland, 13).
353
Ibid., 14.
Churchlands thought seems to be stripped of most of the concerns of analytic
philosophy.
The reason why Churchland rejects the traditional views of language was
illustrated in Chapter II. In that chapter, it was shown that, for Churchland,
language cannot be the basic unit of cognition, so if we aim to know the
foundations of rationality and the validity of our philosophical knowledge in
general, we ought to look into actual foundations of cognition, particularly into
neural phenomena. As has been shown in this chapter so far, because of
Churchlands inclination to attribute the foundations of cognition to neural
phenomena, he conceives moral knowledge to be also founded on non-discursive
elements made possible by neural phenomena. Now, if this is the case, to repeat the
question earlier, what is the role of language, or discursive elements in general, to
morality, as conceived in Churchlands framework?
Churchland acknowledges the importance of language in our lives, but he
thinks that it fulfills a different role, a role completely unlike the way tradition
usually conceives it. This role, he argues, is significant and critical to the point that
it separates by a huge margin not only our social and moral worldview, but also our
general worldview, especially from the worldview of other non-human animals.
2.1 The Role of Language in Human Cognition
[T]he human capacity for language plays an undeniably

important role in the human epistemic adventure. No other terrestrial
creature comes within light-years of our own epistemic
achievements, and no other terrestrial creature commands language...
A mere coincidence? We dont think so... But how does the latter
provide such a dramatic boost to the former? It does so in many
ways...ways that become more readily visible once we have escaped
the crippling delusion that cognition is language-like at its core...
Indeed, it may be the single most important development in the
evolutionary history of the entire hominin line. 354
From a neurobiological standpoint, it cannot be denied that our cognitive
machinery is largely similar to that of our evolutionary brothers, especially
primates. But it is clear that there is a huge gap separating us from them. As
illustrated in the previous chapter, social experience in a civilized world is what
enables humans to gain vast archives of knowledge far beyond that of non-human
animals. Without that experience, we may as well be animals, and perhaps even less
socially capable than them, as illustrated in the case of feral or wild children like
Genie.
Churchland insists that the enhancement or boost we receive from
social experience is only possible because we are equipped with a regulatory
mechanism that forever changed our collective social experience. This mechanism
is our capacity to use language.355
Churchland labeled language as a regulatory mechanism for two reasons.
First, he sees language as a tool to steer, guide, and modulate our cognitive
activities.356 In a neurocomputational sense, this means that it shapes our activations
in our brains, and thereby shapes how our activation spaces are sculpted. Indeed,
354
Platos Camera, 251252.
355
Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, 67. More on this
presently.
356
Discussion of language as a regulatory mechanism taken from Platos Camera, 252
254.
Churchland points out that language enables children to learn not merely through
sensory inputs but also through words. This is possible in the sense that certain
words can trigger specific activation spaces that will not be otherwise triggered by
sensory inputs. In effect, one can update or even change the activation patterns in
ones brain, by continuously combining different words that, in turn, trigger
activation spaces in combinations never before triggered by sensory experience. In
this sense, language allows one to artificially make categories that our brain,
without the aid of language, could have never generated. Indeed, merely
discriminating the intricate details behind a vast type of objects is one thing, but
categorizing those objects into human-made groups is another. For example,
language allows us to label our knowledge about all fruits and plants in the artificial
category called botany, and it even allows us to further group botany into a more
general artificial category called biology. As seen in practice, categorizing and
labeling allows us to operate and communicate more quickly than normal.
Overall, it is evident that language indeed shapes how we conceive the
world. In Churchlands framework, this specifically means that language enhances
and speeds up to some extent the Hebbian-sculpting process in our brains, which
leads to a radically quicker and deeper learning process. But aside from the
immediate regulation that language does to the activations in our brains, it has a
more arguably fundamental regulatory role at the collective level, which leads us to
the second point.

Churchland points out that since language is primarily a communication
tool, the process described earlier becomes inevitably collective and thus enhances
and widens the scope of its regulation, as he writes:
More importantly, if such mutual steering of one anothers

cognitive activities becomes frequent and widespread, then the
process of cognition becomes collective. It then involves a number
of distinct brainsat least a handful, and perhaps many millions
engaged in a common endeavor. Accordingly, the overall quality of
this collective cognitive activity will typically be much higher than
the quality displayed in any isolated individualespecially if we
consider this contrast in cognitive quality over extended periods of
time, for then the advantages of collective inputs and consensual
evaluation will have had a chance to accumulate.357
History tells us that such collective accumulation has forever changed
how human civilization developed. It evidently served as a catalyst to elevate the
human race from cavemen to space explorers (more on this in the next chapter).
These accumulations and progress are largely possible because language can
preserve the knowledge a group of people have accumulated in their generation,
and pass it on to the succeeding generations. Churchland says that language allows
the development of long-lasting oral traditions, enduring legends, or religions that
maintain a more-or-less systematic family of explanatory doctrines and social
practices. With the subsequent development of written records, whether on stone,
clay, parchment, or paper, the sorts of narratives just mentioned can acquire a
stability and longevity that may shape the culture for many centuries.358
357
Ibid., 252.
358
Ibid., 255.
Overall, language gives the human race a constant cognitive system that can
continue to accumulate knowledge and wisdom for several thousands of years.
According to Churchland, language allows human learning to no longer be
constrained by the temporal extent of a single human lifetime, and no longer
limited by the imaginative reach of a single generation... We are now looking at a
cognitive process that knows no essential limitations, or at least none imposed by
time... And this is evidently what has happened to the human species, and to the
human species alone, since our development of language.359
The irony in Churchlands account of language is that in his conviction to
dethrone language as the ultimate foundation of knowledge, language has gained
another important, perhaps even more important role, as depicted above. As already
evident, that accumulative regulatory role can only be conceived if we see language
as a tool to steer the fundamentally non-discursive cognitive skills and knowledge
that we already have. To repeat Churchlands point, we can only grasp the actual
role of language once we have escaped the crippling delusion that cognition is
language-like at its core,360 and only then will we see that language is essentially a
vast regulatory mechanism that guides us to an ever-rising ladder of cognitive
progress.
As may already be evident based on the discussion above, language as a
regulatory mechanism has several roles to play in human moral knowledge. But
besides how moral knowledgeas other kinds of knowledgecan be steered and
359
Ibid., 253.
360
Ibid., 251252.
guided by language, there is also another factor in the discursive dimension that we
must consider, which is the role of social institutions in shaping our moral
knowledge.
2.2 The Role of Social Rules and Institutions
Our de facto moral cognition involves a complex and

evolving interplay between, on the one hand, the nondiscursive
cognitive mechanisms of the biological brain, and on the other, the
often highly discursive extrapersonal scaffolding that structures
the social world in which our brains are normally situated, a world
that has been, to a large extent, created by our own moral and
political activity. That interplay extends the reach and elevates the
quality of the original nondiscursive cognition, and thus any
adequate account of moral cognition must address both of these
contributing dimensions. An account that focuses only on brain
mechanisms will be missing something vital.361
At this point, it is important to elaborate on what Churchland means by
discursive elements of cognition, in contrast to non-discursive ones. Most of the
elements of cognition discussed in this thesis so far largely refer to non-discursive
ones, such as the ability to discriminate faces or to recognize moral prototypes like
cruelty and kindness in a specific social situation. Most of these skills and
knowledge are embodied in ones brain, wired in ones 100 trillion synaptic
connections. As such, these skills and knowledge mostly cannot be articulated by
the one who has them.
Discursive elements of cognition, on the other hand, consist of entirely
external elements, external, meaning that they lie outside us. As Churchland
361
elaborates: [A] significant portion of [our cognitive activity, lies] outside the brain.
It lies in the extrapersonal public space of drawn diagrams, written arithmetic
calculations, spoken and printed arguments, tools of measurement and
manipulation, and extranumary cognitive prosthetics of many other kinds as
well. 362 Taken together, these discursive elements form what Churchland calls
extrapersonal scaffolding. 363 Similar to the literal scaffolding used in building
structures, this extrapersonal scaffolding helps human beings build up their moral
and social knowledge of the world. This is what supports and guides an infants
growth, to transform an innocent child into a actual contributor to social and moral
order, such as a lawyer or politician for example.
How this feat is possible is obvious and already evident to any of us who
does not live isolated from society. Schools, universities, private and government
organizations, the legislative and executive government bodies, and many other
social institutions inevitably shape not only our ongoing social and moral
experience of the world, but also our entire worldview. All these taken together
make up that extrapersonal scaffolding Churchland is referring to, and this directs
the supposedly mindless Hebbian learning process364 to a direction that it may never
take without its aid. As Churchland puts it,
362
Ibid., 6263.
363
In Ibid., Churchland refers to the discursive foundations of moral cognition as a form of
scaffolding throughout this work. He also discusses this more extensively in Platos Camera, chap.
5, sec. 5, Situated Cognition Theory, 274279.
364
Churchland defines Hebbian learning as a mindless, subconceptual process that
continually adjusts the strengths or weights of the trillions of synaptic connections that intervene
between one neuronal population and another (Into the Brain, 235).
[W]e are graced with a system that provides an extraordinary

environment in which the many individual brains at its core can
thrive, cognitively speaking, to a degree that would be impossible in
its absence, and at a level that need never stop rising as our
collective wisdom accumulates. Overall, it is a perfectly stunning
cognitive device, and its ultimate function is precisely the
regulation and the amplification of the...basic activities of the
biological brains that lie at its core...365
This is what makes Hebbian sculpting, which is a very basic activity of neural
systems, so powerful, because it is fated to uncover the deepest patterns and
prototypes in the environment it is situated in, and will inevitably learn the
accumulated knowledge that civilization has gathered, no matter how limited or
crude, through-out their existence.
It is important to note that such sculpting is directed by what can be called
the lifeblood of civilization, language. Churchland writes: Language itself is the
first and perhaps the most transformative of these scaffolds or regulatory
mechanisms... and many more comparably transformative mechanisms rest on the
broad shoulders of this primary institution.366
Overall, it is evident that this extrapersonal scaffolding shapes our lives
deeply, but what does this particularly contribute to our overall moral knowledge?
Several contributions may already be evident. But what Churchland emphasizes is
the fact that, through language, socio-moral discursive rules have become an
effective regulative machinery that shapes our non-discursive socio-moral skills and
knowledge, as he writes:
365
366
Ibid., 275.
I wish to emphasize the genuine novelty represented by the

evolutionary emergence of language and the cultural emergence of
discursive rules. Their emergence makes an enormous difference to
the character and quality of our collective moral life... They
constitute...a new level of regulative machinery to help shape the
conduct of our collective affairs, a kind of machinery that had never
existed before. They provide us with something the other social
animals still do not have. First, they provide a medium for the
accumulation of useful social doctrine over periods far in excess of
an individual humans lifetime. Second, they provide a system for
the collective discussion and local application of that (presumptive)
practical wisdom. And third, they enable procedures, consistent
across time and circumstance, for identifying and penalizing
violations of the discursive rules that (partly) embody that
wisdom.367
Taken together, discursive rule deeply affect our socio-moral worldview.
This is possible precisely because of the existence of social institutions that
advocate and enforce them. For example, if one is born in a devout Christian
environment, one may have a socio-moral worldview that is shaped by the moral
laws written in the Bible. Or, if one is born in a highly secular environment, one
may have a socio-moral worldview shaped by government constitutions, laws,
policies, and human rights. Indeed, ones ability to empathize, ones ability to
recognize kindness and cruelty, or even ones ability to discern the moral
implications behind motor movements, will be steered by the discursive rules that
one has been accustomed to. A Christian may see the cruel act of battering a child
as a sin that defies Gods commandments, while an agnostic secular person may see
the same act as a violation of childrens human rights.
367
It is in this sense that discursive rules serve as a guide to our non-discursive
knowledge and skills. Furthermore, Churchland asserts that it is in this level that
our moral conflicts, arguments, and even court procedures arise. 368 He further
insists that it is in this level that we begin to develop and improve our moral
frameworks.369 This can easily be seen in how laws and policies are continuously
developed by governments to better adapt to current social situations, such as the
development of cyber-laws to address the implications of the development of
information technology. This can also be seen in philosophy, with its long tradition
of conceiving, re-conceiving and inventing moral frameworks. Whether this
development and improvement on our moral frameworks amount to genuine moral
progress is open for debate. Nevertheless, it is evident that discursive rules do not
only transform our personal moral lives, but also our overall moral knowledge at
both the collective and individual level.
Based on the discussions above, it is apparent that discursive moral rules
shape our moral cognition as much as language shapes our overall cognitive
activities. Indeed, Churchland insists that even if they are not the foundation of our
moral knowledge, they are a fundamental part of our overall moral life, as he
elaborates: [Language and discursive rules] do not bring moral reasoning into
existence for the first time, and they do not provide a conceptual model remotely
adequate to the phenomenon of moral cognition in single individuals and nonhuman

368
Ibid., 67.
369
Churchland illustrates how social institutions develop their social and moral discursive
rules in the due course of history. He believes that this development can be properly considered
progress. See Ibid., sec. III, Moral Cognition and the Novelty of Rules, 6670; sec. IV, The
Contrast between Ancient and Modern Scaffolding, 7072. More on this in the next chapter.
animals, but they do change our lives profoundly.370 Indeed, even if language and
discursive rules are not the fundamental essence of our morality, and even if they
cannot capture the entirety of our moral skills and knowledge (because of their
inarticulable embodiment in our neural systems), they undeniably shape our
moral lives.
3. Moral Knowledge Reconceived
Now that the difference between the discursive and non-discursive elements
of morality has been established, the overall meaning of moral knowledge in
Churchlands framework can now be defined. As stated earlier, Churchland asserts
that moral knowledge is something that is embodied in the 100 trillion synaptic
connections in our nervous system. This system enables us to learn vast archives of
non-discursive moral knowledge and skills, which fundamentally constitute our
moral knowledge. However, beyond this fundamental constitution, Churchland
points out that there are external factors that regulate the non-discursive elements
of our moral knowledge. These are the discursive rules that are advocated and
enforced by our social institutions, which are powered by human language as their
lifeblood. Taken together, moral knowledge, then, is a mixture of external and
internal factors internally realized through our neural system, and externally
regulated by extrapersonal scaffoldings, with the extrapersonal scaffolding as the
370
Ibid., 68.
overall embodiment of language, discursive rules, and the social institutions that
use them.
What needs emphasis in the above process is that without the interplay
between these internal and external elements, moral knowledge can never be
accumulated efficiently. Precisely because moral knowledge is not merely a set of
discursive rules that are written in records or embedded in oral traditions, it is
fundamentally composed of several non-discursive skills that are almost impossible
to put in records. It is then not only important to have an accumulated knowledge or
to have a preserving system (i.e., language) to pass on this knowledge at the
collective level, but it is also important to have individual persons who can make
sense of, apply, amplify, and pass on that knowledge. In a sense, a persons brain, a
cognitive machinery that is up to that task, is the main engine that realizes and
further accumulates the collective discursive knowledge overtime, all through the
highly complex and fundamentally non-discursive skills it bestows upon a person.
In sum, moral knowledge, then, is a dynamic accumulation of discursive
knowledge at the collective level that is embodied and built on by a non-discursive
system at the individual level. Indeed, moral and social rules, or any kind of
accumulated knowledge, are useless without a group of people trained through
Hebbian learning to apply, follow, and implement them. On the other hand, a group
of people, even if they are equipped with Hebbian-driven networks, will never have
the sufficient socio-moral skills and knowledge without a social institution to teach
them the discursive knowledge of civilization. Thus, in this sense, moral knowledge
is an inextricable mixture and interplay between discursive elements at the
collective level and non-discursive elements at the individual level.
Overall, the view of moral knowledge presented above is evidently
naturalistic, precisely because it is based on empirical grounds, not on non-
empirical grounds such as the cogito or pure reason. Specifically, it is grounded on
neural phenomena and how that phenomena is affected by the physical and social
world. Nevertheless, this view of moral knowledge, however naturalistic, does not
evidently solve the problem regarding the truth of moral theories and moral
knowledge raised earlier. Again, as Churchland himself points out, it is still an issue
whether the moral knowledge learned through the process described so far
amounts to the learning of Moral Truth, or to mere socialization.371 There is this
possibility that the knowledge learned through social experience is merely a tool to
navigate around the social world, and a mere tool for socialization that can be
effective but does not necessarily refer to genuine moral truths. This possibility is
difficult to deny, not only within Churchlands view of morality, but also with
moral knowledge in general. As Churchland puts it,
[m]oral knowledge has long suffered from what seems an

unflattering contrast with scientific or other genuinely factual
forms of knowledge. It is hard not to appreciate the appearance. One
has no obvious sense organ for moral facts, as one does for so many
of the facts displayed in the material world, and so there is an
immediate epistemological problem about moral facts. How does
one apprehend them? Connected to this epistemological problem is
an ontological problem. For empirical statements, one typically finds
an objective configuration of objects or properties to which the
statement, if true, corresponds. For statements of moral truth, such as
371
One ought to keep ones promises, one seems not to find a

comparable objective configuration, lying in obliging
correspondence. And even if one rejects the correspondence
conception of truth implicit in this objection, the widely accepted
principle that ought cannot be derived from is would seem to
leave truth of moral statements grounded in something other than the
way the material universe happens to be configured.372
Western philosophy has taken this problem seriously, and most often the
response to this is to take an entirely skeptical stance about the truth of moral
knowledge (e.g. emotivism as championed by A.J. Ayer) or ground moral truth on
abstract principles validated by pure reason (e.g. the categorical imperative as
championed by Kant).373 Churchland, on the other hand, takes another approach.
Perhaps, driven by his urge to conceive morality in a naturalistic way, he declares
the objectivity of moral knowledge, as he writes:
My own inclination is to resist the appearance that tends to

produce these two reactions [moral skepticism and moral truth as
validated by pure reason], and thus to avoid the motivation for both
pathologies. Moral truths...are roughly as robust and objective as
other instances of truth, but this objectivity is not secured by their
being grounded in pure reason or in some other nonempirical
support. It is secured in something very like the way in which the
objectivity of scientific fact is secured.374
372
Ibid., 297.
373
On emotivism: According to Alfred J. Ayer, moral statements do not express any factual
truths, but are merely expressions of moral sentiments. See Language, Truth, and Logic, (London:
Penguin Books, 1971 [1936]), chap. 6, Critique of Ethics and Theology, 104126; and The Emotive
Theory of Values in the Appendix, 190193. On the Categorical Imperative: Kant urges that morals
cannot be grounded a posteriori and can only be grounded a priori through a synthetic a priori
proposition. Ultimately, Kant concludes that pure reason provides us with a single maxim that it
necessitates to be followed, which is construed: ...act only in accordance with that maxim through
which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law (Immanuel Kant, Groundwork
of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregory, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997], esp. 31).
374
Initially, Churchlands claim above may appear counterintuitive, but he
argues that, careful analysis will show that this is not the case, as his argument rests
heavily on the empirical and neurocomputational similarities between scientific and
moral knowledge. This leads us to Churchlands overall defense of the realism of
moral knowledge.
B. The Objectivity of Moral Knowledge
There is a common and mostly unspoken conviction that the

moral and political domain is utterly different from the scientific
domain. Scientific principles express objective facts, it is often said,
whereas moral and political principles do not. They express only
subjective feelings, romantic hopes, arbitrary roles, or the
oppression of this weeks tyrant, benign or otherwise.
Our knowledge of so-called right and wrong in the moral
and social domain looks flimsy, arbitrary, and subjective when
placed in contrast with the results of the relentlessly objective
procedures of science. Moral and political convictions are the focus
of systematic disagreement and endless squabbles. They are
regularly steered by ignorance, prejudice, self-interest, class
interest, unbridled emotion, and religious enthusiasm. On the face
of it, moral knowledge fails to attach to any objective reality in
the way that science does.375
Churchlands quote above perhaps summarizes the apparent and commonly
believed difference between scientific knowledge and moral knowledge. Evidently,
by drawing this distinction alone, we can clearly see why the truth and objectivity
of moral knowledge can easily be subjected to skepticism. Churchland, in an
attempt to show the objectivity of moral knowledge, addresses this issue by
pointing out that the said distinction is often superficially and imperfectly drawn.
375
1. Parallelism between Moral and Scientific Knowledge
First, Churchland admits that the collective moral knowledge of average
person in general is often confused and narrow. However, this confusion also
applies to his or her scientific knowledge as well. Indeed, Churchland notes the
contrasts between the moral and scientific knowledge the average person has from
the distilled wisdom developed by institutionalized science. He says that:
The proper analog for the average persons admittedly

confused, narrow, and arbitrary convictions on moral and social
matters is not the carefully distilled wisdom of institutionalized
science. It is the average persons profoundly confused, narrow, and
arbitrary convictions on broadly scientific matters... The fact is, most
people are no better grounded in their scientific knowledge than they
are in their moral and social knowledge. Think of the average
persons convictions about or complete ignorance of the origins of
life, the nature of the mind, the history of the human race, the status
of a fetus, the origins of the universe, and the prospects for a life
after death. Here, also, there is widespread disagreement and endless
squabbling. Here, also; the average persons consciousness is shaped
by ignorance, arbitrary upbringing, unbridled emotion, and religious
enthusiasms. If anything, the average person displays a slightly
higher level of moral cognition than of scientific cognition.376
Thus, if the difference in objectivityor more perhaps more accurately, the
difference in qualityis not apparent to the average person, where else can the
apparent distinction between moral and scientific knowledge be drawn? For
Churchland, looking at the level of collective critical institutions, this distinction is
also less apparent.
Evidently, science is composed of institutions that continue to shape and
improve upon their knowledge of nature, as Churchland writes:
376
Ibid.
...we have the centuries-old institutions of science upholding a

tradition of honest evaluation: academic societies, annual meetings
with public presentations and critical discussions, refereed journals,
independent replication of experimental results, competition and
cooperation between distinct laboratories, a standard curriculum of
initial instruction that remains fluid at its leading edges, and a
sequence of rigorous evaluations and certifications that determine
academic degrees, academic rank, academic offices, and the distinct
powers and responsibilities that go with each. Science, qua
international institution, is an entity that precedes and long outlives
the individuals who pass through it, and it is systematically geared to
the business of producing a deeper understanding of the world at
large, and a more effective human control over its behavior.377
These institutions devoted to honest and critical evaluation of knowledge are
what enable science to legitimately generate genuine scientific truths. As
Churchlands puts it, science, with nature as its primary authoritative source, can
continuously evaluate, change, and improve its existing theories about nature
through experiment, thereby unmasking false theories and replacing it with tried-
and-tested ones.378 Overall, as can be illustrated in the development of astronomical
theories (from Ptolemy, Copernicus, Newton, and into Einstein), scientific
development is evidently a long and extensive critical endeavor.
Even though it may not be immediately evident, socio-moral knowledge is
also developed through a similar critical learning process. For Churchland, this is
evidently seen in our government, particularly in our legislative bodies, as he
describes in detail:
Nations such as the United States and Britain have a history

of continuous constitutional government reaching back over three
or four centuries. Other countries have interruptions in their
377
Ibid.
378
Ibid., 286.
constitutional histories, but the pattern is the same. The relevant

legislative bodies have been continuously formulating and
reformulating social policy of some sort or otherprohibiting
certain kinds of behavior, regulating many others, and positively
encouraging others stillin an ongoing response to the unfolding
environment and to the observed social effects of policies already in
place.
This continuous adjustment of social policy takes place at
many levels, from the federal down to the most mundane of
municipal concerns. But almost all of it is done in the light of past
social experience. Policies are adopted, laws are enacted, and the
public ends up living a collective life that is shaped by those
policies and laws. That collective life may be much the better for
those constraints, or it may display unintended cruelties, unexpected
costs, unanticipated conflicts with other policies already
established, or a host of further disutilities. In addition, a policy that
works well at one stage of our economic, technological, or
educational evolution may not work at all well [sic] at a later stage.
What was appropriate and useful in one factual environment may be
observably cruel or stupid in another. Our permanent political
institutions are in place precisely so as to respond to such
discovered unhappiness and emerging injustice, to respond with
modified or wholly new social policies and legislation.
As the decades and the centuries roll by, such legislative
bodies are the focus of what is clearly a learning process: the
accumulated legislation currently in force is the reflection of long
experience and many adjustments. Furthermore, it sustains a social
and administrative practice that is itself under constant pragmatic
evaluation.379
A political skeptic may only see this legislative process as mere power play.
Indeed, among the writers and implementers of the law, the power play may be
rampant, perhaps especially in highly corrupt countries. Nevertheless, it cannot be
denied that our laws and policies have indeed developed. As Churchland puts it, 380
379
Ibid., 288.
380
Churchland illustrates the difference in social laws and policies between ancient and
modern societies in Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, see sec. IV, The
Contrast between Ancient and Modern Scaffolding, 7072.
there is a stark difference between the Ten Commandments as a governing law in
the ancient world, and the modern laws and policies that we use today.
Evidently, in the Ten Commandments, there is no regulation regarding the
proper care of children, no written rights for women, and more generally, there is
no universal declaration of human rights to be found there. In this sense, the Ten
Commandments is more narrow in scope as compared with our laws today. To put
it simply, the Ten Commandments, although still insightful, is an outdated sets of
laws that can never cover the complex social and moral issues that we tackle
today.381 For Churchland, this contrast shows that significant development has been
made to the law-making process and social governance throughout history.
Similar to the critical institutions that fuel scientific development, the social
development described earlier was also made possible by critical socio-moral
institutions, particularly legislative bodies in the last example. Such critical process
is what made the intricate laws, policies, and constitution that we use today
possible. Conceivably, along with the development of laws, our socio-moral views
have radically changed as well. Unlike before, we do not have policies that regulate
381
This thought is expounded by Churchland in this manner: A body of behavior-
controlling legislation [e.g. the Ten Commandments] adequate to run an agrarian, bronze-age village
is not remotely adequate to run a modern industrial nation with its tens of millions of people and its
complex, trillion-dollar, high-tech economy. Our legislation must address practices and facilitate
activities of which ancient peoples had little or no conception. The regulation of large corporations,
of labor unions, of the stock market, of the nations banks and interest rates, of agricultural and
environmental policy, of pharmaceutical testing and prescription policy, of school curriculums and
scientific research policy, of hospitals and penitentiaries, of intellectual property and its industrial
applications, of court procedures at the local, state, and national levels, of traffic behavior on our
streets and highways, of licensing for electrical contractors, airline pilots, pharmacists, and a
thousand other novel professionsthese are all matters whose regulation is essential to the health
and well-being of modern society, but whose existence went unanticipated by ancient peoples
(Ibid., 70).
slaves as demonstrated by Greeks and Romans. Unlike before, women now have
the right to vote and be educated. For Churchland, this is all possible because
society learns from past social experience and takes on a critical attitude to
improve, change, and build upon the mistakes and lessons from the past.382
Nevertheless, critical institutions are not perfect. Despite their supposedly
rigorous evaluations and learning process of revising and inventing new laws to
adapt to a myriad social and physical situations, they are also prone to errors. This
is the case not only for socio-moral institutions but also for scientific institutions, as
Churchland writes:
To be sure, there is nothing infallible about this learning

procedure [in legislative institutions], but there is nothing infallible
about the parallel learning procedure in institutionalized science
either. In both cases, the human cognitive endeavor repeatedly runs
afoul of and makes adjustments to the real, objective worldsocial
in the first case and natural in the second. And the result in both
cases is an always-imperfect but ever-deeper grasp of how the world
works and how best to make our way in it.383
Regardless of the errors made by both institutions, both aim to gain a deeper
grasp of reality. Churchland insists that the only difference between the two is that
they cover and study a different dimension of the world, with social in the former,
and physical in the latter.
Through the parallel drawn above, the issue raised earlier on whether the
learning of moral knowledge is mere socialization can now be addressed. The first
382
383
Ibid., 286287.
lesson that must be emphasized in the comparison between socio-moral institutions
and scientific institutions is that both apply a critical process of learning.
Owen Flanagan comprehensively summarizes the relevance of this critical
process on his critical commentary essay on Churchlands moral theory:
[Churchlands] core argument is this. Moral knowledge is the result

of complex socialization processes... Mere socialization is
socialization toward which no critical attitude is taken, for which
there are no mechanisms that drive adjustment, modification, and
refinement. The reason moral socialization is not (or need not be)
mere socialization has to do with the fact that there are constraints
that govern the assessment and adjustment of moral learning. We are
trying to learn how to best organize and administer [our] collective
and individual affairs.384
Thus, our aim of attaining moral knowledge is not merely to socialize but to know
the best way to grasp the social world.
Besides adopting a critical process, another lesson that may be derived from
the said parallel is that both science and morality are driven by the empirical world
in their critical learning process, as Churchland writes:
[M]oral learning is driven by social experience, often a long

and painful experience, just as theoretical science is driven by
experiment... What are the principles by which rational people adjust
their moral conceptions in the face of unwelcome social experience?
They are likely to be exactly the same principles that drive
conceptual readjustment in science anywhere else, and they are
likely to be revealed as we come to understand how empirical brains
actually learn.385
384
and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 192215, 206. This essay comprehensively
exposes and critiques Churchlands earlier view of morality as presented in his 1989 work.
Flanagans critique particularly hinges on Churchlands conception of moral progress. This critique
will be covered in the next chapter.
385
The line the same principles that drive conceptual readjustment in science
anywhere else needs emphasis, for reasons that will be illustrated below.
As shown in the previous chapter, a brain learns its social and physical
environment through the Hebbian sculpting of its Hebbian-driven neural networks.
Whether its empirical encounters are social or physical by nature, the brain will
learn their underlying patterns and prototypes. For Churchland, scientific
knowledge is fundamentally composed of activations in physical neural space as
much as moral knowledge is fundamentally composed of activations in social
neural space. Ultimately, both are realized in our neural systems, as Churchland
writes: moral and scientific cognition are on an equal footing, since they use the
same neural mechanisms, show the same dynamical profile, and respond in both the
short and the long term to similar empirical pressures; and...in both moral and
scientific learning, the fundamental cognitive achievement is the acquisition of
skills, as embodied in the finely tuned configuration of the brains 1014 synaptic
connections.386
The way in which scientific knowledge is embodied in our brains may
already be apparent. Conceivably, in the same manner that extrapersonal
scaffolding shapes our non-discursive moral knowledge to a higher level, the
original physical non-discursive cognition is raised to a scientific level also through
the aid of that very scaffolding, mostly through socio-moral institutions for the
former, and scientific institutions for the latter. In this sense, scientific knowledge is
386
fundamentally a non-discursive physical knowledge that is boosted or
enhanced by discursive regulatory mechanisms of scientific institutions. This
parallels the account of moral knowledge conceived earlier. 387
However, what may not be immediately apparent in Churchlands claim,
raised in the previous quote, is why scientific knowledge can also be conceived as a
set of skills. To clarify this point we must discuss the difference between praxis and
theoria.
2. Unifying Scientific and Moral Knowledge
Churchland defines praxis as practical or behavior-oriented knowledge,
and theoria as theoretical or fact-oriented knowledge. 388 He points out that
philosophers have the tendency to place moral knowledge in the first class and
scientific knowledge in the second. For Churchland, this distinction is superficial
because, in application, the difference between them cannot actually be determined
definitively.389 His argument is based on the fact that the brain draws no distinction
between praxis and theoria. This is because both kinds of knowledge are embodied
in the 100 trillion synaptic weights of our brain and both serve as frameworks that
we use to conceive sensory and motor input. The only real difference between them
is that one focuses on the physical dimension of the world and the other focuses on
387
As shown in Section A, moral knowledge is fundamentally non-discursive that is
boosted or enhanced by discursive elements found at the collective or social level.
388
Paul Churchland, Flanagan on Moral Knowledge, in Robert N. McCauley, ed., The
Churchlands and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 302310, 303304. This essay is
Churchlands response to Flanagans Essay, Moral Network Theory that was cited earlier. The
nature of the debate surrounding their exchange will be discussed in the latter parts of this thesis.
389
Ibid., 304305.
its social dimension.390 This, for Churchland, shows that moral knowledge is not a
different mode of knowledge as compared to scientific knowledge, the only real
difference between them is their subject-matter.391
Now even if it is true that both kinds of knowledge (scientific and moral,
praxis and theoria) are realized through the same neural machinery, it would seem
hasty to conclude that the difference between praxis and theoria is merely
superficial, mainly because of the common assumption that science is conceived as
a body of knowledge composed of facts and theories. But for Churchland, this
doubt may be put to rest if one looks closely at how the so-called theoria is used in
the scientific enterprise. As Churchland puts it, 392 we only conceive scientific
knowledge as theoria because we are not immersed in the field that uses that
theoria. Churchland supports this claim by illustrating that an average persons
knowledge of scientific theories is significantly different with that of knowledge of
actual engineers and scientists on the field who put those theoria into practice.
For example, the mathematics and the theory behind how an electronic device
works will be arcane, distant, and abstract to an average person even if he or she
understands the theory itself (the mathematics behind floating-points computations
in a physical CPU for example), but for an adept computer engineer, those
mathematical equations and theories are not merely abstract ideas but are directly
observable features of computers and electronic devices.

390
Ibid., 305.
391
Ibid.
392
As he writes: If one wants to discriminate moral from scientific knowledge, therefore,
one is better advised to look to discriminating subject-matters rather than discriminating modalities
(Ibid., 304).
Thus, for those who work in the field, the theories perfectly illustrate,
empirically how computers work and operate. This is because they put the theory
into practice, and is thus no longer an empty abstract idea. Now, it is founded on
real experience, experience showing that such theory not only explains how
computers work but also enables them to effectively manipulate those computers.
As Churchland illustrates, the properties and entities that are so distantly
theoretical for others have become the directly observable features and the readily
manipulable tools of [a workers] professional workspace. This practical facility, in
both perception and manipulation, is an essential feature of becoming a successful
scientist or engineer.393
In this sense, the line between theoria and praxis blurs, because theoria is
only theoria for those who have not applied the theory into practice. Churchland
attributes this view of science as a mastery of knowledge and skills to Thomas
Kuhn, saying that: As Kuhn has emphasized, mastering scientific theory is a
process that barely begins by memorizing a set of discursive laws. The real work is
done as one acquires the manifold skills of applying, extending, and exploiting it,
and in general, of moving effectively around the peculiar world to which that
theory gives access. 394 For Churchland this clearly indicates that [s]cientific
knowledge...is an inextricable mixture of fact-oriented, perception-oriented
knowledge, and behavior-oriented knowledge. It seems otherwise only to people
393
Ibid.
394
Ibid.
who dont have it or whose encounter with it ended in a handful of two-hour written
examinations in the classroom.395
Conceivably, moral knowledge is also an inseparable mixture of praxis and
theoria. Indeed, as already illustrated in this chapter, moral knowledge is composed
of non-discursive skills such as the capacity to recognize immediately a motor
instance of cruelty and kindness, and is regulated by discursive rules such as the
theoretical interpretation of an act of cruelty as a sin (from the perspective of a
Christian) or as an act against the law (from the perspective of a secular person). In
Churchlands framework, since discursive rules are founded on non-discursive
elements, the mixture of praxis and theoria is also inescapable in ones formulation
of moral knowledge. Thus, both moral and scientific knowledge are a mixture of
theoria and praxis, as Churchland writes: [Moral knowledge is] [a]n inextricable
mix of praxis and theoria focused on the social world, while scientific knowledge
is [a]n inextricable mix of praxis and theoria focused on the natural world.396 In
this sense, moral and scientific knowledge are not different forms of knowledge,
contrary to the common assumption that they are.
Thus, overall, there is an evident parallelism between scientific and moral
knowledge. Again, it is shown that the only difference between the two knowledge
are their subject-matter, and not the mode or the way the knowledge itself is
conceived. This shows that when it comes to how knowledge is conceived at the
individual level, there is no real distinction between science and morality. Also, at
395
Ibid.
396
Ibid., 305.
the collective level, the critical attitude employed by socio-moral and scientific
institutions in the study of science and morality respectively is highly similar.
To summarize, both scientific and moral knowledge take the empirical
world as their guide (physical in the former, social in the latter), both have critical
institutions that can collectively assess and evaluate the objectivity of ones
knowledge (learned through experiments for the former, and learned through past
social experience for the latter), and finally, both are embodied and realized through
the same neural mechanism that is indifferent to the distinction between the two
except perhaps for the different activation spaces that are mostly used to account for
them (physical for the former, social for the latter).
Now this may raise the question of how can one determine the truth of
ones moral knowledge? Evidently, science has a clear unified method in
determining the truth and falsity of their theories.397 But what about in morality,
what method is used to determine the truth of moral theories? One can argue that
such endeavor is useless, since morality is essentially normative at its core,
therefore not truth-evaluable.398 As Ayer would have stressed, moral statements do
not express any factual truth; they are merely expressions of moral sentiments.399 In
397
This refers to the common scientific method taught to us in our early education, which
can be roughly formulated: 1) Ask a question, 2) form a hypothesis, 3) test the hypothesis through
experimentation, 4) analyze data, and 5) make a conclusion.
398
The non-cognitivist argues that moral judgments are not truth evaluable because (for
example) they are merely expressions of attitudes or emotionsin much the same way that
jealousy is not a truth evaluable claim (as jealousy does not refer to anything independent of the
emotional state of the person experiencing jealousy), neither are moral claims (William D.
Casebeer, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, And Moral Cognition, [Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2005], 13).
399
Language, Truth, and Logic, see chap. 6, Critique of Ethics and Theology, 104126
Churchlands framework, however, this issue does not post a problem for the
objectivity of moral knowledge, for he measures the objectivity of knowledge in a
different manner.
3. The Pragmatic Objectivity of Moral Knowledge
In the previous chapter, it has been shown that ones morality is
fundamentally composed of social skills and abilities that took Hebbian learning
years to sculpt. Such learning, being a mindless process, does not account or even
have the concept of truth embedded in its sculpting process. What is apparent is that
it slowly grasps the underlying patterns of the world and yields knowledge on how
best to navigate that world. One is equipped with a cognitive machinery driven by
such learning, and the quality of ones knowledge of the world, it would seem, is
measured by how effectively one grasps and navigates the world. Indeed, when we
walk on the street we do not usually question if our method of walking is the best
method or whether it is true that we are walking at all; instead, we just walk the way
we do because that is how experience has taught us since we were born. The
objectivity and quality of our knowledge of walking is determined by how
effectively we walk in a spatio-temporal world. For Churchland this is also the case
for moral knowledge. Moral knowledge is a know-how, particularly in knowing
the structure of social space and how to best navigate ones way through it. 400
400
Churchland, Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge, 300; Churchland, Toward a
Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, 44.
As illustrated in this thesis so far, we acquire socio-moral knowledge in the
same way we acquire knowledge of the physical world. Evidently, in a
neurocomputational sense, both are acquired through the Hebbian sculpting of our
neural networks. Indeed, for Churchland, moral knowledge and knowledge in
general are acquired through neural phenomena. He argues that this mechanism
seems to show that the quality of ones knowledge is measured not through some
one-to-one correspondence with reality, but through how well and how far that
knowledge lets a person grasp and navigate the world, as Churchland writes:
What motivates this suggestion is the novel account of

knowledge and conceptual development emerging from neural-
network models of cognitive function... On these
neurocomputational models, knowledge acquisition is primarily the
process of learning how: to recognize a wide variety of complex
situations and how to respond to them appropriately. The quality of
ones knowledge is measured not by any uniform correspondence
between internal sentences and external facts, but the quality of
ones continuing performance. From this perspective, moral
knowledge does not automatically suffer by contrast with other
forms on knowledge.401
Evidently, this means that, for Churchland, moral knowledge is objective because it
is practically effective. It is thus evident that the acquisition of moral knowledge is
learning practical wisdom, in particular the wise administration of a [persons]
practical affairs in a complex social environment. For Churchland, this means that
moral knowledge is a genuine...case of learning about objective reality as one
finds anywhere.402
401
402
This is why Churchland justifies moral knowledge by pointing to
experience:
Just what are the members of the society learning? They are
learning how best to organize and administer their collective and
individual affairs. What factors provoke change and improvement in
their typical categories of moral perception and their typical forms of
behavioral response? That is, what factors drive moral learning?
They are many and various, but in general they arise from continuing
social experience of conducting a life under the existing moral
framework.403
Thus, his answer to the question: What social skills will make one the
maximally successful social agent? is: Only experience can answer that
questionone's own experience, and the accumulated experience of all
mankind.404
Based on the points above, Churchlands arguments lead him to a pragmatic
justification of moral knowledge.405 However, his pragmatism is different in a sense
that it leads to a pragmatic justification not merely by affirming the objectivity of
moral knowledge solely because of its practical effectiveness, but also by showing
that, at the fundamental level, all types of cognition are essentially pragmatic, in a
sense that all knowledge is a slow process (as Hebbian learning dictates), of
learning the most practically effective grasp of the world and navigating around it.
That being the case, moral knowledge is as objective as any kind of knowledge
gained through synapse adjustment or neural sculpting of activation spaces.
403
404
405
Flanagan refers to Churchland as pragmatist when it comes to his overall view of
knowledge. See Moral Network, 208.
This leads us back to the argument Churchland is appealing to in his task to
show the objectivity of moral knowledge, to show in particular that moral
knowledge is fundamentally not different from scientific knowledge. At the neural
level, Churchland claims that all knowledge is essentially the same. This means that
as a mode or a form of attaining knowledge, morality is no different from any kind
of knowledge, and thus no different from knowledge gained through science, as he
writes:
[M]oral learning is driven by social experience, often a long

and painful experience, just as theoretical science is driven by
experiment. Moral knowledge thus has just as genuine claim to
objectivity as any other kind of empirical knowledge. What are the
principles by which rational people adjust their moral conceptions in
the face of unwelcome social experience? They are likely to be
exactly the same principles that drive conceptual readjustment in
science anywhere else, and they are likely to be revealed as we come
to understand how empirical brains actually learn.406
Overall, then, Churchlands moral realism, or his justification of the
objectivity of moral knowledge, lies in his claim that all knowledge is driven by the
same neural mechanism. He claims that such mechanism points to the fact that the
quality of ones knowledge is not measured by a one-to-one correspondence, as
classical truth dictates, but by how penetrating and how effective the knowledge is
in helping one grasp and navigate the world. Thus, from this perspective, as long as
moral knowledge is penetrating and effective, it is objective. But it would seem that
the similarities depicted above led Churchland to conclude something else besides
the objectivity of knowledge, as will be shown below.
406
4. A Glimpse of Moral Progress: Beyond Churchlands Depiction of Moral
Realism
Churchlands moral realism, as discussed above, led him to another radical
conclusion. Since moral knowledge is driven by the same neural mechanism as
scientific knowledge at the individual level, and since, at the collective level, both
embody critical institutions that evaluate and improve their respective knowledge,
Churchland is optimistic that moral progress is possible as much as scientific
progress is, as he writes in different occasions:
[Because] moral knowledge is as genuine as knowledge

elsewhere... moral progress is possible. There is no reason why our
moral consciousness and moral understanding can continue to
improve and deepen indefinitely, just as our nonsocial perception
and our theoretical science may also do. For in fact we do have an
organ for understanding and recognizing moral facts. It is called the
brain.407
As I view matters from the neural-network perspective...I can

find no difference in the presumptive brain mechanisms and
cognitive processes that underwrite moral cognition and scientific
cognition. Nor can I find any significant differences in the respective
social institutions that administer our unfolding scientific and moral
consciousness respectively. In both cases, learning from experience
is the perfectly normal outcome of both the neural and the social
machinery. That means that moral progress is no less possible and no
less likely than scientific progress.408
Churchlands optimism on the above parallel, however, is not shared by one
of his critics. Flanagan remarks that Churchland is overly optimistic about the
capacities of the community to arrive at high-quality moral knowledge. Flanagan
407
Ibid., 303.
408
believes that the problem is rooted in Churchlands excessive dependence on the
analogy between scientific and moral knowledge.409
Before going to the details of Flanagans critique and the overall defense of
Churchlands idea (this would be discussed in the next chapter), the researcher
would first attempt to show why Churchland is excessively dependent on the
analogy between science and morality, and ultimately why he is optimistic that
moral knowledge can progress. The answer to this, the researcher asserts, lies in
Churchlands overall neurophilosophical account of epistemology, specifically his
neurocomputational account of how objective knowledge is attained. In such
discussion, Churchlands idea of how progress in scientific knowledge is possible
will also be revealed, thereby showing how progress in socio-moral knowledge is
also possible.
C. Reconceiving Moral Realism through the Brains Epistemic Situation
Ever since W.V. Quine dismantled the analytic and synthetic distinction410
and has shown that epistemology should be naturalized, 411 the direction of
409
Flanagan, Moral Network, 192193.
410
Some of the distinctive elements of Quines naturalism result from his divergences
from the logical positivists. The latter held that there is a strict distinction between analytic and
synthetic truths, taking the former to be necessary and a priori, and the latter to be a posterior and
contingent Quine came to see things differently... Quine begins his attack by focusing on the
accounts of analyticity provided by Kant and Frege, and argues that they fail because they either
presuppose the notion of analyticity at some point in their analyses, or they rely on concepts that are
just as problematic as analyticityfor example, synonym, correct definition, necessityin their
explication of it... We thus see that, for Quine the distinction between analytic and synthetic is not an
absolute one. Some sentences are more immune to revision in the light of future experience or
theoretical developments, but no sentences, not even p or not-p, are entirely immune of revision.
There are no analytic truths in this sense. Nor are there any necessary truthsat least not if we
identify the latter with absolute and unrevisable truths, or if we follow positivists in equating
epistemology has radically changed. Churchland took Quines intention to heart, as
one of his commentators write: Churchland is the first truly natural epistemologist.
Quine (1951) opened the doors by arguing that natural science does matter to
philosophy (and vice versa). Churchland was the first to boldly step through those
doors and demonstrate how naturalized epistemology could, and should, be
done.412
This section will be a brief account of Churchlands neurocomputational
epistemology. Because in Churchlands framework all kinds of knowledge are
fundamentally driven by neural phenomena, knowing how knowledge is conceived
through neural phenomena also means knowing how morality is conceived overall.
Thus, the discussion of the overall status of moral knowledge can and must be
based on Churchlands overall epistemology.
statements that express necessary truths with statements that express analytic truths (Barry Dainton,
Quine, in Barry Dainton and Howard Robinson, eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic
Philosophy, [London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014], 73&75).
411
Quines overall claim that epistemology should be naturalized can be seen in this quote:
Philosophers have rightly despaired of translating everything into observational and logico-
mathematical terms. They have despaired of this even when they have not recognized, as the reason
for this irreducibility, that the statements largely do not have their private bundles of empirical
consequences. And some philosophers have seen in this irreducibility the bankruptcy of
epistemology. Carnap and the other logical positivists of the Vienna Circle had already pressed the
term metaphysics into pejorative use, as connoting meaninglessness; and the term epistemology
was next. Wittgenstein and his followers, mainly at Oxford, found a residual philosophical vocation
in therapy: in curing philosophers of the delusion that there were epistemological problems. But I
think that at this point it may be more useful to say rather that epistemology still goes on, though in a
new setting and a clarified status. Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a
chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical
human subject (Willard Van Orman Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, [New York:
Columbia University Press, 1969], 8283; Epistemology Naturalized 6990).
412
Aarre Laakso and Garrison Cottrell, Churchland on Connectionism, in Paul
Churchland, 149.
1. Neurosemantics: How the Brain Represents the World413
In Chapter II, it has been illustrated that the brain grasps the world through a
plethora of activation spaces whose configurations are attained through a long
period of synaptic adjustments. But the question of how those activation spaces
represent the world was still not answered. According to Churchland, the brain
maps the world similar to how geographical maps represents the world, though
our brain maps the world not through two-dimensional maps but through high-
dimensional ones.
1.1 Representing the World through Maps
For Churchland, the fact that there are representational alternatives besides
language and propositional representation is clearly established. He asks us to look
at photographs, paintings, holograms, acoustic recordings, movie films, algebraic
equations (for straight lines, circles and surfaces), folding road maps, and many
others. Clearly, these objects represent certain aspects of the world beyond what
language can depict. Churchland claims that the brain is similar, as it represents the
world in a non-lingual way, specifically through activation vectors and activation
spaces. The way in which these vectors and spaces portray information or
representation is through their distance relations between prototype regions,
which is roughly similar to how maps represent areas through distance relations
between regions, as Churchland writes:
413
General discussion on this part mostly taken from Churchland, What Happens to
Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 103112; Platos Camera, 74103.
The view on the table is that to possess a conceptual

framework for any given feature-domain is to possess a high-
dimensional activation space that has been metrically sculpted into a
maplike internal structure. The representational significance or
semantic content of any given map-element therein (e.g., a specific
metrically compacted prototype region) is determined by the unique
profile of its many proximity and distance relations to all of the other
map-elements within that same space.414
How the brain represents the world through distance relations between
prototype regions can be clearly seen if we look back at the previous example of
activation space for faces presented in Chapter II (Figure 2.9). Where it is shown
that there are prototype regions for a non-face, male face, and female face. This
means that a whole conceptual framework of a face is a map of typical activation
regions with prototype activations and trajectories for a certain kind of face. 415
Apparently, there is a respective region for each type of face. Taken as a whole, this
constitutes a neuronal map for faces. But it is important to note, again, that such a
three-dimensional map presented in Figure 2.9 is only a simplified version of the
actual 80-dimensional activation space generated by the face network presented
earlier. Our biological brains, on the other hand, are even more complex, as they
represent the world through maps with millions of dimensions, as Churchland
writes:
414
415
When Churchland refers to prototype regions, he means an area that is typically
activated in an activation space for a respective representation. For example a male face activates the
prototype region of a male face (male face region in Figure 2.10). In the context of recurrent
networks, activation regions refer not only to prototype points in a region, but also prototype
trajectories through the region. For example, the movement of a male face is an activation trajectory
in the male face region, but a single snapshot of a male face is only an activation point in that very
same region.
On this score, think maps. Not the two-dimensional maps

that grace your automobiles glove compartment, but high-
dimensional mapsmaps with three, or a hundred, or even a million
distinct dimensions, maps with extraordinary resolution and
structural detail. Such maps residehundreds and perhaps even
thousands of distinct mapsinside the brains of animals in general,
and inside the brains of humans in particular. They are maps not of
any geographical realities; their high-dimensionality takes them out
of that comparatively meager realm. Rather, they are maps of
abstract feature domains... They are maps that constitute the
conceptual frameworks so familiar to us from the philosophical
tradition, and so vital to any creatures comprehension of the world
in which it lives.
However, and contrary to tradition, these frameworks are not
families of predicate-like elements, united by a further family of
sentence-like general commitments in which those elements appear...
Indeed, they are not linguaformal at all. Instead, these high-
dimensional maplike frameworks typically consist of a large family
of high-dimensional prototype points and prototype-trajectories
united and mutually configured by an intricate family of similarity
(i.e., proximity) and difference (i.e., distality) relations. The full
range of such prototype points and trajectories represent the full
range of possible kinds of things, and possible kinds of processes and
behavioral sequences, that the creature expects, or is conceptually
prepared, to encounter.416
As shown in the quote above, Churchland thinks that the brain represents
the world through map-like elements in a form of prototype activation regions in
specific activation spaces. This is roughly similar to how geographical maps can
represent the world through regions of places. For example, a detailed map of the
Philippines will contain demarcation lines between, say, Quezon City, Manila, and
Makati in the same manner as an activation space will contain demarcation lines
between types of non-face, male face, and female face. In this sense, whether it be
neuronal maps or geographical maps, the significant factor that determines that a
416
Churchland, Platos Camera, viiviii.
map is a map for a certain feature (for brains) or place (for geographical maps) is
the distance relations between the map elements.
In sum, respectively, geographical maps represent the landscape of the
places through distance relations engraved in an image or a drawing, while neuronal
maps represent the abstract landscape of the world (that is, their abstract features
and patterns) through distance relations sculpted in activation spaces in the brain.
Indeed, as seen in previous chapters, the brain is indeed capable of representing
different features and patterns of the world, whether they be physical or social. Now
the question is what difference does this map-like representation have? Apparently,
it has several differences,417 but what needs emphasis with the topic at hand is the
characteristics of maps to portray the world in different degrees of detailthat is,
its characteristics to portray the world in a homomorphic manner.
417
Churchland presents several difference that his framework (which he calls Domain
Portrayal Semantics [DPS]) evokes. One is that it explains how concepts can be related to each other
in manner of distance between activation points or similarities in the distance relation of each
elements. For example, the map of the Philippines can be approximately related to a shape of a
sitting dog even though those two concepts are highly different from each other. Another is that DPS
gives an account of how the brain represents the world without the need to have a direct causal
relation to the object represented. For example, a very rough Philippine map accidentally generated
by spilling a cup of coffee on a paper can represent the overall rough structure of the Philippines
without the need for it to be generated directly by the prior experience of the Philippines. The map
just needs to be roughly accurate to represent the place; it does not matter how the map was made or
if the map was made with exact reference to the place. It simply needs to be accurate when used for
representing the place. A third difference, when the above points are combined, when DPS explains
how maps, generated through different causal factors, can still show resemblance to one another. For
example, a fictional map created by a fiction writer that is shaped like a dog can be similar to a map
of the Philippines even though the writer does not know anything about the Philippines. Another
example is that a fictional map of Atlantis made by different authors can still have similarities even
though they do not have a common reference in reality. Overall, what DPS gives us is an internalist
criterion for identity portrayal or sameness of meaning. Discussion mostly based on Churchland,
What Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 104105.
1.2 Homomorphism of Maps: Beyond First-Order Resemblance
Churchland asserts that the brain does not represent the world through first-
order resemblance, particularly not through one-to-one concept to property
resemblance the Locke-Humean account depicts.418 He insists [that] would be like
requiring, of a highway map of the entire continental United States, that the various
circular black dots for the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego, Houston,
Seattle, and New York must each literally resemble the unique city that each black
dot represents. 419 For Churchland this one-to-one first-order resemblance is not
needed to represent the world; instead he insists that successful representation is
achieved...[by] second-order resemblance between the overall pattern of distance-
relations between the various circular black dots on the map, and the overall pattern
of objective distance relations between the various cities collectively
represented.420
If our representation is indeed a form of second-order resemblance, it
implies several things for our overall epistemic and semantic situation, and such
implication can be seen on how geographical maps work. For example, a map of the
Philippines does not need to have a one-to-one exact resemblance to the entirety of
the actual Philippine landscape to be an objective reference. That map, or any map
for that matter, only needs to depict (1) the family of distance-relations it bears to
everything else on the map, and (2) the homomorphism that holds between those
418
Further discussions on the present topic would be based on Churchland, Platos Camera,
2.7 How the Brain Does Not Represent: First-Order Resemblance, 7890.
419
420
Ibid.
assembled distance relations and the objective distance relations holding between
the objective items that are thereby successfully mapped.421 This means that highly
different maps of the Philippines can still objectively represent the place as long as
they meet the criteria depicted above. A clear instance of this can be seen in Figures
4.1 and 4.2. These two maps are clearly different from each other in terms of
details. But even though the other map is more detailed than the other, that does not
make the less detailed map a false or untrue map; it only means that the other map
is a more accurate map than the other. To state another example, even an old map
that mistakenly depicts the detailed shape of the Philippines is still a roughly correct
Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3422

Three Maps of the Philippines, Figure 4.2 having the details of elevation and
detailed region divides as compared with Figure 4.1; a plain blank map.
Figure 4.3 is an old Philippine map taken from 1814 World Atlas
(Islands of the East Indies) by Mathew Carey
map, as long as it meets the requirements stated earlier. An example of this is the
portrayal of the Philippines in the 1814 World Atlas (See Figure 4.3). In a sense,
421
Ibid.
422
Figure 4.2 taken from David Rumsey Map Collection, Islands of the East Indies,
www.davidrumsey.com,
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~663~50102:Islands-of-the-East-
Indies-?sort=pub_list_no_initialsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_list_no%2Cseries_no
this old map is still an objective portrayal of the Philippines, though the two
previous maps above are more accurate portrayals of the Philippines. This is the
case because we see the map of the Philippines as a whole; accordingly, overall, we
see the map of the Philippines roughly as a dog-shaped figure. Thus, any map that
resembles this particular dog-shaped figure is a rough representation of the
Philippines. This is why Figure 4.3 is a recognizable map of the Philippines because
it contains the holistic picture of the Philippines. But once we isolate micro-
elements of the map (we zoom in Visayas for example), it will be hard to tell if the
map is part of the Philippines (unless familiar with the intricate structural details of
the Philippines). In this sense then, representation lies in distance relation between
all elements taken as whole, leading us to semantic holism. 423
Overall, because of their holistic nature of depicting distance relations, maps
give us a representational account that does not need Boolean (black or white; true
or false) confirmation, and then show us how degrees of accuracy or objectivity in
representation are possible. A map of the Philippines does not need to be 100%
accurate to represent the Philippines; it merely needs to have the overall objective
distance relations accurate enough to roughly represent the Philippines. Seeing that
neuronal maps are roughly similar to geographical maps, our representation of the
world, at least in Churchlands framework, is the same as well. In this sense, we
423
Evidently, the proper semantic theory for a highway map, or any other geographical
map, is robustly holistic. Semantic significance accrues to such map elements not one by one, and
independently of the semantic significance of neighboring map elements. Rather, they gain their
semantic and referential significance collectively, and the unique significance of each distinct
element is an irreducible function of all of the within-map relations it bears to every other map
element. For maps, at least, no other semantic theory is even worth talking about (Churchland,
Platos Camera, 81).
represent the world not through first-order resemblance but by second-order
resemblance. Thus, accuracy and objectivity are not a matter of plain truth and
falsity, but come in degrees. This, however, invites the question of how we are
supposed to evaluate the accuracy or objectivity of a neuronal map. Churchland
argues that the map analogy also gives us an insight on how maps could be deemed
objective no matter how rough their representations are.
1.3 Attaining Objectivity through Map Indexing
Churchland states that the Kantian lesson Thoughts without content are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind 424 naturally emerge from the brain
map account depicted above.425 This claim can be understood if we look at how a
map is used in real navigation. For example, when a person is lost in a forest, a map
of the forest would obviously be usefulbut, without knowing where you are on
the map, the map is as good as useless. As Churchland puts it, you need the
indicator-state to finger-point that you are here on a certain area of the map. On
the other hand, even if the person lost in a forest knows where he is on the map
(through a you are here indicator-state), if the map is not detailed enough to
portray the crucial areas of the forest, the map would also be useless. From this
perspective, maps without indicator-states are empty, and indicator-states without
proper maps are blind. To put it more visually, when navigating a forest, maps
without fingertips to point you are here are empty, and fingertips without
424
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 93 [A 52/B 76].
425
detailed maps are blind (Figure 4.4). Thoughts without content are like maps that
cannot be indexed, while intuitions without concepts are indicator states with no
proper map to refer to.
Figure 4.4426
(a) Intuitions without concepts, (b) Concepts without intuitions
First, with regard to intuitions without concepts, we have seen in Chapter II
how sensory information, particularly indicator-states or intuitions in the
discussion, can be useless without a prior conceptual framework in place. As have
been discussed, such conceptual framework is basically an activation space that
represents the world like a map. Without those maps, sensory perception will be
blind as seen in untrained artificial neural networks. A network without a prior
grasp of what a face is cannot see the features of a face; in a sense it is blind to
faces. The same is true for a child without neuronal maps evoking comprehension
of what objects are; the child cannot grasp the world without proper sculpted
activation spaces to give him or her a map on how to navigate the world. 427
Churchland states that the principle here is that there is No Representation Without
426
Figure 4.3 taken from Churchland, Platos Camera, 103.
427
Reference to discussion on Chapter III: 2.1 Forming the Human Person, a
neurocomputational account, in this thesis.
at least Some Comprehension.428 This is where the learning process discussed in
Chapter III comes in again. Without a hard-earned sculpting process of attaining
activation spaces through Hebbian learning, one cannot even begin to grasp the
world. As Churchland would say, one needs to know and comprehend the world to
some extent before one can begin to properly perceive it.429 In this sense, intuitions
without concepts are truly blind.
On the other side of the discussion (See Figure 4.4b), thoughts without
content, what is important to point out here is that for maps to be meaningful, they
need to be indexed. Churchland describes the indexing process in this manner:
Maps, as we know, can be indexed. That is, a point within

the map can be specified, perhaps with a reaching fingertip, as the
map-indexers current location, within the larger range of locational
possibilities comprehended by the map as a whole. The indexers
fingertip may assume a specific position on the two-dimensional
highway map, a position with a unique < x, y > pair of coordinates,
to indicate you are here. The abstract feature-domain maps within
the brain can also be indexed, this time by the activity of our sense
organs, to indicate to the brain you are here in the space of
possible objective situations. A sense organs current activity can
cause a signature pattern, < x1, x2,..., xn >, of n simultaneous
activation-levels, across some population of n neurons that embodies
the relevant map. And that activation-pattern will specify a unique
position within the coordinates of that n-dimensional space, a
position that represents the abstract feature currently confronted in
the creatures perceptual environment.430
428
Churchland, Neurosemantics, 143; Platos Camera, 9697.
429
The reason is that, in general, representations cannot do their cognitive jobnamely,
allow us to make relevant and reliable discriminative responses to the environment and,
subsequently, to steer our way through that environmentin an informational vacuum. If you are to
have any hope of recognizing your situation within a complex environment, then you had better
know a good deal about that environment (Churchland, Neurosemantics, 143).
430
Churchland, Platos Camera, ix.
Clearly, when it comes to geographical maps, maps that cannot be indexed
are completely fictional. For example, a map of Atlantis on earth, no matter how
detailed or intricate as a map, is purely fictional as long as it cannot be indexed
anywhere on earth. The same is true for our neuronal mapsif our maps cannot be
indexed in reality, they are purely speculation, as Churchland writes: What is
important, for any map to be taken seriously as a representation of reality, is that
somehow or other, however indirectly, it is possible to index it. (Otherwise it
remains a pure speculation.) 431 Churchlands use of the word indirectly here
needs emphasis, because Churchland is not only referring to sense perception as a
method of indexing, but he is also acknowledging the tools of science that allow us
to index reality beyond what our senses can index. This artificial indexing is
where scientific revolution and progress lies. As we have seen in history, the
telescope allowed us to confirm Copernicus Model (or his neuronal map) of the
solar system. Without such technology, Copernicus Model would have remained
merely pure speculation. The researcher asserts similarly, moral revolution and
progress can happen with the help of technology, as will be explained on the last
parts of this chapter.
1.4 Toward Greater Realism: On the Evaluation of Neuronal Maps
As stated earlier, the objectivity of moral knowledge was justified by
Churchland by showing that the measure of the quality of ones moral knowledge is
431
by how far and how well it lets one navigate and grasp the world. Simply, moral
knowledge is pragmatically justified. But can we attain a justification for moral
knowledge beyond practical success? Churchland insists that his
neurocomputational map account gives a representational value that is not founded
on practical success alone. In fact, he argues that such map account explains how
we commit mistakes and how we succeed in representation. In this sense,
Churchland is claiming that we can measure and explain ones pragmatic success
using criteria outside practical success.
1.4.1 Beyond Classical Pragmatism
For Churchland, conceding to total pragmatism denies the possibility of
attaining an explanation of what practical success consists in. 432 Believing that
truth is what works, pragmatists tend to give up the idea of accurate
representation all together. While Churchland concedes that he is a pragmatist
himself, he does not subscribe to the notion that practical success should be our sole
basis for evaluating knowledge. He insists that we must be able to explain how we
succeed and fail in our representations, as he writes:
[W]e want to be able to explain the profile of any creatures

pragmatic successes and failures in terms of the profile of virtues
and vices of its various background representational systems. If, on
the other hand, we choose to define truth or representational
virtue directly in terms of pragmatic successas in, the true is
432
Discussions on Churchlands view of pragmatism taken from Churchland, What
Happens to Reliabilism Liberated from Propositional Attitudes, 103; Platos Camera, 128134.
what workswe deny ourselves all access to an evidently rich

domain of potential explanations.433
But how can we explain practical success without appealing to classical
correspondence? Evidently, Churchlands brain map account gives us a
neurocomputationally grounded alternative, as he states:
[The neuronal map account has a] major payoff here, one of

especial interest to anyone with Pragmatic inclinations. The brains
possession of behavior-guiding, high-dimensional, feature-space
maps allows us to construct illuminating explanations of our
occasional behavioral misadventures. A map, after all, may be
inaccurate in some one or more particulars. Here and there, it may
fail of a perfect homomorphism with its target domain.434
Churchlands claim can be illustrated through the previous example earlier.
Comparing the old map of the Philippines (Figure 4.3) with the new one (Figure
4.2), we can see that, as a whole, both are roughly successful in representing the
Philippines. But, if we look at the map details, the old map fails in specific
instances of representation as shown in Figure 4.5. Here it can clearly be seen that
the old map is not accurate in its portrayal of Visayas, especially that of Panay. One
can even go so far as saying that it fails to represent Panay in terms of its objective
distance relations. Simply put, the old map taken together can successfully
represent the Philippines, but it fails to represent Panay accurately to the point that
it cannot be recognized as Panay. Churchlands map account suggests that the brain
also misrepresents the world in a similar manner. Although some neuronal maps are
accurate depictions in some aspects, it can also fail to be accurate in other specific
433
434
(a) (b)
Figure 4.5435
(a) Contemporary Map of Visayas, (b) 1814 Map of Visayas
aspects. In worst cases, a map can completely fail to represent reality. Indeed,
experience and history tells us that humans often commit representational mistakes.
From simple misperception 436 to mistaken scientific theories, clearly, our brains
cannot always be accurate in their attempt to depict the world. But these are not
grounds to incline to total skepticism of knowledge; rather, the account above gives
us a possible basis on how we misrepresent the world, and thus gives us an idea
how to correct our misrepresentations. Churchland explains further:
[W]e can... hope to give highly specific explanations, of the

diverse disappointments and multiform misadventures encountered
by any creature, in terms of either its enduring misconceptions of the
435
Figure 4.4a and 4.4b is an enlarged portion of 4.1b and 4.2 respectively.
436
Churchland has an extensive discussion on misperception, but it can roughly be
summarized as this: From a neurocomputational perspective, misperception is often caused by neural
networks ability to either do vector completion or recurrent modulation. Basically, what both of
these processes do is to enhance or clarify the status of a degraded sensory input. This is done
either by modulating or completing the degraded activation vector of the input. Usually, this process
helps us discriminate common objects in unorthodox situations, but this process sometimes fails to
modulate or complete a sensory input. The failure is usually caused by the network to assume that
the object is X even though it is actually Y. The assumption is made through the networks tendency
to associate the current degraded activation vectors to regular prototype activations. But sometimes
the prototype activation vector is sometimes mismatched with the current input. A best example of
these are optical illusions like the color illusion in famous grey squares under the cylinders shadow
or the recently trending blue-black/white-gold dress. Discussion based on The Engine of Reason, the
Seat of the Soul, 107114.
world, on the one hand, or its ephemeral misperceptions of the

world, on the other. We can find specific fault with its
representations at either one of these two distinct levels. And having
located such faults, whether in ourselves or in others, we can have
some hope of repairing them or avoiding them in the future... Thus
we have a case for insisting on a conception of, and at least a
comparative measure for, cognitive or representational virtue that is
independent of any measure of pragmatic or navigational success.437
What, then, is our basis for correcting the misrepresentation of our neuronal
maps? Science, apparently, has continuously developed and corrected its
knowledge throughout its existence. Churchland argues that science clearly shows
how the correction of ones representations should be done, and such correction is
one of the factors that made science progress to its current state.
1.4.2 On the Development of Neuronal Maps: Illustrating Scientific Progress438
[A]ll theories are conceptual maps and all conceptual maps

are theories. What is important, for any map to be taken seriously as
a representation of reality, is that somehow or other, however
indirectly, it is possible to index it . (Otherwise it remains a pure
speculation.)439
The prevailing theme in Churchlands philosophy is that all our concepts are
theories that can be subjected to critical evaluation. As seen on how he attempts to
show that folk psychology is a theory, Churchland insists that all our theories must
be evaluated if we want our knowledge to progress. Such evaluation is, for him, a
437
438
Discussion on scientific progress mostly based on Churchland, Platos Camera, 203
220, 234236.
439
process of evaluating the neuronal maps generated by us and by all of humankind.
Evidently, science has been doing this process for hundreds of years.
Indeed, looking back at history, science has achieved better and more
powerful theories of the world. For example, our view of the cosmos has changed
so much through the years. The initial Ptolemaic model was changed to the
Copernican model, modified by Kepler, unified and augmented by Newton, and
further unified and augmented again by Einstein. Churchland insists that this
process consists in modifying and subsuming the earlier and less powerful neuronal
maps with new and more powerful neuronal maps. 440 For example, Newtons
neuronal map of gravity was improved through Einsteins more powerful and
accurate map. Again, this process can be better understood if we look at actual
geographical maps. Compare the new map of the Philippines with the old 1814
Philippine map shown earlierevidently, our new maps did not render the 1814
map as a totally mistaken map, though the new map provides us with a more
accurate portrayal of the Philippines. The new map proves to be a superior map if it
440
Churchland generally conceives the development of the sciences as the development of
neuronal maps, as he writes: If...we construe scientific understanding as the possession of sundry
maps of the enduring categories, symmetries, and invariants displayed by the objective universe,
then we are free to evaluate the successes or failures of those maps in a large variety of distinct
dimensions, and to evaluate those maps as varying in continuous degrees of accuracy and
inaccuracy. We can then acknowledge, as surely we must, the manifold representational failures
displayed by the many temporarily triumphant theories that populate our long scientific history,
while still maintaining (a) that each of them boasted at least some representational success in at least
some dimensions of evaluation, however narrow, and (b) that successive theories in the same or
overlapping domains often show a still greater representational success across a yet wider range of
dimensions than did their rightly superceded predecessors. In fact, this is precisely what the
successful map subsumptions (a.k.a. intertheoretic reductions)... They typically give us a (usually
only partial) vindication of the ontology and the world portrayal of the reduced theory, plus a
systematic correction of the elements and/or the structural relations of that earlier world-portrayal. A
poor map gets subsumed by a larger and better map, whose internal structures provide both an
explanation of why the older map has the peculiar structural features it does, plus a template for their
systematic correction (Churchland, Platos Camera, 216217).
can explain why the old 1814 map is wrong in some aspects, and also, roughly
correct in some. In a sense, the new map has a more penetrating and wider grasp of
the Philippines. Similarly, for Churchland, superior scientific neuronal maps (or
theories) will also be able to achieve a similar feat when compared with an older,
less superior scientific neuronal map. This development of superior scientific
theories is what, for Churchland, constitutes conceptual progress in science. It is not
about totally replacing old false theories, but about modifying an old neuronal map
or creating a new one, that is more powerful in portraying reality. As stressed
earlier, this is what makes Churchlands map account different from the classical
view of truth, as it evaluates theories not merely as true or false, but with varying
degrees of accuracy.
This leads Churchland to a form of scientific realism, in a sense that all
theories are accurate portrayals of the world as long as they objectively depict a
certain aspect or dimension of reality.441 This means that Ptolemys model, even
though false in the light of new scientific theories that includes galaxies in their
equations, can be deemed an accurate portrayal of at least the solar system. Again,
truth and falsity come in degrees; theories can be right and wrong in different
aspects and dimensions of reality. We can clearly evaluate such degree of accuracy
441
Churchland thinks that [a]ll of our past neuronal maps, when widely embraced on the
strength of their comparative performance at the time, subsequently turned out to be at least partly
accurate portrayals of at least some dimensions of reality, even as judged from the stern perspective
of the superior neuronal maps that actually displaced them... Indeed, and by the same token, any
future neuronal maps, if widely embraced on the strength of their comparative performance at that
time, are also likely to be at least partly accurate portrayals of at least some dimensions of reality,
even as judged from the perspective of whatever neuronal maps will eventually displace them as
well (Platos Camera, 217).
by comparing it with a different or more powerful map (similar to how we can
compare the 1814 Philippine map with new one). From this perspective, the aim of
science, then, is to create and modify theories in order to better portray reality, as
Churchland writes: [W]e can... portray the enterprise of science as one of seeking
ever-more comprehensive and accurate conceptions/portrayals of objective reality,
and as having achieved at least some success in this regard.442
With the above points, it can now be pointed out what evaluation and
correction of neuronal maps consists in within Churchlands framework, and how
these processes amount to progress in our overall knowledge.
The ultimate criterion for evaluation in Churchlands framework is this, to
repeat a quote:
What is important, for any map to be taken seriously as a

representation of reality, is that somehow or other, however
indirectly, it is possible to index it. (Otherwise it remains a pure
speculation.) Exactly how we manage to index it is an entirely
secondary matter. A map may be systematically indexed by the
activity of our native instruments of measurement and detection
our native sense organs. Or it may be systematically indexed by the
activity of new and artificial instruments of measurement and
detectionthe instrumental armamentarium of modern science.
There is no essential difference, in the epistemological warrant that
may accrue to any conceptual framework, depending on whether the
instruments deployed are natural or artificial, on whether their
origins were evolutionary or technological. The warrant is the same
in either case.443
What needs emphasis in the quote above is Churchlands appeal to artificial
indexing. Here he is recognizing the ability of science and technology to
442
443
circumvent the cognitive weakness of humans, particularly their physical limitation
in grasping and navigating the world. Indeed, as already mentioned, our technology
has enabled us to grasp and navigate aspects of the world that, without them, we
would never dream of knowing. To state more examples, imagine a world without a
microscopewithout it we would have not discovered the realm of viruses and
bacteria, and without such knowledge, we would not have the proper medicine to
combat such microorganisms.
It is important to note, however, that aside from having the proper
technology, one also needs to have the proper methodology. The key insight that
should be recalled here is that science has critical institutions that continuously
evaluate the knowledge or the maps it generates. Such evaluation is based not only
on the different perspectives that other people adopt, but also the many different
maps of reality they use to evaluate the map under investigation. This means that in
Churchlands framework, evidence also consists in conforming to other
authoritative maps that have been successfully indexed in the past.444 In this sense,
evidence, then, is not simply indexing the map to reality but also appealing to an
444
He illustrates this point by showing how the 6,000-year-old young earth creationist
theory can be proven inaccurate through multiple theories or neuronal maps from other sciences,
namely, Darwins theory of natural selection, deep historical geology (especially sedimentary
geology), the biologists reconstruction (from the fossil record) of species appearance and
extinction, the biochemists reconstruction of terrestrial evolutionary history from both nucleic and
mitochondrial DNA, planetary astronomy and its long developmental timelines, nuclear physics and
its deep-time radioactive dating techniques, and our growing armory of biochemical techniques for
the genetic modification of simple organisms and the in vitro exploration of their artificial evolution
over time. In this sense, Churchland states that the principal evidence against Creationist biology is
not just a few problematic observational facts, nor even a teeming number of such observational
conundrums. It is a hulking giant of an alternative interpretation of the empirical data, a hugely
successful family of distinct but mutually conforming explanatory theories. Indeed, the
observational data that scientists report (Churchland, Platos Camera, 220).
overall background framework or a panoply of neuronal maps that critical
institutions have built throughout the decades, or even centuries of critical
development. This continuous process applied over time ensures the growth of the
overall number and accuracy of the neuronal maps we adopt to grasp and navigate
reality. As science has demonstrated in history, it has indeed grown through such a
process. This, for Churchland, is what constitutes progress, as he writes:
By these means, as we have already discussed and as our

scientific history illustrates, we can subject our existing conceptual
maps to systematic evaluation and, occasionally, to well-motivated
modifications. And to judge by the comparative levels of success
displayed by successive maps as this evaluative process has been
repeatedly applied over historical time, it often leads to major
advances in our capacity to anticipate and to control the diverse
behaviors of the empirical world. That is, it displays progress,
sometimes highly dramatic progress, at least in the practical
domain.445
But it is important to clarify that Churchland is not claiming that science can
someday reach a Final Theory of truth that has achieved neuronal maps that can
depict reality with 100% accuracy.446 Rather, he is simply illustrating how science
has progressed through the above process throughout history, and how science can
further progress in the future by continuously adopting and improving such
processes. Science does not need to converge into a Single Final Theory to truly
445
Ibid., 234235.
446
Churchland has warned his readers that one should avoid the tendency of traditional
scientific realists or even pragmatists to see scientific progress as the convergence to a One True
Final Theory. Churchland is not denying its possibility, but he asserts that nothing requires that we
reach it either, because he acknowledges the limitations of our brains and our biology even if aided
by developing technology and methodology. See Churchland, Conceptual Progress and Word-
World Relations: In Search of Essence of Natural Kinds, in A Neurocomputational Perspective:
278295, 293294; this cited article was first published in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15, no. 1
(March 1985); Platos Camera, 25, 218, 234.
progress; it only needs to have a more powerful, detailed grasp of and navigation of
reality.
Now that Churchlands overall view of epistemology and scientific progress
has been presented, it is now possible to relate those insights to Churchlands earlier
account of morality. Although not exactly stated by Churchland, the researcher
argues that Churchlands claim that moral progress is similar to scientific progress
suggests that he may be optimistic that the same level of knowledge development
described above can also be realized in the moral domain.447 This is a strong claim
and this will be discussed mainly on the next chapter. But some preliminary points
must be pointed out before ending this chapter, specifically how the future
developments and breakthroughs in the moral domain can conceivably be similar to
developments and breakthroughs in the scientific domain.
2. Toward Greater Moral Realism
As shown above, science has sufficient technologies and methodologies to
evaluate scientific theories. Apparently, on the other hand, moral knowledge, at
least as common sense may tell us, is validated by an arbitrary or subjective
standard. Unlike in the sciences which have a unified method they can use to
determine the validity of their knowledge, there seems to be no reliable method to
447
The issue here is that Churchlands account of moral progress (19892000) was written
before he conceived his neuronal map epistemology and how such epistemology explains the
development of the sciences (2012). Thus, Churchland did not directly claim that the neuronal map
development can be also applied to morality. But because of Churchlands premise that all types of
cognition (whether social or physical) are driven by the same neural phenomena, there is a
possibility that scientific progress as he illustrated in his 2012 work can be also realized in the moral
domain.
determine the validity of ones moral knowledge. Evidently, the methods and
technologies that science uses to evaluate and test its theories are different from the
methods of socio-moral institutions. There is an apparent gap, at least when it
comes to the objectivity of evaluation between science and morality. Think for
example of the difference between experiments in the medical labs to test certain
drugs that can cure SARS or Ebola, and the hearings of Congress in the Philippines
to evaluate the validity of proposed social policies. There can be no doubt that the
decisions of Congress, no matter how critical, are subject to more bias when
compared with the experiments in medical labs.
Churchland admits that there is indeed an evident gap between scientific and
moral knowledge, but this gap, as repeatedly argued in this chapter, is evident not
because moral and scientific knowledge are fundamentally different from each
other as a mode of knowledge. The lack, Churchland claims, lies in the scarce
development of our conception of human nature, as he points out: [O]ur social
technologies show little of the truly radical change evident in our modern scientific
conception of the purely natural world. This is because, I suggest, the
neurobiological, cognitive, and social sciences have yet to achieve the major
conceptual advances achieved in physics, chemistry, and biology.448 Despite the
obvious lacks, Churchland is confident that we can reach that major conceptual
advancement in the moral realm in the future.
448
As stated earlier, Churchland is optimistic that moral progress is as possible
as scientific progress is. However, besides appealing to the fundamental similarities
between scientific and moral knowledge at the neural level and the critical
institutions that regulate them, he did not elaborate on how progress of our
knowledge of the socio-moral realm is possible. One of the main problems with
Churchlands account, as his critics point out, is that the object of knowledge of
socio-moral institutions is different from that of the sciences.
Flanagan argues that it is a mistake to think that the physical world is the
same as the socio-moral world.449 He states that the physical world is more stable
and fixed than the moral structure of the world. This is why he thinks that Lawrence
Kohlbergs theory of moral development is misguided. Flanagan insists that
Kohlberg made a mistake in thinking that Jean Piagets model of cognitive
development, which refers to the causal relation of an organism to the physical
world, can also be applied to the moral sphere.450 Thus, he thinks that Kohlbergs
extension of Piagets program is an utter failure and a degenerate research
program despite having many true believers. The physical realm, for Flanagan,
is simply different from the moral realm. On the same grounds, Flanagan also
449
Discussion taken from Flanagan, Moral Network Theory, 210212.
450
Kohlberg appropriated the Piagetian model to ethics (a model that Piaget had himself
begun in 1932), but the crucial point Kohlberg and Kohlbergians pay insufficient attention to is that
the moral world isnt fixed in remotely the same way the spatial, temporal, or causal structure of the
world is fixed... This is one of the reasons that Piagetian developmental-stage theories have had
some success with space, time, causality, conservation, and number, while Kohlbergs extension of
Piagets model to moral sphere has turned out to be a dismal failure, an utterly degenerate research
program, despite many true believers (Ibid).
thinks that Churchland is committing a similar mistake in his concept of moral
progress.
The researcher agrees with Flanagan in insisting that the moral world is not
stable, but he is mistaken in assuming that the physical world is stable and fixed.
This point can be clearly seen if we take a closer look at current scientific theories
about the cosmos, specifically that of quantum physics.
2.1 The Possibility of Systematically Indexing Socio-Moral Maps
It has been briefly stated in Chapter II that, precisely because of its unstable
nature, quantum mechanics is something that is challenging, if not impossible, to
understand using classical logic. As Stephen Hawking would put it, the quantum
world defies the traditional conception of the universe, meaning that objects
move on well-defined paths and have definite histories... [that] classical picture
could not account for the seemingly bizarre behavior observed on the atomic and
subatomic scales of existence. Instead it was necessary to adopt a different
framework, called quantum physics.451
The unstable nature of quantum mechanics can be briefly but
comprehensively understood through the famous thought experiment which
attempts to explain the nature of quantum superposition, the Schrdingers cat
451
Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 7.
paradox experiment.452 The thought experiment is simple: A cat is sealed in a box
where there is a mechanism that allows a poison to kill the cat depending on the
state of subatomic particles, represented by ON or OFF. The problem with this
experiment is that subatomic particles, by nature, are in a state of superposition, so
they are continuously fluctuating between ON and OFF that they are practically ON
and OFF at the same time. Thus, this gives the possibility that the cat is both dead
and alive at the same time. In this sense, then quantum states are fluctuating
between different states; they do not have fixed values. In the example above, the
cat cannot be deemed alive or dead because its state is fluctuating between those
two extremes.
Now what does the above discussion tell us about Flanagans argument on
the instability of the moral domain? Several things apparently. The development of
quantum physics tells us that instability is not a roadblock to conceptual progress.
The fact that this field deals with unstable realities does not hinder it from
systematically grasping reality. Moreover, quantum physics even developed
theories that has progressed our understanding of quantum reality. Indeed, similar
to how Einstein improved upon Newtons theory of gravity, developments are made
to quantum physics, such as the shift from Bohr-Sommerfeld theory to Heisenberg-
Schrdinger theory, which is arguably better than the former.453
452
Discussion of Schrdingers cat and superposition taken from Mendel Sachs, Concepts
of Modern Physics: The Haifa Lectures, (London: Imperial College Press, 2007), See Schrdingers
Cat Paradox, 5557.
453
The new HeisenbergSchrdinger theory is usually called new quantum theory, to
distinguish it from the Bohr-Sommerfeld old quantum theory. Today, Schrdingers theory is
routinely used instead of Heisenbergs theory, because it is better structured mathematically and is
For the researcher, this clearly means that, despite being unstable, socio-
moral phenomena can also be systematically grasped. To use Churchlands
terminology, the supposed unstable socio-moral phenomena can be systematically
indexed and critically evaluated, roughly similar to how science does it with
quantum phenomena. In this sense, since moral knowledge is not fundamentally
different from scientific knowledge, the current roadblock to the endeavor to
develop our moral knowledge does not lie in the nature of socio-moral phenomenon
itself. The researcher argues that the problem lies in the fact that our latest socio-
moral technologies, methodologies, and theories are not at par with sciences. To
put it simply, we do not have the tools to enable us to systemically index socio-
moral phenomenon like that of the armamentarium natural science uses to
systemically index physical phenomena. Churchland indirectly refers to this issue,
to repeat a quote:
[O]ur self-conception and our social technologies show little

of the truly radical change evident in our modern scientific
conception of the purely natural world. This is because, I suggest,
the neurobiological, cognitive, and social sciences have yet to
achieve the major conceptual advances achieved in physics,
chemistry, and biology. Bluntly, the cognitive scaffolding that
sustains our social lives is still laboring under the burden of a
comparatively primitive conceptual framework. Folk physics may
be gone from our enveloping institutions, but folk psychology is
still very much with us, at least in our social institutions.454
The question, though, is how do we go beyond folk psychology? What tools
do we need to develop a theory or a neuronal map of human nature that can reliably
linked naturally with classical mechanics (Varvoglis, History and Evolution of Concepts in Physics,
109).
454
replace or at least modify the current one? The researcher suggests that the
requirements are roughly similar to the requirements needed to overcome folk
physics.
2.2 Beyond Folk Psychology
Folk physics is simply our everyday intuitions and conceptions on how
physical objects work. As Dennett would put it, folk physics is second nature; it is
as effortless as folk psychology.455 For example, when one sees a glass of water fall
on the floor, it would be second nature for us to assume that it will break.
Apparently, folk physics is an effective tool to grasp and navigate the physical
world, so it is easy to believe that it is true. Imagine, then, if we do not have the
current scientific institutions to tells us that the sun revolves around the earth or the
earth is an oblate spheroid. In that situation, our folk physics will be our sole guide.
Thus, it will be completely natural for us to assume that the world is flat and the sun
arcs upon that flat earth. How else could it be? This is how one sees this
phenomenon every day. At the quotidian practical level this kind of folk physics is
sufficient. Some of the outliers in the ancient times, however, were not satisfied
with this. Perhaps driven by the attempt to know and represent the world better,
they sought something more.
455
Daniel Dennett, Two Contrasts: Folk Craft versus Folk Science, and Belief versus
Opinion, in John D. Greenwood, eds., The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality and Cognitive
Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 135148.
As illustrated in Chapter II, the Greeks started to go beyond folk physics by
inventing mathematics to systematically analyze the workings of the physical
universe. And, thanks to the development of more powerful tools like the telescope,
the early mathematicians were able to properly index their mathematical theories or
their neuronal maps of the world into reality. By doing so they invented more
powerful scientific theories that better represent the world. During the critical mass
of this endeavor the foundation of the scientific community was built. And, after
breaking free from the control of the medieval church, science became the fastest-
growing human endeavor in history. Unlike other fields such as metaphysics, which
is inclined to make neuronal maps that cannot be indexed to reality, science is
devoted to indexing neuronal maps.
The researcher asserts that a similar process must be adopted to attain
radical progress in our knowledge of the socio-moral world. To go beyond folk
psychology, we need powerful moral theories, theories that can be indexed to
reality. Similar to how civilization has overcome folk physics by creating
mathematics and the method to index the neuronal maps it produces, we need a
systematic and powerful way to understand moralityat least as powerful as
mathematics is in portraying the worldand the proper tools to index such system
into reality.
Overall, if we follow science closely, the possibility of advancing ones
knowledge lies in naturalizing morality to better understand how it works and how
it is generated by the individual and society in the actual socio-moral world. It

would seem that, within Churchlands framework at least, the most illuminating
means to develop a naturalistic grasp of the social world lies first in sufficiently
knowing how humans work as individuals, because only through knowing this can
we know how the larger kinematics of the social world operates, as Churchland
explains:
Cognitive Neurobiology...allow us to appreciate in greater

detail the regulatory institutions that humans have long deployed. It
will allow us to appreciate how they do their regulatory and
evaluative work, and even, perhaps, to generate new mechanisms
think of computer technologies and the Internet. Old myths and folk
conceptions are not what we need at this point... Where cognitive
theory is concerned, what we need is a comprehensive and revealing
theory of brain activity. Then, and only then, will we be able to
understand in detail the very considerable role that our secondary
social institutions play in regulating and amplifying it.456
Indeed, throughout this chapter it has been shown that moral knowledge is
driven by neural phenomena at the fundamental level, which is then guided and
steered by regulatory mechanisms or social scaffoldings at the higher level. By
knowing that the kinematics behind morality is fundamentally neural phenomena,
we begin to possibly understand, at least within Churchlands framework, the true
role of social institutions and language in our socio-moral world. In this sense, the
lower-level (molecular level) phenomena gives light to the workings of the higher-
level (molar level) phenomena. 457
Similar to how knowledge of physics has changed our view of the elements
in the periodic table as simply variations of the valence electrons, and how it has
456
457
also changed our understanding of temperature from a two-state phenomenon of hot
and cold to mean kinetic energy of molecules, 458 in the future, knowledge from
neuroscience may someday give us an understanding of psychological and social
phenomena that we have never expected before.
In this thesis, through Churchlands framework, it has been shown how
neural phenomena can give us a better understanding of the psychological and
sociological dimensions of human nature. Most of the radical developments in
neuroscience, though, are still ahead of us. As Churchland has stated repeatedly,
folk psychology is still with us, and until this changes drastically, developments in
our understanding of human nature and our moral and social character will be
limited. As limited as perhaps folk physics was, when it was the only tool to
understand the universe. When one compares folk physics to our current physics, it
is evident how little our understanding of the universe was before the dawn of
science and mathematics. Perhaps, in the future, our successors will see our current
folk psychology in a similar manner.
458
As our science textbooks tell us, the difference between the elements in the periodic
table is the shared valence electron structure each uniquely possesses. This supposedly simple
change in molecular level can drastically alter the composition of an element. Think of the
difference between metals and noble gases for example. Alterations in molecular dynamics is what
make those two types of elements radically different from each other. Besides chemicals and
particles, this influence of molecular-level phenomena on molar-level phenomena reaches to several
other examples. Think of temperature for example. Because of our understanding of particle physics,
we know for a fact that temperature is merely the result mean level kinetic energy of molecules.
Heat is simply means that there is more kinetic energy in a substance, cold means that there is less
energy in it. This is why temperature has an absolute zero at 0 Kelvin (or -273 Celsius), because, at
that level, molecules practically stop generating kinetic energy, hence, yielding no heat. A substance
cannot get any colder than absolute zero, because temperature is the result of molecular
movement. These types of understanding enable molecular-level phenomena to give a deeper
penetrating grasp of molar-level phenomena, which also applies to neural phenomena. Discussion
based on Ibid., 2428.
Overall, it is apparent, then, that to better understand socio-moral
phenomena we must follow the footsteps of natural science. In Churchlands
framework, this means that we must attempt to systematically index socio-moral
theories into socio-moral realities. That is, we must index them to natural facts, like
neuroscience facts, as depicted earlier. Simply put, we must naturalize morality;
only then can our socio-moral knowledge develop and progress.
This perspective, however, leaves out a very important factor essential to
morality. So far, the discussion of morality in this thesis only entails how morality
is developed, how moral knowledge is learned, and how to better understand socio-
moral phenomena through the development of neuronal maps. Apparently, all these
refer to the descriptive dimension of morality, particularly to natural facts about
morality. But morality is filled with normative factors and normative assumptions.
The question is, what is the role of these normative elements when placed in the
perspective of Churchlands framework? Unfortunately, Churchland did not
directly address the normative issue of morality. He did not even attempt to
elaborate on the difference between the normative and descriptive dimensions of
morality. Churchland simply took it as a given that those two are different aspects
of morality, and loosely declared that each aspect has something to contribute to the
other. Now, if Churchland thinks that one can contribute to the other, the question
becomes: What is the role of moralitys descriptive dimension relative to its
normative dimension? The final chapter of this thesis will attempt to answer this
question.
CHAPTER V
Moral Progress
Churchlands exposition of his view of moral progress is decisive but brief.
Although his views are clear, he did not clarify and elaborate on some crucial
points. The researcher suggests that this is the reason why his critics think that his
view of moral progress is riddled with problems. With these points in mind, this
chapter will attempt to 1) expose Churchlands view of moral progress, 2) clarify
some of the issues his critics pointed out with his view, 3) defend Churchlands
view, and 4) reconsider his view to answer the main problem.
A. On the Possibility and Actuality of Moral Progress
For Churchland, moral progress consists in the slow change and
development, over historical periods, of the moral prototypes [moral knowledge and
practices] we teach our children and impose on derelict adults. 459 He argues that
this said progress is not only possible but also actual. Apparently, for him, history
clearly shows us that we have indeed developed our moral prototypes through our
accumulated social experience. Churchland makes his case by comparing the
extrapersonal scaffolding, or regulatory mechanisms, of the ancient era with the
modern era.
459
1. On the Actuality of Moral Progress, a Historical Parallel
As already mentioned in Chapter IV, Churchland specifically emphasizes
the apparent gap between the current legislation with the ancient legislation, as he
illustrates:
A body of behavior-controlling legislation [e.g. the Ten

Commandments] adequate to run an agrarian, bronze-age village is
not remotely adequate to run a modern industrial nation with its
tens of millions of people and its complex, trillion-dollar, high-
tech economy. Our legislation must address practices and facilitate
activities of which ancient peoples had little or no conception. The
regulation of large corporations, of labor unions, of the stock
market, of the nations banks and interest rates, of agricultural and
environmental policy, of pharmaceutical testing and prescription
policy, of school curriculums and scientific research policy, of
hospitals and penitentiaries, of intellectual property and its
industrial applications, of court procedures at the local, state, and
national levels, of traffic behavior on our streets and highways, of
licensing for electrical contractors, airline pilots, pharmacists, and
a thousand other novel professionsthese are all matters whose
regulation is essential to the health and well-being of modern
society, but whose existence went unanticipated by ancient
peoples... The extracortical cognitive scaffolding... is now a
glittering skyscraper of monumental proportions. It makes the
ancient but cognate scaffolding of Exodus look like a plaster hut
by comparison. We have constituted ourselves into a Leviathan
that even Hobbes could not have anticipated.460
Indeed, our current extrapersonal scaffolding lets us swim through a vast,
complex social sea that our ancestors may have never anticipated. Clearly there is a
stark difference between the social situation of ancients when compared with the
moderns. The grasp and navigation of the socio-moral world required for modern
society to run now is much wider in scope compared with the ancients. This
contrast, Churchland argues, clearly shows that we have progressed, as he writes:
460
Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition, 70
This contrast, I assert, represents substantial moral progress

on the part of the human race. Of the matters addressed by ancient
legislation, we have simply put some aside entirely, and we
regulate the others far more consistently, systematically,
sensitively, and wisely than did the ancients. This much is
unsurprising, perhaps. We have the advantage of more than two
millennia of additional social experience, and we now have the
luxury of well-tuned social machinery, with long institutional
memories, devoted to the case-by-case administration of our more
deeply informed discursive legislation.461
Social experience serves an important role here. As discussed in the last
chapter, the interplay between non-discursive elements at the individual level and
discursive elements at the collective level makes the accumulation of socio-moral
knowledge possible. Undoubtedly, such socio-moral knowledge is shaped by
centuries of collective social experience, which is preserved, accumulated, and
enhanced by the development process illustrated in the last chapter. Although
apparent, such progress, however, seems to apply only to the accumulation of
collective wisdom and does not reflect at the individual level. Churchland
acknowledges this fact, as he writes:
It may be objected that, even where it is realized, the

progress here celebrated is more a matter of our having upgraded
the quality and the vitality of the social ocean in which all of us
swim, than it is a matter of our having upgraded the personal
moral virtues of the average individual human beings who happen
to swim in it. With this claim, regrettably, I must largely agree.
While the procedural and legislative virtues that constitute a
modern nation like Canada or the United States no doubt rub off
to some degree on its individual peopleif only by way of the
high standards of the examples it continually setsthe moral
character of an average modern North American is probably little
superior to the moral character of an average inhabitant of the
ancient Levant. The bulk of our moral progress, no doubt, lies in
461
Ibid., 7071.
our collective institutions rather than in our individual hearts and

minds.462
Churchland is, however, optimistic that the little change that an individual
is endowed with through collective moral progress is significant. He thinks that
small increments at the individual level can yield a large difference at the collective
level. 463 This is because the process of development of knowledge involves the
interplay between the individual and collective levels. Thus, improvements in the
individual area can snowball into something drastically significant at the
collective level. From this perspective, then, progress in both dimensions is actual,
as Churchland writes: Plainly, I assert, there has been real progress here, at both
levels of cognition [individual and collective], in...the moral domain....464
In sum, in Churchlands framework, moral progress is the increase and
accumulation of collective knowledge through years or even centuries of social
experience. Progress is genuine if that knowledge enables us to better grasp and
navigate through the social world at the collective, and even at the individual level.
History shows us that this depiction of moral progress is actual in reality, precisely
because there is a clear contrast between our current grasp and navigation of the
social world as compared with the Ancients, as Churchland illustrated. It is thus
clear for Churchland that moral progress is actual.
462
Ibid., 71.
463
Ibid., 7172.
464
Ibid., 72.
2. On the Future of Moral Progress
Now if moral progress is actual, Churchland urges that we should seek
further progress. He thinks that future moral progress lies in following the example
of scientific progress, which has evidently radically changed over the course of
history. As stated in Chapter IV, Churchland thinks that moral progress is no less
possible and no less likely than scientific progress. 465 The points stated in that
chapter show why he is optimistic about this claim. But Churchlands overall
parallelism of moral progress and scientific progress is comprehensively
summarized in this quote:
From the neurocomputational perspective, [moral progress]

looks different only in its ontological focusthe social world as
opposed to the natural worldfrom what we are pleased to call
scientific progress. In the natural sciences as well, achieving adult
competence is a matter of acquiring a complex family of perceptual,
reflective, and behavioral skills in the relevant field. And there, too,
such skills are embodied in an acquired set of structural, dynamical,
and manipulational prototypes. The occasional deflationary voice to
the contrary, our scientific progress over the centuries is a dramatic
reality, and it results from the myriad instructions (often painful) of
an ongoing experimental and technological life lived under those
same perception-shaping and behavior-guiding scientific
prototypes.
Our conceptual development in the moral domain, I suggest,
differs only in detail from our development in the scientific domain.
We even have institutions whose job it is to continually fine-tune
and occasionally reshape our conceptions of proper conduct,
permissible practice, and proscribed behavior. Local, state, and
federal legislative bodies spring immediately to mind, as does the
civil service, and so too do the several levels of the judiciary and
their ever-evolving bodies of case-law and decision-guiding legal
precedents. As with our institutions for empirical science, these
socially focused institutions typically outlive the people who pass
through their offices, often by centuries and sometimes by many
465
centuries. And, as with the payoff from our scientific institutions,

the payoff here is the accumulation of unprecedented levels of
recorded (social) experience, the equilibrating benefits of collective
decision making, and the resulting achievement of levels of moral
understanding that are unachievable by a single individual in a
single lifetime.466
In sum, Churchlands confidence in the actuality and possibility of moral
progress can be attributed to his confidence that scientific progress is actual and
possible. Because scientific and moral knowledge entail the same mode of
knowingat the individual level, as shown in the acquisition of neuronal maps, and
at the collective level, as shown in the critical evaluation of knowledge by social
and scientific institutionsChurchland is confident that progress in the socio-moral
domain is no less possible and no less likely than in the scientific domain. He
admits, however, that radical progress is yet to be achieved in the socio-moral
domain, as he writes:
The social domain shows some of the same sorts of

advances. We do use modern mathematics to serve the making of
economic policy (think of the Federal Reserve Board and its
macroeconomic models), and to sustain the nations monetary
activities on a minute-by-minute basis (think of the e-network and
the computational facilities that underlie your use of a credit card
at the supermarket checkout counter). As well, our conceptions of
proper social behavior have certainly changed. (For example,
Exodus prohibits the charging of interest on loans, but modern
industrial society would collapse without that crucial practice.) On
the whole, however, our self-conception and our social
technologies show little of the truly radical change evident in our
modern scientific conception of the purely natural world.467
466
Ibid., 54.
467
The reason for this gap was illustrated in the last chapter. To review the
points briefly, it has been stated that moral knowledge is not yet sufficiently
equipped with the armamentarium or tools that science uses to evaluate and index
its neuronal maps. As Churchland puts it, this is evident in the fact that the
cognitive scaffolding that sustains our social lives is still laboring under the burden
of a comparatively primitive conceptual framework. Folk physics may be gone
from our enveloping institutions, but folk psychology is still very much with us, at
least in our social institutions.468
Overall, then, what prevents radical moral progressas radically as in
science is that we still lack the knowledge of socio-moral phenomena, and we
lack the tools to properly gain such knowledge. This is apparently the bottleneck to
radical moral progress. The researcher argues that while it is true that our
navigation of the social world has improved throughout the centuries as illustrated
in the difference between the ancient and modern scaffolding, our grasp of the
social world is still lacking, lacking because it is based on folk psychology, an
understanding of human nature that is apparently deficient in several grounds, as
stated in Chapter II. It can be inferred, then, that in Churchlands framework, the
limitation to radical moral progress lies not in our lack of ability to navigate the
social world, but the lack of knowledge of what the social world is, and how to
grasp it.
468
Ibid., 72.
Nevertheless, Churchland is optimistic that future radical moral progress is
not far from our reach. Because of his confidence that our understanding of the
physical world through science is not different from our understanding of the socio-
moral world at the fundamental level, Churchland is optimistic that we can attain a
powerful grasp of the socio-moral world as well, perhaps as powerful as our current
scientific grasp of the physical world. Churchland thinks that the moment we attain
such, our overall socio-moral sensibilities and situation will radically change, as he
writes:
[T]he continuing development of sciences such as

cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, neuropathology,
neuropharmacology, and vector algebra (the mathematics of neural
nets) eventually become absorbed into the extrapersonal, social-
level scaffolding that already structures our interpersonal lives.
And by being absorbed, it will change that scaffolding, and with it,
our moral practices and our moral conceptions. It will afford us the
opportunity to hone entirely new nondiscursive cognitive skills, as
we learn to navigate a social environment containing novel
structures and novel modes of interaction. It will permit a deeper
insight into the intricate dance that is each persons unfolding
consciousness and thus make possible a deeper level of mutual
understanding, care, and protection. It will reconfigure our legal
practices, our correctional practices, our educational practices, and
perhaps even our recreational and romantic practices.469
Again we can refer to a relevant historical parallel here that will help in
imagining how such change is possible, as Churchland repeatedly does.
The development of science and technology, apparently, shows how a more
penetrating grasp of the physical world can transform several aspects of our lives.
We can see how our advanced knowledge of biology has changed our medical
469
Ibid., 7374.
assumptions and practices, and how our advanced knowledge of electromagnetism
and electronics has changed our day-to-day social interaction. We have apparently
diagnosed and cured diseases that our ancestors did not even know exist, and we
have invented technology that our ancestors may have never anticipated. The
invention of vaccines, smartphones, and the Internet apparently hinges on
developing a more penetrating grasp and navigation of the physical world. Such
development is made possible by the radical progress science has achieved in the
past decades. This radical progress, for Churchland, can also be achieved in the
socio-moral domain; we simply need to gain a more penetrating knowledge of that
domain.
Now that Churchlands overall view of moral progress has been laid down,
the issues surrounding his view can now be addressed. As what has been illustrated
so far, Churchland is implying that moral progress is possible as a whole. When he
says that a more penetrating understanding of socio-moral phenomenon can change
our moral practices and our moral conceptions...[and] reconfigure our legal
practices, our correctional practices, our educational practices, and perhaps even
our recreational and romantic practices, 470 this shows his confidence that the
normative dimension will change along with a more developed descriptive
understanding. Evidently, he has not attempted to separate the normative and
descriptive dimensions of morality. In this sense, one can say that Churchland is
confident that moral progress in both dimensions is possible.
470
Ibid., 7374.
Nevertheless, knowing how morality works naturally is different from
setting the standards of what is the best way to be moral. Again, this brings us back
to the is-ought gap that has been briefly alluded to in the past chapters.
Unfortunately, although Churchland took a decisive stance on the distinction
between the normative and descriptive dimensions of morality, he did not tackle the
issue extensively. This is perhaps why some critics pointed out some problems with
his approach toward the normative dimension of morality. These problems will be
addressed in the next section.
B. Critique of Moral Progress
In this section, the researcher will examine the two major critiques made
against Churchlands view of moral progress. These two critiques are concerned not
with the descriptive dimension of Churchlands concept of morality, but rather,
with the normative premises and implications that he adopted.
1. Flanagan on the Limits of Moral Progress
The normative issue in Churchlands account of moral knowledge was
raised by Flanagan in his critical essay, The Moral Network.471 His critique is two-
fold, as he writes:
My two significant reservations have to do not so much with

the [moral] theory itself but with Churchlands way of conceiving of
471
and their Critics, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers): 192215. Proceeding discussions on
Flanagans critique will be based on this.
the normative side of a naturalistic ethics. It seems to me 1) that

Churchland is overly optimistic about the capacities of moral
community to arrive at high-quality moral knowledge; 2) that he
fails to emphasize sufficiently the local nature of much of our moral
knowledge.
Both problems are rooted, I believe, in excessive dependence
on the analogy between scientific and moral knowledge. One needs
to press ways that science and ethics are alike to win the case for
moral knowledge. But things that are alike are not alike in all
respects... And one needs to mark certain unique aspects of the ends
of moral life to understand some special features of moral
knowledge.472
Flanagans critique is anchored on his reference to the supposed different
ends of morality. He insists that the main difference between morality and
science is that science has a relatively clear and specific end, which is to achieve an
objective knowledge of the world. 473 Thus, in this sense, scientific progress is
clearly a process of attaining better knowledge of the world. Morality, on the other
hand, does not have an evidently clear end.. For Flanagan, the ends of morality
are riddled with diverse and local value judgments. Thus, if moral progress exists, it
is a pursuit that seeks to attain different diverse ends. For example, as Flanagan
illustrates, an interpersonally driven moral progress is concerned with social
stability, coordination, and protection from harm, while in contrast, an
intrapersonally driven moral progress is concerned with individual flourishing and
personal goodness.474 People concerned with harnessing the community as a whole
472
Ibid., 192193.
473
Flanagan admits that the aims or ends of science are not fully clear, but it can also be
filled with ambiguity, but he argues that the aims or ends of morality are far more ambiguous, less
clear, and thus more diverse than that of the sciences. See Ibid., 208209.
474
Ibid..
will develop or progress their moral framework differently from people who are
concerned with harnessing the individual.
These contrasting ends become more apparent when we compare the moral
values of different cultures like that of a Buddhists or a Catholics for example.
The ultimate end of a Buddhist is achieving the state of enlightenment, while a
Catholic will pursue the attainment of a place in the kingdom of God. Thus, their
sense of moral progress will be radically different from each other, in a sense that
a Buddhist may see self-discipline and self-awareness as the path to moral
excellence, and a Catholic may see close relationship with God as the path to it.
From this perspective, moral progress is very local and diverse because each
community has different ends and has a unique take on what should be valued,
resulting in radically different oughts. Indeed, moral doctrines, laws, and
constitutions for one religion may be ineffective for another, or, at the individual
level, a certain moral practice may be irrelevant to one individual and relevant to
another.
Evidently, moral knowledge, although empirical and somehow critical as
Churchland illustrated, can be very local, thus becoming conflicting and diverse
across the globe. Flanagan states that even though there are universal moral
principles such as It is wrong to kill except in self-defense, most of the time,
people find their good in a variety of ways.475 As seen in the previous example,
Christian values may be largely different in detail when compared with Buddhist
475
Ibid., 209210.
values. Although they may share some general moral beliefs and principles, the
difference is more pronounced, according to Flanagan. In this sense, only a handful
of moral laws and practices are global, while most others are local.
For Flanagan, there is nothing wrong with having a diverse moral landscape.
Unlike in science where there is a clear goal of attaining a more objective and
accurate knowledge, morality naturally has diverse goals, which leads to diverse
frameworks, and ultimately, different kinds of progress. Flanagan thinks that this
diversity is better than forcing any unification, or any kind of moral agreement
where none is needed. 476 Morality does not seek or need to have a unified goal
toward a particular end.
This being the case, Flanagan insists that moral progress is not as global and
linear as scientific progress, even though Churchland makes it out to be; rather, it is
a limited progress toward better socio-moral conditions for a particular group of
people. For Flanagan, our moral knowledge does not need or ought to
accumulate, develop, and be better than our previous take on it, but merely needs
to be better enough that it helps and accommodates the needs of a particular
community. Considering these diverse values and oughts, morality need not
progress like science, contrary to Churchlands view. From Flanagans perspective,
the normative dimension of morality does not need to strive toward a linear and
global progress, unlike that of science, which seems to enforce a clear normative
assumption that it ought to have a better and accurate objective knowledge of the
476
Ibid.
physical world. Thus, the direction of moral progress can evidently be non-linear,
local, and diverse; it need not be unified, according to Flanagan.477
2. Clark on the Difference between Social and Moral Progress
A different form of critique of Churchlands view of moral progress was
also raised by Andy Clark in his critical essay Making Moral Space: A Reply to
Churchland.478 Clark and Churchland have had multiple exchanges and dialogue
concerning their views on morality, with this exchange spanning across multiple
essays,479 but the main complaint of Clark is this:
There is, I maintain, a sufficiently profound difference

between our human moral projects and the project of successful
social navigation to justify treating the latter, but not the former, as
distinctively moral modes of thought and reason. Such modes are
marked, for example, by the requirement to provide reasons for our
actions, and to be able to address the important question of the
acceptability, or otherwise, of our own underlying needs, desires and
goals... Practices of public moral discussion and exchange
create...these kinds of moral sensitivity...480
Clarks issue with Churchlands view of morality is that it fails to
differentiate between social navigation and moral sensitivity. For Clark, being
477
This phrase is a summary of Flanagans insistence that moral progress should not be
forced into a linear, unified, global process like that of the sciences. Flanagan thinks that moral
progress ought to be local and it ought to take a direction that is appropriate for the individual and
community he or she lives in.
478
Andy Clark, Making Moral Space: A Reply to Churchland, in Richmond Campbell
and Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000):
307312.
479
Their exchanges spans across three articles, namely, Clark, Word and Action:
Reconciling Rules and Know-How in Moral Cognition in Campbell and Hunter, Moral Epistemology
Naturalized: 267290; Churchland, Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition in
Campbell and Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized: 291306, and finally ends in the article
cited in the above footnote.
480
Clark, Making Moral Space, 309.
moral is not simply learning how to grasp and navigate through social space, but
attaining some form of moral understanding, or moral sensitivity to the needs,
desires, and goals of others. Clark argues that this led Churchland to assume that
moral progress simply needs or ought to be an increase in ones grasp and
navigation of the social world, as Clark writes:
For Professor Churchland, progress consists in greater

collective success at the negotiation of increasingly complex social
spaces. I claim, by contrast...that moral progress consists primarily in
increased collective sensitivity to the needs, reasons and desires of
others. Our communal explorations of moral space serve to sculpt
and tweak these needs and desires while simultaneously attempting
to accommodate as wide a variety as possible... For we make moral
progress, I want to claim, only by swimming better in a sea of
others [sic] needs and reasons, not by simply swimming better in a
social sea.481
In this sense, Clark is implying that moral progress is different from social
progress. For him, our standards for moral progress must not simply be attaining a
better grasp and navigation of the social world, but must also include having a
deeper understanding of the socio-moral situation of others, particularly their needs,
reasons, and, desires. From Clarks perspective, then, moral progress consists of, to
repeat and emphasize a point, not simply swimming better in a social sea but
swimming better in a sea of others needs and reasons.
Overall, the above critiques discuss 1) Churchlands failure to consider the
critical implications of the normative factors surrounding moral progress, according
to Flanagan, and 2) Churchlands failure to properly distinguish social and moral
progress, according to Clark. The researcher admits that Flanagan and Clarks
481
Ibid., 310.
critiques are sound and warranted. But what moral progress ought to be is a
normative question that can have different answers. In a sense, each person can
have different prescriptions of what moral progress should and ought to be like.
Thus, the disagreements of what moral progress should consist of is understandable.
However, there are clues that show that Churchlands discussion and overall take
on moral progress is not a prescription. On the contrary, the researcher suggests that
Churchlands seeming neglect of the normative dimension and his lack of
distinction between the moral and the social has a fundamental reason, a reason that
is aligned with his overall naturalistic approach toward morality in general and
moral progress in particular.
C. Moral Progress as a Phenomenon
The researcher argues that there is a fundamental difference between a claim
that sets the standards on how progress ought to be, and a claim that examines
what progress actually is. The former is a prescription of how progress should be
and should have been, while the latter is a description of how progress has
happened and can happen in the future. A simple example of this difference is how
we approach human growth. A description of human growth can consist of
illustrating how the child has grown biologically (for example how the child
became taller), and how he or she has developed a robust body to grasp and
navigate through the world. Or, it can be illustrating a childs cognitive growth,
how he or she learned to think independently, for example. This description of

progress, with growth as a measure, defines progress as a clear change in the
objective world. On the contrary, a prescription of what human growth should be
like will be different. It will prescribe how the child ought to grow. For example,
biologically speaking, one can prescribe how a child ought to be a good-looking
man or woman. Or, cognitively speaking, how that child ought to have a high IQ.
Clearly, a prescriptive and a descriptive account of growth are different from one
another, in a sense that they approach the concept of progress differently.
When describing progress, one looks what change actually occurs. It does
not matter what that change is. For example, whether the child has grown to be a
good-looking person with high IQ, or an ugly person with low IQ, what matters is
that there is a visible change, a form of accumulation or increase that can be
observed objectively. On the other hand, prescription is not based on such objective
observation; it is setting a self-imposed standard or a measurement that is almost
entirely independent of what happens to the observed object. Putting it in the
context of human growth, it is clear that this is an expectation of how development
or accumulation ought to happen, as seen in the case of expecting a child to be
good-looking or to have high IQ. When applied to the context of moral progress,
the researcher claims that Churchlands account of moral progress is basically
descriptive and Flanagan and Clarks accounts are basically prescriptive.

As Flanagan himself has declared, he thinks that moral progress is a
normative concept.482 This can clearly be seen in how he depicts moral progress as
something that ought to be local and diverse, and something that need not be forced
to be global and linear. Clarks prescriptive tendencies, on the other hand, can
clearly be seen with his opposition to Churchlands claim that moral progress is
merely an increase in our collective social navigation. For Clark, moral progress
ought to be something more, more in a sense that it must also be an increase in our
overall moral sensitivity, rather than merely an increase in our ability to swim
through the social world. In this sense, then, both Flanagan and Clark are
prescribing a supposedly better or different standard of progress as compared with
Churchlands.
Answering Flanagan and Clarks critique, the researcher asserts that both
thinkers have misunderstood Churchlands approach to moral progress. It can be
argued that Churchlands approach in his discussion of moral progress is not
prescriptive but rather, descriptive. This may seem to be too strong of a claim to
assert, but the researcher argues that this can be seen in 1) Churchlands attempt to
show the actuality and possibility of moral progress, and 2) his constant appeal to
historical events and social structures and phenomena in his discussion, and
ultimately 3) his persistent parallelism between scientific and moral progress.
482
[Moral] Progress is a normative concept and it is related to the kind of evaluation
involved in the two claims that I have been trying to show make sense: (1) It is a necessary condition
of subjective flourishing that the virtues an individual displays, and the norms she avows and abides,
pass tests for reflective equilibrium. (2) It is a necessary condition of objective flourishing that the
virtues an individual displays, and the norms she avows and abides, pass tests for wide reflective
equilibrium (Owen Flanagan, The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World,
[Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007], 133).
1. The Phenomenon of Progress: Morality-Science Parallelism
Churchlands appeal to moral progress, as already illustrated several times,
is founded on his parallelism between moral and scientific knowledge. There is,
however, an important point to emphasize in such parallelism. First is that, for
Churchland, scientific progress is something that is evidently actual and ongoing.
As shown in Chapter IV, in Churchlands framework, science progresses by
modifying and replacing its neuronal maps with new maps that have a more
developed and accurate portrayal of the world. But one need not look through this
neurocomputational perspective to see the evidence of scientific progress. Indeed,
one would be hard-pressed to deny the obvious development science has achieved
throughout history. As repeatedly alluded to in this thesis, by simply looking at the
development of medicine and technology, the socio-historical-empirical evidence of
scientific progress seen in those fields will be apparent even to a non-academic.
Thus, when Churchland states that scientific progress over the centuries is a
dramatic reality, and it results from the myriad instructions (often painful) of an
ongoing experimental and technological life, 483 or when he states that science
displays progress, sometimes highly dramatic progress, 484 he is affirming that
reality, which points to the overwhelming evidence of scientific progress. Hence, it
is obvious that, for Churchland, scientific progress is not a prescription of how
science ought to have developed, but how science actually developed. In a sense,
483
484
scientific progress is clearly an evident observable phenomenon that is not
measured solely by self-imposed standards.
Now, when Churchland states that moral progress looks different only in
its ontological focusthe social world as opposed to the natural worldfrom what
we are pleased to call scientific progress, or when he states that [o]ur conceptual
development in the moral domain...differs only in detail from our development in
the scientific domain,485 is Churchland implying that moral progress is an actual
evident observable phenomenon like that of scientific progress, which is not
measured solely by a self-imposed standard? This seems to be the case because
Churchlands appeal to moral progress always hinges on a particular historical
event, a social structure or phenomenon, and most especially on
neurocomputational grounds.
As seen in Chapter IV, Churchland thinks that morality and science are not
fundamentally different modes of knowledge at the neural level, and both show
similar development of knowledge at the collective level. This is precisely why
Churchland arrives at this conclusion, to repeat a quote:
As I view matters from the neural-network perspective...I can

find no difference in the presumptive brain mechanisms and
cognitive processes that underwrite moral cognition and scientific
cognition. Nor can I find any significant differences in the respective
social institutions that administer our unfolding scientific and moral
consciousness respectively. In both cases, learning from experience
is the perfectly normal outcome of both the neural and the social
machinery. That means that moral progress is no less possible and no
less likely than scientific progress.486
485
486
Ibid., 59.
Furthermore, in the earlier parts of this chapter, Churchlands appeal to the
actuality of moral progress is based on historical grounds, as seen in his attempt to
contrast the ancient and modern scaffoldings.
Based on the above points, the researcher argues that Churchland is not
prescribing what moral progress ought to be; rather, he is attempting to describe
what moral progress is. Thus, it can be said that when Churchland appeals to the
actuality of moral progress through scientific progress, he is saying that our brain,
driven by discursive elements, can clearly make progress, as seen in the sciences.
Hence, if morality is similar to science at the collective level, and basically the
same at the fundamental level (or the neural level), then there is no reason why such
progress in the scientific domain cannot also happen in the moral domain. In this
sense, Churchlands parallelism is an attempt to show that moral progress is as real
and actual as scientific progress. Overall, this means that, in Churchlands
framework, moral progress, similar to scientific progress, is an actual evident
observable phenomenon that is not measured solely by a self-imposed standard.
Adopting the thought above, the researcher argues against Flanagans and
Clarks critiques of Churchlands concept of moral progress. First, Churchland is
not imposing that moral progress ought to be unified and global, as Flanagan states;
Churchland is merely describing the ongoing global developments and unification
in social policies and laws.487 On the other hand, Churchland is also not imposing
487
In fact, Churchland does not oppose Flanagans claim that morality is local, as he writes:
I am agreeing with Flanagans locality thesis here, but I am trying to locate it comfortably within a
that moral progress ought to be only about the increase of societys collective
ability to navigate social space, as Clark construes. Again, Churchland is simply
describing moral progress as seen in the legislative bodies, which constitutes the
development of more effective social laws and policies, a development that was and
is implemented to help society better navigate the ever-increasing complexity of the
social world.
Thus, even though Flanagans and Clarks critiques toward Churchlands
concept of moral progress reveal the latters lack, their critiques clearly miss the
point when they took Churchlands concept as prescriptive, precisely because
Churchland is not aiming to prescribe the perfect standard for moral progress that
we ought to pursue; rather, he is describing what moral progress actually is, based
on social, empirical, and neurocomputational grounds.
Now if Churchlands concept of moral progress is a description of an
observable phenomenon and not a prescription of an ideal standard, what does this
imply about his seeming neglect of the normative dimension of morality in general,
and his failure to address the gap between moral and social in particular? The
researcher suggests that this simply means that Churchland is not seeing significant
progress in the normative dimension in general, and in our individual moral
larger conception of human cognition, a conception that portrays moral knowledge as one of the
more dramatically local of a considerable spectrum of cognitive cases, a spectrum that locates
prototypical examples of science toward the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, but locates them
still within a common continuum (Churchland, Flanagan on Moral Knowledge, 306). This
statement clearly implies that Churchland is not denying the locality of morality and, even more, he
is not imposing that moral progress ought to be unified and global. He is simply trying to describe
how morality, despite its locality and diversity, can be interlocked in a common continuum or to a
whole.
cognition in particular. Indeed, Churchland directly admits to the latter as discussed
earlier, to repeat a quote:
It may be objected that, even where it is realized, the

progress here celebrated is more a matter of our having upgraded the
quality and the vitality of the social ocean in which all of us swim,
than it is a matter of our having upgraded the personal moral virtues
of the average individual human beings who happen to swim in it.
With this claim, regrettably, I must largely agree...the moral
character of an average modern North American is probably little
superior to the moral character of an average inhabitant of the
ancient Levant. The bulk of our moral progress, no doubt, lies in our
collective institutions rather than in our individual hearts and
minds.488
As seen in the quote above, Churchland is not claiming that our moral
sensibilities have not increased at all, but that most of the progress that happens
in the socio-moral domain lies in the collective institutions. In a sense, for him,
what has clearly improved is how socio-moral institutions regulate the social world.
Thus, Churchland is not denying progress in the moral domain, nor is he
prescribing that moral progress ought to be merely social progress, as Clark seems
to imply. Churchland is simply acknowledging the fact that the bulk of our progress
lies in our increased collective ability to regulate the social world. Furthermore, he
admits that the said increase in our moral sensitivity, or increase in our moral
character, is, however, not much compared with the ancients. In this sense,
Churchland has not neglected the moral dimension to solely focus on the social
dimension; he is simply describing where significant progress in the socio-moral
domain happened as he observed in history.
488
Ibid., 71.
With regard to the normative dimension in general, Churchland takes on this
issue in several scattered texts. But as can be seen in those texts, there are enough
points to argue that he clearly thinks that progress in the normative dimension of
morality did in fact happen but has the potential to become even more radical and
drastic. This potential, he seems to imply, can be realized by increasing our
descriptive understanding of the socio-moral world and human nature, as discussed
in his take on future radical moral progress. This is where his indirect take on the
normative significance of a naturalistic account of morality can be found, and
contains the possible solution to the main problem of this thesis. The researcher will
attempt to justify this claim in the succeeding pages.
2. Changing the Normative Landscape: Addressing the Is-Ought Gap
Churchland acknowledges the is-ought gap and the possible naturalistic
fallacy that can be committed by ignoring it, as pointed out by Hume and further
elaborated on by G.E. Moore. 489 Being primarily an epistemologist, Churchland
489
The is-ought gap is derived from Humes famous passage in Treatise of Human Nature,
(London: Penguin Books, 2004 [173940]), 436, as quoted in a previous footnote in Chapter III.
G.E. Moore follows Humes premise and asserts that the notion of good cannot be derived from
natural properties. Moore argues that it is always an open-question of whether some natural
property is good, it cannot be taken as is or a given natural fact. In this sense, goodness is a
simple non-natural property. Thus, labeling any natural property as good is considered an addition to
its meaning, in a sense that goodness is added to the original natural property. This prevents one
from reducing goodness to any natural property like pleasure for example, because when one says
pleasure is good, one is adding good to natural property pleasure. That being the case, pleasure is a
natural property that is not inherently good, because good is a non-natural property added to it. See
Principia Ethica, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1903]), chap IV, sec. 13, 6675.
The significance of this distinction to neuroscience and morality has been illustrated by
Bernard Gert, Neuroscience and Morality, Hastings Center Report 42, no. 3 (2012): 2228; Joshua
Greene, From Neural Is to Moral Ought: What Are the Moral Implications of Neuroscientific
directly addresses the topic by pointing out the issue of how descriptive accounts
based on neuroscience facts can contribute to epistemology in general, which he
acknowledges to be a normative discipline, as he writes:
[A] naturalistic and non-linguaformal take on the processes

of world representation [or neurocomputational take on
epistemology] must confront the inevitable objection that
epistemology is originally and properly a normative discipline,
concerned with the principles of rational thought, with how we
ought to evaluate our theories. Since we cannot derive an ought
from an is ...any descriptive account of the de facto operations of a
brain must be strictly irrelevant to the question of how our
representational states can be justified, and to the question of how a
rational brain ought to conduct its cognitive affairs. If these
evidently normative matters are our primary concern, then
descriptive brain theory is strictly speaking a waste of our time.490
As seen in the above quote, Churchland acknowledges this apparent is-
ought gap, but argues that this gap does not imply that the normative dimension is
completely independent from the descriptive dimension, as he continues:
There is something to this objection [that ought cannot be

derived from is], no doubt, but much less than is commonly
supposed. An immediate riposte points out that our normative
convictions in any domain always have systematic factual
presuppositions about the nature of that domain. They may be deep
in the background, but they are always there. And if those factual
presuppositions happen to be superficial, confused, or just plain false,
then the normative convictions that presuppose them will have to be
reevaluated, modified, or perhaps rejected entirely.491
Moral Psychology? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 4 (October 2003): 847850. A brief
discussion of their views has been shown in Chapter I, Review of Related Literature, in this thesis.
490
491
Churchland, Platos Camera, 203. In a much earlier work (1989), Churchland also made
a similar claim: [N]ormative issues are never independent of factual matters. This is easily seen for
our judgments of instrumental value, as these always depend on factual premises about causal
sufficiencies and dependencies. But it is also true of our most basic normative concepts and our
judgments of intrinsic value, for these have factual presuppositions as well. We speak of
justification, but we think of it as a feature of belief, and whether or not there are any beliefs and
what properties they have is a robustly factual matter. We speak of rationality, but we think of it as a
feature of thinkers, and it is a substantive factual matter what thinkers are and what cognitive
Based on this, he asserts that the possible contributions that neuroscience
can make to epistemology are significant and that our normative epistemological
claims (for example on what truth and rationality should consist in) can radically
change through neuroscience.492 Again, Churchland grounds this claim on history,
particularly through a historical parallel, as he writes:
I here appeal to an analogy...namely, our understanding of

the nature of living things, and our normative understanding of what
a healthy body, metabolism, immune system, developmental
process, or diet amounts to. Even into the early modern period, we
had essentially no understanding of biological realitycertainly
none at the microlevelalthough we did have an abiding interest in
the avowedly normative matter of what Health amounted to, and in
how best to achieve or maintain it.
Imagine now a possible eighteenth century complaint, raised
just as microbiology and biochemistry were getting started, that such
descriptive scientific undertakings were strictly speaking a waste of
our time, at least where normative matters such as Health are
concerned, a complaint based on the principle that you cant
derive an ought from an is. I take it the reader will agree that such a
complaint is, or would have been, profoundly, even tragically,
benighted. Our subsequent appreciation of the various viral and
bacteriological origins of the pantheon of diseases that plague us, of
the operations of the immune system, and of the endless sorts of
degenerative conditions that undermine our normal metabolic
functions, gave us an unprecedented insight into the underlying
nature of Health and its many manipulable dimensions. Our
normative wisdom increased a thousand-fold, and not just
kinematics they harbor. Normative concepts and normative convictions are thus always hostage to
some background factual presuppositions, and these can always prove to be superficial, confused, or
just plain wrong. If they are, then we may have to rethink whatever normative framework has been
erected upon them (Churchland, On the Nature of Theories: A Neurocomputational Perspective,
in Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective, 196).
492
As illustrated in Chapter IV, Churchlands neurocomputational take on epistemology is
radically different from that of traditional epistemology. Churchland is suggesting that if what he
illustrated through his neuronal-map epistemology is roughly correct, then he thinks that we are
going to have to rethink our normative assumptions from scratch; consequently, our standards for
how we evaluate the virtue of truth or rationality will change drastically. See Churchland, Platos
Camera, 203. How such change in our view of epistemology is possible is something that he
illustrates in length in Ibid., chap. 4, 187250.
concerning means-to-ends, but concerning the identity and nature of

the ultimate ends themselves.493
Indeed, there is an apparent gap between modern and medieval normative
assumptions about healthcare. Churchland explains that the medieval understanding
of life and health, and the medical practices that adopt such understanding, were
downright pitiful when compared with our current understanding of life and
health. The medical practices that adopt this current understanding are all based on
modern biology. Churchland argues that there is no reason why our current
understanding of cognition and rationality (in parallel to cognition and health), will
not also become pitiful when faced with future advancements of neuroscience (in
parallel to biology).494
Based on this, Churchland claims that our normative epistemological claims
can also be transformed through the breakthroughs of neuroscience, as he writes:
The present complaint concerning the study of Rationality, I suggest,

is a clear parallel. In advance of a detailed understanding of exactly
what brains are doing, and of how they do it, we are surpassingly
unlikely to have any clear or authoritative appreciation of what doing
it best amounts to. The nature of Rationality, in sum, is something
we humans have only just begun to penetrate, and the cognitive
neurosciences are sure to play a central role in advancing our
normative as well as our descriptive understanding, just as in the
prior case of Health.495
Based on the above points, it is clear that Churchland thinks that the
normative dimension is heavily based on a background of natural facts. Thus,
changing such background can also radically change the normative assumptions
493
494
495
Ibid., 204.
that are based on them. As seen in the case of how our normative assumptions about
health were changed by a more advanced descriptive understanding of life,
Churchland thinks that a more advanced descriptive understanding of the brain will
also change our normative epistemological assumptions of what rationality consists
in, or perhaps even what truth amounts to. Now, the question is, can the above
points also be applied to morality? Can the normative dimension of morality be
changed by an increase in our descriptive understanding of it?
Unfortunately, Churchland did not directly and extensively discuss this
issue. He only tackled this very briefly when he clarified the possible concerns that
a neuroscientific take on morality threatens to evoke, as he writes:
These are the early days of what I hope will be a long and
fruitful intellectual tradition, a tradition fueled by the systematic
interaction and mutual information of cognitive neurobiology on the
one hand and moral theory on the other... What we are
contemplating here is no imperialistic takeover of the moral by the
neural. Rather, we should anticipate a mutual flowering of both our
high-level conceptions in the domain of moral knowledge and our
lower-level conceptions in the domain of normal and pathological
neurology. For each level has much to teach the other... Nor need
we resist this interaction of distinct traditions on grounds that it
threatens to deduce normative conclusions from purely factual
premises, for it threatens no such thing.496
Churchland acknowledges the fact that the normative dimension of morality
is in its own domain, and that the insights that neuroscience can give to our
understanding of morality is not as drastic as one may think. He writes: An
adequate theory of the brain, plainly, will not constitute a theory of distributive
justice or a body of criminal law. It would constitute, at most, only a theory of how
496
we generate, embody, and manipulate such worthy cognitive achievements. 497
Thus, Churchland concludes that a substantive moral and political theory will still
have to be done by moral and political thinkers, according to the various methods
by which we make moral and political progress.498
In this sense, Churchland is basically saying that even though neuroscience
can indeed change our descriptive understanding of morality, it does not mean that
it can serve as a sole basis for crafting normative assumptions, because that, as
Churchland declares, is in a different domain that is covered by moral and political
thinkers. Simply put, neuroscience cannot tell us what law or moral doctrine we
ought to make.499 This clearly means that Churchland acknowledges the apparent
gap between the normative and descriptive dimensions of morality.
This being the case, can we say that Churchland is admitting that the
understanding that neuroscience can give to our moral understanding will only be
descriptive and has nothing to do with our normative assumptions? Not necessarily.
In fact, as illustrated earlier, Churchland seems to be implying that a radical change
in our descriptive understanding (that is, when our folk psychology is replaced by a
more scientifically informed understanding of human nature) can bring about a
radical change in our normative assumptions. As Churchland states: [a
scientifically informed understanding of human nature] will change...our moral
497
Ibid.
498
Ibid.
499
Here, Churchland clearly acknowledges the limits that neuroscience can give to our
normative assumptions. This aligns with Gerts claim that neuroscience is unlikely to add anything
to our current understanding of morality as a code of conduct or law that one should or ought to
abide to. See Neuroscience and Morality, 2627.
practices and our moral conceptions... It will permit a deeper insight into the
intricate dance that is each persons unfolding consciousness and thus make
possible a deeper level of mutual understanding, care, and protection. It will
reconfigure our legal practices, our correctional practices, our educational practices,
and perhaps even our recreational and romantic practices.500 This shows that he is
confident that an increase in our descriptive understanding can indeed change our
socio-moral normative practices.
Based on the discussion of how Churchland approaches the is-ought gap in
epistemology, such statement is warranted, in a sense that he thinks that for every
normative claim there is always a deep presupposition of facts, and if those factual
presuppositions happen to be superficial, confused, or just plain false, then the
normative convictions that presuppose them will have to be reevaluated, modified,
or perhaps rejected entirely.501
Overall, it can be said that even though Churchland accepts the principled
distinction between is-ought, he thinks that for every ought there is a presumed
is. Thus, even though one cannot directly derive an ought from an is, an
ought based on a mistaken or superficial is will be misinformed or misguided.
The researcher suggests that this may be the reason why Churchland advocates an
interplay or a systematic interaction and mutual information of cognitive
neurobiology on the one hand and moral theory on the other. 502 Even though
500
501
502
Churchland admits that normative factors and elements are in a separate domain
handled by moral and political theorists, any normative assumption about morality
must be based on a background powerful descriptive understanding; otherwise, it
will be misinformed and misguided. While it is true that laws and moral doctrines
cannot be derived from purely factual assumptions, such laws and doctrines are
heavily based on such factual assumptions. Thus, if one aims to craft a well-
informed law, moral doctrine, or any kind of normative assumption, one ought to
adopt a descriptive understanding that can provide an abundance of powerful
information.
In this sense, then, Churchland seems to be implying that it is natural for
our normative assumptions to be based on a background descriptive understanding.
Furthermore, he is also emphasizing that it is evident in history that a change in our
background descriptive understanding will also constitute a change in our
normative understanding, as seen in his allusion to how modern microbiology and
biochemistry have changed our normative assumptions about healthcare. Hence,
one can say that, for Churchland, it is also natural for our normative assumptions
to be changed or transformed by a different set of descriptive presuppositions
because history has shown this to be the case. From this, one can infer why
Churchland is optimistic that a more penetrating understanding of socio-moral
phenomenon can change our moral practices and our moral conceptions...[and]
reconfigure our legal practices, our correctional practices, our educational

practices. 503 Because clearly, for him, normative assumptions in general are
naturally grounded on descriptive-factual assumptions, thus, it is also natural for a
radically new descriptive understanding to radically transform our normative
understanding.
In a separate work and context, Churchland actually indirectly points out
how the above process has already happened in the moral domain. Again, he refers
to history, as he writes:
[T]he great religions of the world have occasionally made substantial

changes in their own doctrines and practices, and have occasionally
taken major steps forward in their doctrinal wisdom and their moral
judgments. Christians no longer burn at the stake the people we used
to call witches, even though their Old Testament is still
unambiguous in requiring death (Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live. Exodus, 22:18). The Roman Church no longer burns or
imprisons peopleas it burned Giordano Bruno and imprisoned
Galileofor teaching that Earth rotates on its axis and revolves
about the Sun. Medical vaccinations are no longer prohibited by the
church (for a short time, they were) on grounds that they constitute a
worldly and profane attempt to interfere with Gods will concerning
who lives and who dies. Anesthetics are no longer denied to women
in childbirth (they were stoutly resisted in some religious quarters)
on grounds that they spared women the punishment properly due
them for carrying the guilt of Eves original sin. And, at least in this
country, the female population is no longer denied access to higher
education, to the voting booth, and to professional careers on
grounds that women are Gods subsidiary afterthought, made from
Adams rib and destined for lesser duties.
I take it that we can all agree that these doctrinal shifts are
morally welcome. But we should note that, in every case, the agent
of moral change was our growing understanding of and control over
the complex natural world. So-called witches (i.e., schizophrenics
and manic-depressives) were not possessed by Satan, they merely
had dysfunctional brains, brains we now have some capacity for
repairing. Earth is not the Center of the Universe; it is a vulnerable
speck of dust, cosmologically speakingone we had best learn to
503
take care of. Vaccinations against disease and anesthetics to curb

pain are no more, and no less, violations of Gods will than is
building a roof to protect ourselves from His rain, or donning clothes
to protect ourselves from His cold. And women are not lesser
modifications of male original material; on the contrary, the Y
chromosome characteristic of males (we are XY) is a piggy-back
device that modifies the basic human XX genetic material, which,
unmodified, invariably makes a human female. (If anything, the Old
Testament had it exactly backward.) Moreover, the male and female
brains produced by human chromosomes are, taken one by one,
physically indistinguishable from one another, save for a few tiny
nuclei and a handful of chemicals that govern sexual behavior.
Certainly they are different in no intellectually or politically relevant
dimensions.504
It is important to emphasize the phrase the agent of moral change was our
growing understanding of and control over the complex natural world. 505 This
clearly shows that Churchland is indeed assuming that our normative assumptions
about morality can be changed by a more powerful descriptive understanding of the
natural world. Indeed, as he points out, history seems to tell us that our standards on
how women ought to be treated, our normative take on when life ought to be
preserved through medicine (as seen in the early resistance to vaccination), and our
standards on how mentally ill people (previously witches) ought to be treated, were
all transformed radically by a more informed descriptive understanding of the
natural world. In this sense, then, our moral oughts were clearly transformed by a
more scientifically informed is. Accordingly, it cannot be denied, at least in
Churchlands framework, that natural facts have a normative significance in the
504
Paul Churchland, Science, Religion, and American Educational Policy, in
Neurophilosophy at Work, 8384; This article was first published in Public Affairs Quarterly 14, no.
4 (2001): 279291.
505
Ibid., 84.
sense that it informs and transforms our normative assumptions. If we take
Churchlands appeal to history seriously, this significance is clearly evident. As
Churchland says, no matter how indirect, natural facts loom over our normative
assumptions. Thus, a deeper descriptive understanding has and will have a
normative significance.
Based on the points stated in this section, Churchland has clearly not
neglected the normative dimension of morality. He is simply assuming that it is
natural for the normative dimension to be transformed by a deeper descriptive
understanding of the natural world. Thus, when Churchland says that moral
progress is possible and actual, and such progress constitutes an increased grasp and
navigation of the socio-moral world: resulting in transformed moral practices and
moral norms, he is merely stating what has happened in history and what can
happen in the future. Thus, it can be said that Churchland sees moral progress as a
phenomenon, precisely because he alludes to history, social phenomena, and
neurocomputational grounds when he acknowledges how an increase in our grasp
and navigation of the socio-moral world happened, and because he also alludes to
history to show how our normative assumptions were clearly changed by a deeper
descriptive understanding. In this sense, it is understandable for Churchland to be
optimistic about the possibility of moral progress in both the normative and
descriptive dimension of morality. As opposed to Flanagans claim that Churchland
is overly optimistic about the capacities of moral community to arrive at high-

quality moral knowledge,506 the researcher claims that Churchlands optimism is
warranted, at least within his own framework, precisely because he thinks that
moral progress is a phenomenon and, not a pure prescription that he is hoping for
humankind to achieve.
Now that the normative significance of natural facts in Churchlands
framework has been established, there remains the question of how a naturalistic
account of morality, specifically, can change our current normative moral
assumptions. Throughout this thesis, particularly in Chapters III and IV, the only
thoughts established are how our descriptive understanding can possibly change by
grounding morality on neural phenomena (as seen in Chapter III) and socio-
empirical factors (as seen in Chapter IV). In those chapters, it has been established
that: 1) Morality is something that is mostly acquired, and only our most
fundamental social skills are innate. Being moral, then, is something that is
acquired through years of experience in the social and physical world; 2) Morality
is something that is non-discursive at its very core, with the role of discursive
elements or extrapersonal scaffoldings particularly to regulate and enhance the
original non-discursive morality of the human person; and 3) Morality as a mode of
knowing the world is not fundamentally different from the rest of our cognition or
knowledge. In this sense, there is no reason why our understanding of morality
cannot progress like that our understanding of science.
506
Ibid., 192193.
The above descriptive understanding, the researcher suggests, can transform
our current normative assumptions about morality. How such naturalistic view can
change our moral norms and practices can only be estimated. But Churchland has
given small glimpses on how such transformation can take place. The researcher
will attempt to expound on these glimpses and ultimately aim to reconstruct
Churchlands vision of future radical moral progress, which he has only briefly
alluded to.
D. Envisioning Moral Progress, Toward a Naturalistic Understanding of
Morality
Following the premise that Churchland sees moral progress as a
phenomenon, it can also be said that for him, future radical moral progress is a real
possibility, that it is not simply a hopeful prescription of how the socio-moral world
ought to be, but a description of how that world can be. To understand this claim,
one can refer to an analogy that has been mentioned before in this chapter. Human
growth, as illustrated earlier, is a progressive phenomenon that can be described
without setting a purely arbitrary standard. Based on this premise, the measure for
progress is made through observable phenomena of accumulation and development,
and not solely through a self-imposed standard on how one ought to develop. The
researcher claims that Churchlands optimism toward future radical moral progress
is something along these lines. This section will aim to explore this real possibility.
1. Transforming the Normative Moral Landscape
Churchland declares that the continuing development of sciences such as
cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, neuropathology, neuropharmacology,
and vector algebra (the mathematics of neural nets) [can change] our moral
practices and our moral conceptions...[and] reconfigure our legal practices, our
correctional practices, our educational practices.507 It has been said that such claim
is based on Churchlands stance that normative assumptions can be transformed by
changes in background natural facts. The question is how can Churchlands
radically new naturalistic account of morality change some of our normative
assumptions? There are some obvious changes that one can infer from them, as the
researcher will attempt to illustrate.
1.1 Moral Pathology, Neural Factors behind Moral Capacity
In Chapter III, it has been illustrated how morality is acquired or learned by
a human being. To recall the important insights in that chapter, there are two factors
that allow a persons moral character to emerge. First is the persons biology,
particularly biological design. This design has a built-in learning mechanism in the
human nervous system that Churchland calls Hebbian-induced sculpting of
activation spaces. This mechanism allows the person to learn how to grasp the
complex patterns and intricacies of the physical and social world, and also bestow
the ability to navigate through such world. Now, such learning mechanism, by
507
nature, needs exposure to and immersion in a physical and social environment,
which leads us to the second factor: the Hebbian sculpting process will only yield a
respective moral character for a person, if it is properly shaped by sufficient social
experience, as shown in Chapter III.
Now, how can this descriptive account of morality change our normative
assumption? First, what needs emphasis here is the biological design, especially the
brain, which allows one to learn and acquire ones moral character. Most of the
time we take this design for granted and assume that humans, by nature, have the
inherent capacity to be moral. Alluding to this assumption is the statement in
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: All human beings are
born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 508
Although, normatively, each person is declared to have freedom, reason, and
conscience, in Churchlands framework, these traits are made possible by natural
factors that bestow these very traits on a human being. In cases where those natural
factors are disturbed, those very abilities can be corrupted, not by other human
beings, but by the failure in the internal natural factors that make them possible.
This possibility was explored briefly in Chapter III. As discussed there,
lesions and damages in ones brain can damage ones capacity to properly acquire
ones moral character. This condition is called moral pathology, a term Churchland
508
General Assembly United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
illustrated by Michel Streich, (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2008 [1948]), Article 1.
also uses in describing this natural phenomenon. 509 Churchland illustrates this
phenomenon in this manner: [M]oral pathology consists in the partial absence, or
subsequent corruption, of the normal constellation of perceptual, reflective, and
behavioral skills under discussion... [I]t consists in the failure to achieve, or
subsequently to activate normally, a suitable hierarchy of moral prototypes. 510
There are several different ways how such failure can happen, but Churchland urges
that we can come to understand how displays of moral incompetence, both major
and minor, are the reflection of specific functional failures, both large and small,
within the brain. 511 Fortunately, this remark is no longer merely speculative
because of advances in technology that allow us to explore the mechanism of the
human brain. As Churchland puts it, we now have brain-scanning technologies such
as PET and MRI that allow us to explore how failures in moral perception, moral
reasoning, and social behavior can emerge from brain damage.
One notable case that can serve to illuminate the present discussion is the
case of Boswell, who has lost his ability to morally perceive evil or aggressive
and violent emotionally charged situations.512 Boswell is unable to recognize the ill
509
Churchland, Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, See 9. Moral
Pathology, 4851. Proceeding discussions on the said topic will be based on this.
510
Ibid., 4849.
511
Ibid., 49.
512
Churchland based his discussion on Boswell on the case study by prominent
neurologists Antonio and Hannah Damasio: Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., and
Damasio, A. R., Neuropsychological Approaches to Reasoning and Decision Making, in A. R.
Damasio et al., eds., The Neurobiology of Decision-Making, (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1996): 157
180; Damasio, A. R., Tranel, D., and Damasio, H., Somatic Markers and the Guidance of
Behavior, in H. Levin et al., eds., Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991): 21729; Bechara, A., Damasio, A., Damasio, H., and Anderson, S. W.
Insensitivity to Future Consequences Following Damage to Human Prefrontal Cortex, Cognition
50 (1994):715. as cited by Churchland in Neurophilosophy at Work, 49, 239, 241&244.
intent behind socially and morally problematic scenes shown to him. What is
important to emphasize is that Boswell has no problems with his vision, so his
inability to recognize the physical intricacies in a scene was not lost. Thus, the
problem is not caused by physical visual impairment, but lies higher in his
hierarchy of activation spaces.
Boswell was diagnosed with herpes-simplex encephalitis that damaged the
lower half of both his temporal lobes, which contain the infero-temporal cortex. The
infero-temporal cortex is actually responsible for discriminating and coding facial
expressions. In neurocomputational terms, it is an activation space for recognizing
facial emotions. Although he recognizes the faces of people he knows, he is unable
to discern the emotions their faces have. In this sense, Boswell is unable to
recognize the ill intent behind socially and morally problematic situations, most
likely because he has no way to know the persons intent. This assumption is
further supported by the fact that Boswell has no problem recognizing ill intent
behind voices. Overall, Boswells situation clearly shows that moral perception is
something that is heavily affected by specific dysfunctions in the brain. Also, such
dysfunction can be very specific and complex.
Another patient, known as EVR, experienced a different form of moral
pathology. 513 EVR had a normal life as a devoted father, faithful husband, and
striving accountant. Things changed however, after he had a surgery to remove his
513
EVR is also another patient of Antonio and Hannah Damasio, that Churchland also
referred to in his discussion of moral pathology. His case was briefly sketched in Chapter III of this
thesis.
brain tumor. Six months after the surgery, he lost his job because of irresponsibility
and engaging in a series of decisions that led to heavy financial loses. He was also
divorced by his frustrated wife, though he remarried. He also became involved with
a prostitute, who later left him.
First, what is important to emphasize in EVRs case is that his IQ of 140
remained intact after the brain surgery. Thus, one can rule out the possibility that
his typical intelligence quotient was damaged because of the surgery. MRI scans
revealed that the problem is actually the lesions in the connecting axonal pathways
between the ventromedial frontal cortex (the seat of complex planning) and
amygdala (a primitive limbic area that apparently embodies fear, anxiety and
disgust)514 Basically, this severed link isolated EVRs practical reasoning abilities
from his ability to rationally evaluate emotional contexts. Apparently this severance
consequently removed an important element of decision-making. Loosely, the
emotional and social context was removed from his practical decision-making. In
normal people with undamaged brains, this dimension is important because it
allows one to factor in the social dimension of ones decision, which clearly plays a
role on what one should inhibit from doing and what one should do. Losing such
ability explains why EVR was unable to maintain his previous life and his social
relationships.
Overall, EVRs situation clearly shows that moral behavior is something
that is also heavily influenced by brain dysfunction, similar to Boswells problems
514
in moral perception. Both their cases illustrate that moral character is heavily reliant
on a sufficiently functioning brain. Factors that cause such brain or neural deficits
are entirely physical and natural, which can be the result of developmental
misadventures and other chronic predationschildhood infections, low-level
toxins, abnormal metabolism, abnormal brain chemistry, abnormal nutrition,
maternal drug use during pregnancy, and so forth, or surgery in the case of
EVR. 515 Basically, anything that disrupts the standard mechanism of neural
phenomena responsible for social and moral cognition can lead to moral pathology.
Beyond the case of EVR, one can clearly imagine how some criminals can
also be merely victims of moral pathology. In fact, current studies on forensic
neuropsychology consider this possibility seriously. For example, studies show that
psychopathic criminals commonly have dysfunctions in the frontal lobe of their
brains, which lead to violent and anti-social behaviors. 516 In a separate study,
several MRI scans on criminals also reveal that aggressive and non-aggressive
offenders have brain structural differences, particularly differences in temporal and
pre-frontal lobes.517 Offenders who have an abnormal brain structural difference are
515
Ibid.
516
Adrian Raine, The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical
Disorder, (California: Academic Press, 1993), See IV Frontal Dysfunction, 109113.
517
MRI scans...found structural differences between aggressive and non-aggressive
groups, particularly within the temporal lobes, but also in the frontal lobes. Tonkonogy (1991) used
both CT and MRI to assess 87 individuals referred for neuropsychiatric examination due to alcohol
abuse, cerebrovascular accidents, or head injury. Twenty-three of the assessed individuals had
evidence of structural brain abnormality. Fourteen of these individuals had what was termed
'frequent episodes of violent behaviour' and were significantly more likely to have lesions in the
anterior and inferior area of the temporal lobe. Five of the individuals had lesions in this area, and
four of these were lateralized to the right hemisphere. The authors speculated that violence may
result from unilateral tissue loss in the amygdala-hippocampal region of the temporal lobe.
known to have experienced substance abuse, cerebrovascular accidents or head
injury, which suggests that the structural differences of these offenders brain, and
subsequently their aggressive and violent behavior, are caused by those factors. All
of these studies imply that immoral behavior can indeed be linked to brain
dysfunctions, or to neural phenomena in general.
Based on the above discussion, it would be clear, as Churchland explains,
that some failures of moral character...especially the most serious failures, are
likely to involve some confounding disability or marginality at the level of brain
structure and/or physiological activity. Therefore, if we wish to wisely address such
major failures of moral character, in the law and within the correctional system, we
would do well to understand the many dimensions of neural failure that can
collectively give rise to them. We cant fix what we dont understand.518
The question is, how does this knowledge of moral pathology affect our
normative moral assumptions? The obvious insight that it can explain is that moral
capacity is something that is dependent on natural factors, particularly neural
phenomena, in the context of the current discussion. Any kind of trouble or
MRI scans have also been used to compare the brain structures of aggressive versus non-
aggressive individuals within disorders with aggressions such as schizophrenia, antisocial
personality disorder, and epilepsy. A study comparing 20 repetitive and 19 non-repetitive violent
offenders with schizophrenia reported that asymmetric gyral patterns in the temporoparietal region
were common in the repetitive group and absent in the non-repetitive group (Wong et al., 1997). An
MRI study (Barkataki et al., 2005) of antisocial personality disorder, and schizophrenia patients with
and without a history of violence, reported reduced temporal lobe volume in the antisocial
personality disorder group and violent schizophrenia group. The authors interpreted this finding as
evidence in support of the role of the temporal lobe region in mediating violent behaviour (Jessica
Bramham and Seamus O'Ceallaigh, The Neuropsychology of Aggression and Violence, in Susan
Young, Michael Kopelman and Gisli Gudjonsson, eds., Forensic Neuropsychology in Practice: A
Guide to Assessment and Legal Processes, [New York: Oxford University Press, 2009], See
Neuroimaging of aggression and violence, 2225).
518
dysfunction that arises from its normal operation leads to moral incapacity. In this
sense, one can say that people who are victims of such dysfunctions are not free to
be moral. Plainly, they do not enjoy the moral capacity that is normatively assumed
to be possessed by everybody.
Certainly, if one is ignorant of the medical condition of EVR for example,
one can easily label him as an unfaithful and incapable father that has lost his way.
Applying the normative assumption that everybody is endowed with the capacity to
be moral, one can declare that EVR is at fault, and he is almost entirely responsible
for losing his job and the damage he has done to his life and his family. This is the
case because we have this commonsense background assumption that humans are
free to act otherwise, unless prevented by others. In EVRs case, what led him to
those decisions was clearly an internal and natural factor; it is not the cause of some
peer pressure nor bad education by his past mentors. Indeed, EVRs life was
normal until he suffered brain damage. In that moment, he lost the capacity to be
completely moral as he normally would. To put it plainly, he is incapable of being
moral after the surgery. Perhaps, one can even go so far to say that the criminals
mentioned earlier who also suffer from moral pathology as a result of brain damage
are in a similar situation with EVR. They may simply be incapable of acting
morally, precisely because they lost the natural factors that allow them to be moral.
With this, our commonsense concept of morals and responsibility may simply fail
to apply in their case, and perhaps nor will the civil law for normal people. How we
ought to treat criminals and supposedly immoral people who are victims of moral
pathology may need to be reconceived by moral and political theorists. Certainly,
following Churchlands framework, such reconception must be informed by a
deeper descriptive understanding of what morality is, to account for different cases
of moral pathology. Without such information, that new ought will simply be
misguided. As Churchland states, to repeat a quote: ...if we wish to wisely address
such major failures of moral character, in the law and within the correctional
system, we would do well to understand the many dimensions of neural failure that
can collectively give rise to them. We cant fix what we dont understand.519
Conceivably, the transformation that can result from increased
understanding of moral pathology can be substantial. Again, this possibility can be
seen by alluding to a historical parallel. The researcher suggests that ignorance of
the possible natural causes of moral pathology is similar to the medieval ignorance
of what causes psychosis. As mentioned in Churchlands quote earlier, when the
knowledge of psychology was still scarce during the medieval era, psychotic
patients were treated as witches, and were burned at stakes. In our era, supposedly
immoral people or criminals who normally would be treated as evil or bad people
may simply be people who are suffering from moral pathology. Our current
oughts involving evil people may possibly be misinformed similar to our
ancestors misinformed oughts involving witches. Following this thought, it can
be the case that the medieval treatment of supposed witches can clearly be seen as
something unjust in the light of modern psychology. In the same sense, there is a
519
possibility that our current treatment of some supposedly evil or bad people may
be, in the future, also be seen as something unjust in the light of matured
neuroscience. More specifically, enforcing the death penalty on criminals who
plainly suffer from moral pathology may be seen as an inhumane act, perhaps akin
to how burning of witches at stakes is currently seen as inhumane. If witches are
simply psychotic people who need medical attention, evil criminals may also
simply be morally pathological people who need medical treatment. If this is the
case, our current standard of how we ought to treat criminals may simply be
rendered obsolete, much like the medieval standard of how people, specifically our
ancestors, ought to treat witches.
The details of how such radical possibility can be realized is, of course,
difficult to estimate, but, following Churchlands line of thought, it is likely that our
oughts regarding the treatment of supposedly evil people can be transformed by
more knowledge of the natural facts that make them evil or be victims to moral
pathology.
1.2 An Empirical Grounding of Moral Education
Certainly, not all corruption or loss of some elements that make up ones
moral character are caused by deficits or dysfunctions in the brain. As stated in
Chapter III, Hebbian learning dictates that exposure to an appropriate social
environment is also a prerequisite to ones acquisition of moral character, as
Churchland puts it:

There is no suggestion, let me emphasize, that all failures of

moral character can be put down to structural deficits in the brain. A
proper moral educationthat is, a long stretch of intricate
socializationremains a necessary condition for acquiring a well-
formed moral character, and no doubt the great majority of failures,
especially the minor ones, can be put down to sundry inadequacies in
that process. Even so, the educational process is thoroughly
entwined with the developmental process and deeply dependent on
the existence of normal brain structures to embody the desired
matrix of skills.520
In this sense, moral education is clearly a crucial factor in determining ones
moral character, and failure to provide that normal moral education can result to
some problems, as Churchlands explains:
Consider first the structurally and physiologically normal

brain whose formative social environment fails to provide a normal
moral education. The childs experience may lack the daily examples
of normal moral behavior in others, it may lack opportunities to
participate in normal social practices, it may fail to see others deal
successfully and routinely with their inevitable social conflicts, and
it may lack the normal background of elder sibling and parental
correction of its perceptions and its behavior...
The problem is compounded by the fact that children in the
impoverished social environments described do not simply fail to
learn. They may learn quite well, but what they learn is a thoroughly
twisted set of social and moral prototypes and an accompanying
family of skills thatwhile crudely functional within the
impoverished environment that shaped them, perhapsare
positively dysfunctional within the more coherent structure of
society at large.521
There is a limit to how much neuroscience can help in addressing problems
in moral education. But Churchland suggests that since learning is fundamentally
grounded on neural phenomena, it can illuminate and aid in the rehabilitation
process of people who were subjected to improper education. In this sense,
520
521
Ibid., 51.
Churchland is basically suggesting that moral correction and moral education can
be empirically grounded.522
The neurophysiological insight that is evidently significant in the education
process is the fact that the cognitive plasticity, as Churchland calls it, is greater in
children than in adults, because [t]he cognitive plasticity of the youngthat is,
their unparalled capacity for learningis owed to neurochemical and physiological
factors that fade with age. (The local production and diffusion of nitric oxide within
the brain is one theory of how some synaptic connections are made selectively
subject to modification, and there are others.)523 Thus, early education is crucial,
and missing that window can be detrimental to the moral development of a child.
Based on this, Churchland is suggesting that our corrective policies should be more
geared toward nurturing children than handling adult criminals, since: the
plasticity of the young over the old poses a constant invitation to shift our corrective
resources childwards as due prudence dictates. This policy suggestion hopes to
reduce the absolute input to our correctional institutions.524 In this sense, instead of
merely focusing on how to correct and treat immoral people after it may already
be too late, policies should also focus on how to prevent children from being led to
immorality by properly educating them in the first place.
Nevertheless, even though the cognitive plasticity in the young is crucial,
there are some possible methods that neuroscience can use to rehabilitate adults
522
Churchland, Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, See sec. 10,
Moral Correction, 5153. Proceeding discussions on the said topic will be based on this.
523
Ibid., 52.
524
Ibid.
already subjected to improper moral education. Although still speculative,
Churchland suggests that neuropharmacological intervention can help in this case,
as he writes:
Suppose that we were to learn how to re-create in young

adults, temporarily and by neuropharmacological means, that
perfectly normal regime of neural plasticity and learning aptitude
found in children. In conjunction with some more effective programs
of resocialization than we currently command (without them, the
pharmacology will be a waste of time), this might relaunch the
disadvantaged normals into something much closer to a normal
social trajectory and out of prison for good.525
The aid that neuropharmalogical intervention can give is of course limited.
Besides enhancing and retriggering the cognitive plasticity of a person, the proper
moral education is still needed, because that process cannot be replaced solely
through medical intervention, as Churchland puts it: We will never create moral
character by medical intervention alone. There are too many trillions of synaptic
connections to be appropriately weighted, and only long experience can hope to do
that superlatively intricate job. The whole point of exploring the technologies just
mentioned will be to maximize everyones chances of engaging in and profiting
from that traditional and irreplacable process.526
This discussion provides an empirically grounded insights for moral
education. Aside from re-emphasizing the importance of education overall,
neuroscience can possibly transform how education is enforced because of the
525
Ibid.
526
Ibid., 53.
insights it can possibly contribute on the natural factors that affect learning overall.
There is in fact researchers who takes this claim seriously.
Some researchers claim that neuroscience can inform education and change
it. 527 Knowing the nature of neural phenomena and how the human persons
neurons are shaped in growth is, for them, an important consideration in
constructing the most proper education system. This endeavor is what some call
mind-brain-based learning (MBE), or simply neuroeducation.
One of the important concepts that is evident in this endeavor is the
emphasis on the critical periods for education (which is related to Churchlands
concept of cognitive plasticity). 528 Neuroscience research suggests that there are
stages in ones life with the highest neural reorganization and processing. This is
particularly the case with infants ranging from 03 years old and adolescents from
1015 years old. Such insight suggests that teaching in those critical periods will be
more meaningful and significant for the growing child.
Another important point that neuroeducation (MBE) emphasizes is the
existence of mirror neurons.529 Mirror neurons fire or activate when the person acts,
and when the person observes another person perform the same act. The interesting
fact about mirror neurons is that observing the other perform an act is significantly
the same as doing the act itself. This suggests that imitation is an important factor in
learning an act. Thus, in education it might be the case that learning through
527
Uta Frith and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education,
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
528
Ibid., see chap. 2, The Developing Brain, 1830.
529
Ibid., 159163.
showing and making the learners observe is more effective than merely stating it
through lingual or verbal descriptions.
Although promising, neuroeducation or brain-based learning is still a young
field. Currently, its proposed methods are still under internal disputes and some of
its assumptions are only on the level of speculation.530 But with their faith in the
relevance of neuroeducation, some of its proponents remark that someday it will
be possible to pop a pill to learn,531 in a sense that someday we will have sufficient
knowledge of neurobiology to accelerate learning and make it more efficient. This
kind of neuropharmalogical-enhanced learning is of course a utopian speculation
which is still far from realization. But the fact that the gaps between neural
530
John T. Bruer, one of the older critics of the overoptimistic claims of neuroeducation,
states that neuroscience and education are still far from being directly bridged, as he writes: Brain
science fascinates teachers and educators, just as it fascinates all of us... Educational applications of
brain science may come eventually, but as of now neuroscience has little to offer teachers in terms of
informing classroom practice. There is, however, a science of mind, cognitive science, that can serve
as a basic science for the development of an applied science of learning and instruction. Practical,
well-founded examples of cognitive science into practice already exist in numerous schools and
classrooms. Teachers would be better off looking at these examples than at speculative applications
of neuroscience (John T. Bruer, Education and the Brain: A Bridge Too Far, Educational
Researcher, 26 [8] [1997]: 416, 4).
In recent years, despite radical developments, neuroeducation is still a research filled with
disagreements and disputes. At worse, some advocates of neuroeducation engages in using
insubstantial neuroscience facts in their methods, called neuromyths. A study highlights the situation
of neuroeducation overall, namely the areas of agreements and disagreements in the field of
neuroeducation. The result was a compilation of several dozen beliefs about the brain and learning
that were filtered through the panel, which classified them as to whether they were well established,
probably so, intelligent speculation, or popular misconceptions (neuromyths). Not surprisingly, the
panel members' ratings varied, but there was enough consistency between the panel's ratings and the
findings from the author's (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2008) extensive meta-analysis of the literature that
she was able to extract twenty-two principles that describe how the brain learns.
This study and other published articles make clear that there is not yet broad agreement on
the standards that define educational neuroscience. Perhaps those who continue to focus on the
somewhat contrived and now stale neuromyths will shift their efforts instead to the research findings
that have real potential for enhancing educational practice... [Nevertheless, neuroeducation] have
come a long way...and the future looks promising (David Sousa, How Science Met Pedagogy, in
David A. Sousa, eds., Mind, Brain, & Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom,
[Bloomington: Solution Tree Press, 2010], chap. 3).
531
Frith and Blakemore, The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education, 167.
phenomena, learning and education are currently slowly being bridged give the
promising possibility that, in the future, a matured neuroscience can indeed
transform our educational practices and correctional practices, as Churchland
insists. As illustrated in this sub-section, currently, neuroscience insights can
contribute in changing our policies on the treatment of the morally disadvantaged,
and empirically grounding our methods in terms of moral education and education
in general.
Now, if a deeper understanding of the nature of morality through knowing
neural phenomena can lead to some changes in our normative assumptions about
moral correction and moral education, how can such deeper understanding change
our moral culture overall? Churchland is optimistic that the descriptive knowledge
neuroscience can give us will not only change our moral culture, but our culture
overall.
1.3 The Possibility of Transforming Culture
Our traditional language-centered conception of cognition is

now confronted with a very different brain-centered conception, one
that assigns language no fundamental role at all. It will be some time
before we digest this major shift in perspective, and longer still before
we begin to use the new conceptual framework in casual
conversations and daily human life. But it will not be as long as some
suppose. The reason is simple. These new assumptions, and many
more from functional neuroanatomy and cognitive
neuropharmacology, will soon be put to work in medicine,
psychiatry, child development, the law, correctional policy, science,
and industry. Their impact in these areas will not be minor. And as
they affect our lives from these many points of the social compass,
we will have both the opportunity to learn the relevant vocabulary,
and the motivation to participate in the relevant conversations. The
new framework, like any other, will gradually work its way into the
general population. In time, it will become the common property of
folks generally. It will contribute to, or even constitute, a new folk
psychologyone firmly rooted, this time, in an adequate theory of
the brain.532
Changing the whole landscape of our view of human nature to a whole new
folk psychology is certainly a strong claim that can clearly be refuted. One would
need to have a certain optimism to think that everyday talk would constitute of
neuroscience facts in the future, as one of the skeptics to this idea remarks:
According to a 2007 New Yorker profile of professors Paul

and Patricia Churchland, two leading neurophilosophers, they like
to speculate about a day when whole chunks of English, especially
the bits that constitute folk psychology, are replaced by scientific
words that call a thing by its proper name rather than some outworn
metaphor. The article recounts the occasion Patricia Churchland
came home from a vexing day at work and told her husband, Paul,
dont speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is
awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline,
and if it werent for my endogenous opiates Id have driven the car
into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour
me a Chardonnay, and Ill be down in a minute. Such awkward
chemical conversation is unlikely to replace folk psychology
anytime soon, despite the Churchlands fervent wishes, if only
because it misses the actual human reasons for the reported
neurochemical impairmentssuch as, for example, failing to get
ones favored candidate appointed to a post.533
Overall, Tallis complaint is based on the premise that our current folk
psychological assumptions will not be displaced by a future neuroscience research.
Besides Tallis, many other thinkers claim that the future of folk psychology is not
532
533
Raymond Tallis, What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves, New Atlantis:
A Journal of Technology & Society, vol. 29 (2010): 325, 4.
as radical as Churchland envisions;534 on the other hand, there are some thinkers
who partially agree with Churchlands vision. 535 Nevertheless, whether our folk
psychological assumptions will be radically transformed to the point that they can
change our day-to-day conversation is an empirical question that only time can
confirm. Thus, Churchlands claim and the claims of his critics can only be
validated in the future.536 But the researcher argues that Churchlands vision of the
future of folk psychology is not simply blind. Again, like all of his references to
future events, Churchlands optimism is grounded on history, as he writes:
Some of my colleagues find this last idea implausible. They

doubt that the vocabulary of a sophisticated science could ever gain
general use on the scale at issue. I think they are wrong, and I am
encouraged by the following facts about our recent social history. In
the middle third of this century, the peculiar vocabulary and special
assumptions of Freudian psychology spread through the educated
populace like a wildfire. The lexicon of anal retention , Oedipal
complex, sexual repression, and a hundred other terms provided a
rich resource for gossip and mirth, for criticism and disdain, for self-
534
Besides Tallis, there are several thinkers who directly critique Churchlands radical
claim that our folk psychological assumptions can be radically transformed by neuroscience. Some
of them are: Andy Clark, Dealing in Futures: Folk Psychology and the Role of Representations in
Cognitive Science, in McCauley, The Churchlands and their Critics: 86103; Robert N. McCauley,
Explanatory Pluralism and The Science of Co-evolution of Theories in Science, in McCauley, The
Churchlands and their Critics: 1747.
535
There are also others who partially agree with Churchlands vision. Some of them are:
William Ramsey, Stephen Stich, and Joseph Garon, Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future
of Folk Psychology, in John D. Greenwood, eds., The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality
and Cognitive Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 93119; Daniel Dennett,
Two Contrasts: Folk Craft versus Folk Science, and Belief versus Opinion, in Greenwood, eds.,
The Future of Folk Psychology: 135148.
536
Churchland replied to his critics regarding the future of folk psychology in this manner:
[O]ur well-known prediction that the propositional attitudes displayed in folk psychology, and in
some scientific psychological theories as well, are fated to be swept away in favor of a new set of
theoretical notions, notions inspired by our emerging understanding of the brain. For us, this is an
empirical claim, based on our reading of a broad range of overlapping evidence. Certainly there is a
ample room for reasonable people to disagree in their reading of it...for they are entirely free of any a
priori arguments designed to make propositional-attitude psychology forever invulnerable of
criticism (Paul M. Churchland and Patricia Smith Churchland, The Future of Psychology, Folk
and Scientific, in The Churchlands and their Critics, 1996: 219254, 221).
indulgence and self-rationalization, and for social confabulation

across the board. These manifold social functions earned it a popular
currency quite independent of its therapeutic success, or the lack of
it.537
Churchland states that it cannot be denied that, despite its prominence, the
Freudian framework had faded badly by the early 1970s. Indeed, it was soon
replaced by New Age psychobabble, a pastiche of primal screams, inner
children, and getting in touch with one's feelings. For Churchland this means
that getting a new form of psychobabble into general use is not difficult at all. He
claims that the public is eager for such frameworks, eager to the point of
embracing nonsense for decades on end.538
Thus, he asks, what if a widely accepted conceptual framework were to
come along that had some real integrity? 539 More specifically, what if a
neuroscientifically informed framework that serves the taste of the public, like
that of the Freudian framework or New Age framework, becomes popular across
the population? Unlike the previous two, Churchland claims that this new
framework, being grounded on natural facts, will be more powerful and more
penetrating than its predecessors; consequently, it will provide a real grip on the
structure of cognitive reality.540
If such framework indeed has some real integrity, it will earn its keep, by
enabling each one of us to see more deeply into our social and personal situations,
537
538
Ibid., 323324.
539
Ibid., 324.
540
Ibid.
by giving each of us a broader range of behavioral responses to awkward or
problematic situations, by allowing us to smooth the course of our cognitive and
emotional commerce, by helping us to realize our individual potentials, and by
making mutual love a deeper and more widespread human achievement. 541
Churchland thinks that as long as such new framework serves our practical
purposes, it will remain in our culture.
If this vision indeed happens, neuroscience facts would have permeated
culture, and it will inevitably transform our day-to-day norms and practices as
illustrated above. The correctness of such vision is of course something that can
only be confirmed in time. Nevertheless, the researcher suggests that, for
Churchland, it is a real possibility, a real possibility meaning that Churchland is not
merely prescribing a future state of culture, but describing or even predicting the
future state of culture. One can say that his vision may be overly optimistic, but it is
not plainly a naive prescription; rather, it is an assertion of a possibility grounded
on history.
Now if Churchland is optimistic that a deeper descriptive understanding of
human nature through knowing neural phenomena can transform our culture, it is
understandable why he thinks that a more scientifically informed understanding of
human nature and the social world can transform our moral conception and
practices, to repeat a quote:
[T]he continuing development of sciences such as

cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, neuropathology,
541
Ibid.
neuropharmacology, and vector algebra (the mathematics of neural

nets) eventually become absorbed into the extrapersonal, social-
level scaffolding that already structures our interpersonal lives.
And by being absorbed, it will change that scaffolding, and with it,
our moral practices and our moral conceptions. It will afford us the
opportunity to hone entirely new nondiscursive cognitive skills, as
we learn to navigate a social environment containing novel
structures and novel modes of interaction. It will permit a deeper
insight into the intricate dance that is each persons unfolding
consciousness and thus make possible a deeper level of mutual
understanding, care, and protection. It will reconfigure our legal
practices, our correctional practices, our educational practices, and
perhaps even our recreational and romantic practices.542
Of course the question of how exactly such change will happen can only be
estimated. In this section, the researcher attempted to give a glimpse on how such
change is possible by illustrating how neuroscience facts can change some of our
commonsense conceptions about morality. One can only go so far in envisioning
the future. But, based on historical parallels, in the future our current normative
views may be as misinformed, mistaken, and misguided as our ancestors.
If we recall the normative practices against witches, vaccines, and women,
one can only wonder how drastic the envisioned change Churchland is imagining in
the future. Perhaps someday all criminals will be labeled simply as sick people who
needs medical intervention. Perhaps someday the attainment of specific moral
abilities will be aided and enhanced by medicine, to the point that one can reach a
state of moral excellence through medical intervention.
Certainly, some resistance will emerge to prevent unacceptable changes.
But, barring any reasonable ethical resistance, some attempts at resisting these
542
changes may be as uninformed and futile as the Churchs previous resistance to
vaccines on grounds that they constitute a worldly and profane attempt to interfere
with Gods will concerning who lives and who dies.543
The future radical change that Churchland is predicting is difficult to
foresee, but we can be certain of one thing: Churchland is confident that the
normative moral landscape will inevitably change by attaining a deeper, more
naturalistic understanding of morality. Similar to how knowledge of chromosomes
(XX for female and XY male), changed our normative views on women, or similar
to how knowledge of psychology changed our normative views on the mentally ill
(previously witches); knowledge of neural phenomena has the real potential to
change our normative views about morality. The change already brought about by
natural facts, and the potential real changes a deeper understanding of morality can
bring to the future, are where, in Churchlands framework, the normative
significance of a naturalistic understanding of morality can be found.
2. Radical Moral Progress, Toward a Naturalistic Understanding of Morality
Throughout this thesis, the possible changes that Churchlands naturalistic
account of morality can bring about were explored. As been shown, such an
account can clearly change our descriptive understanding of morality and also
transform our normative assumptions surrounding it. Nevertheless, no matter how
compelling Churchlands naturalistic account of morality is, it is merely a
543
Churchland, Science, Religion, and American Educational Policy, 8384.
speculation, albeit a philosophical one. In fact, Churchland admits that this is the
case, to quote some of his thoughts on this:
[T]he neurocomputational perspective here paraded is not a

narrow perspective, focused exclusively on the microarcana of
individual brains. On the contrary, it is a multiscaled perspective that
may finally allow us to construct a unified, and unblinkered, account
of human cognition as it unfolds over the centuries. At the very least,
it offers a systematically novel approach to problems that have
always been central to our discipline. Concerning its future success .
. . I live in hope, as always.544
While it can be argued that Churchlands view is based on computational
neuroscience and neuroscience in general, it is still an untested speculation. In
Chapter II, the comparison between Churchlands geometrical activation-vector-
space framework (neurocomputational perspective) and Einsteins theory was
made. Comparing the status of both theories will help reveal where Churchlands
theory currently stands.
Despite some similarities, Churchlands account is far less established than
Einsteins theory. Einsteins theory of relativity is an actual mathematical account
that is generally accepted by the scientific community because it has already passed
several empirical tests. Indeed, our Global Positioning Systems (GPS) would be
erroneous (about 10 kilometers of error per day) if general relativity was not taken
into account.545 On the other hand, Churchlands activation-vector-space framework
is only a philosophical account grounded on the mathematics of artificial neural
networks. Such account, although promising, is far from reaching the status of
544
545
Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 102.
Einsteins theory of relativity. This is precisely because neuroscience in general,
Churchland admits, has yet to reach the major conceptual advances in physics,
chemistry, and biology. 546 To put it simply through an analogy, computational
neuroscience has not yet found the E=mc2 of neural phenomena. Furthermore,
neuroscience currently does not have the technology to test any kind of
revolutionary computational-mathematical account of neurons, as applied to actual
real-life cognition. Indeed, Churchland points out that even though advances in
brain scans have emerged, technologies that directly scan and extract the full detail
of the complex matrix of 100 trillion synaptic connections in the brain remain to be
invented.547 Thus, Churchlands neurocomputational account of morality, and his
neurocomputational framework in general, is a theory that is highly speculative
because it cannot currently be tested or confirmed through experimentation. Our
current technology and knowledge in neuroscience, unfortunately, are still
incapable of such feats.
Nonetheless, even though Churchlands naturalistic account of morality is
speculative, by nature it is an account that is confirmable empirically, precisely
because it is an account grounded on the natural world, and not on pure reason or
546
Churchland, Rules, Know-how and the Future of Moral Cognition, in
547
Determining the entire activation pattern across a typical neuronal population thus
appears almost as impossible, with current technology, as recovering the connection matrix that
produces it. We are limited, with microscopic physical probes, to sampling a small subspace
perhaps a hundred dimensions or soof the much higher-dimensional activation space embodied in
any real brain area. Such comparatively low-dimensional samplings can still be informative, to be
sure. Observed over time, they can reveal, perhaps, the gross categorical structure of the target
activation space, though at very poor resolution. And in very tiny neuronal populations ( 1,000
neurons or so, as can be found in an insects nervous system), this resolution gap, between the
monitored sample and the entire target population, will be much reduced (Churchland, Platos
Camera, 117).
metaphysics. Thus, future testing, particularly experimentation in the light
neuroscience and science in general, can show if Churchlands account is truly a
plausible theory. Now, of course, this also implies the plausibility that his account
may be completely wrong. On this issue, the researcher refers to a similar claim
made for Churchlands naturalistic account of epistemology:
Churchland is the first truly natural epistemologist. Quine

(1951) opened the doors by arguing that natural science does matter
to philosophy (and vice versa). Churchland was the first to boldly
step through those doors and demonstrate how naturalized
epistemology could, and should, be done. Even if everything
Churchland ever wrote about connectionism and neuroscience
should turn out to be utterly wrong, which is unlikely, that legacy
will remain.548
In the same manner, the researcher claims that if Churchlands naturalistic
account of morality turns out to be utterly wrong, which is unlikely, he has shown
us how morality can be naturalized, and shown us that neuroscience does matter in
our understanding of the moral domain. Indeed, throughout this thesis, what
prevails in Churchlands framework is his adamant effort to naturalize morality. As
shown in his bottom-up approach in neurophilosophy, as shown in his discussion of
moral learning in light of the activation-vector-space framework, as shown in his
discussion of moral realism and the development of moral knowledge (where he
established the natural objective value of moral knowledge and the significant
empirical role society plays in such process), and finally, as shown in this chapter,
particularly in his discussion of norms and practices, he advocates the grounding of
normative assumptions on natural facts.
548
Aarre Laakso and Garrison Cottrell, Churchland on Connectionism, 149.
Overall, perhaps the most significant insight that has been shown in this
thesis is the possible effects and the drastic changes that a naturalistic account of
morality can bring about. Indeed, such an account not only shows how morality can
possibly be grounded on natural facts, particularly neural phenomena and socio-
empirical factors, but how such natural grounding, specifically the increased
descriptive understanding that it provides, can possibly transform the overall
normative moral landscape. This very possibility is basically what Churchland calls
radical moral progress.
Now, it is important to recall that in Churchlands framework, such radical
progress can be made possible not only by naturalizing morality or attaining a
deeper understanding of socio-moral phenomena and human nature, but also with
the help of social institutions and the extrapersonal scaffolding or regulative
machinery used and built upon throughout human history. As stated in Chapter IV,
society is responsible for teaching, evaluating, and improving the knowledge that is
accumulated and preserved through language. Clearly, developing and attaining a
deeper understanding and knowledge of the nature of morality requires a
functioning society and the very extrapersonal scaffoldings that it uses and
embodies.
Indeed, our society equipped with regulatory mechanisms has progressed so
far. The best example of this, as repeatedly emphasized in this thesis, is the
development of science. Scientific progress shows that our cognitive machinery
when aided by regulatory mechanisms such as language in the form of written

records and oral traditions, or the different technological and conceptual tools such
as telescopes, microscopes, graphs, and mathematical equations, can radically
transform the landscape of the world. Such radical progress, Churchland envisions,
can also be achieved in the moral domain, and it can be done by not solely
grounding our moral knowledge on natural facts, but also through the continuous
development social institutions employ for our moral knowledge. Such process may
eventually yield the development of new regulatory mechanisms or extrapersonal
scaffoldings that will allow us to better grasp and navigate the socio-moral world,
as Churchland writes:
[T]he moral domain offers as much prospect for radical

progress as does any other domain of cognitive activity. And such
progress will be achieved not becausein a runaway spirit of mad-
dog reductionismwe turn our backs on the social-level cognitive
machinery. On the contrary. The current officeholder may be tossed
out on its ear, but the high-level office will remain. It will then be
occupied, however, by a system of concepts and an accompanying
vocabulary grounded in a more deeply informed and technologically
more powerful theory of human nature. It will then do all of the old
jobs betterthose that are worth doing, anywayand endless new
jobs to boot. Accordingly, now is hardly the time to become faint of
heart or feeble of vision. The relevant sciences are pregnant with
promise, and their effects on social practice are already being felt.
The virtues of extrapersonal cognitive scaffolding remain obvious, to
be sure. But it is equally obvious that new and better scaffolding
might sustain a new and even better moral order. The science alone
wont build it. But we can.549
As mentioned in Chapter IV, the primary blocks to development of moral
knowledge are 1) our current folk psychology (named by the current officeholder in
the above quote), and 2) the lack of regulatory mechanism or tools available to
549
properly grasp (or index) human nature and social reality. To radically progress in
the moral domain, we may need a new regulatory mechanism and new
extrapersonal scaffoldings that can drastically change our moral conceptions. It may
be a new scaffolding that the continuing development of science, through fields
such as cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, neuropathology,
neuropharmacology, and vector algebra (the mathematics of neural nets), can give
us.550
Our knowledge of the natural world has already reached a revolution that
has drastically changed the landscape of the physical world through natural science.
This was made possible by society through the help of its regulatory mechanisms
and extrapersonal scaffoldings. Churchlands view of radical moral progress
consists of reaching a similar revolution in our knowledge of the socio-moral world
and human nature. 551 To achieve this, drastic developments in human-related
science may be required. Similar to how natural science grasps the deep secrets of
the physical world through revolutionary mathematical and scientific methods,
human science, in the future, may grasp the deep secrets of human nature and the
socio-moral world through a new regulatory mechanism that we have yet to create.
As Churchland puts it, human science has only just begun so, surely a new
regulatory mechanism will be added to that picture in the centuries to come.552
Even though we are uncertain of what regulatory mechanism or extrapersonal
550
Ibid.
551
Ibid., 73.
552
scaffolding will be added, or how drastic those additions can change our
understanding of morality, it is clear that, at least in Churchlands framework,
morality can truly progress by naturalizing it, thereby, truly attaining a deeper
understanding of what its nature is.
If we take Churchlands vision of radical moral progress seriously,
especially the possibility that norms and practices can be radically changed by a
deeper understanding of the natural world, the pursuit of an ever-increasing natural
knowledge of morality may someday change our moral conception, our moral
practices, and even our moral culture in ways that we may have never imagined.
Even if Churchlands naturalistic account of morality turns out to be completely
wrong, this illustrated vision of radical moral progress, despite its arguably over-
optimistic character, is something that can be difficult to deny precisely because it
is a historically and scientifically informed vision of the future of morality.

CHAPTER VI
Summary, Conclusion, and Recommendations
A. Summary
In recent years, the gap between neuroscience and morality is slowly
closing. However, despite the promise that neuroscience holds in changing our
understanding of morality, several thinkers argue that neuroscience can only
contribute to our descriptive understanding of morality but never to our normative
understanding of it. On the contrary, Churchland thinks that our morality overall
that is, our moral conceptions and our moral practices, can be radically changed and
developed by a greater descriptive understanding of human nature that neuroscience
can give. In a sense, he is claiming that our normative moral assumptions can
change by gaining a deeper descriptive understanding. For Churchland, this
development and change constitutes his vision of moral progress.
Nevertheless, some of Churchlands critics think that he is overly optimistic
with his vision, particularly his claim that the normative dimension of morality can
progress with greater descriptive understanding. This thesis aimed to clarify this
said issue by ultimately answering the question: Can the normative significance of
a naturalistic account of morality be established through Churchland's concept of
moral progress?
There are, however, two problems encountered in this endeavor: 1) Being
primarily an epistemologist, Churchlands works on morality are relatively scarce

compared with his work on epistemology; 2) Related to this first issue, Churchland
did not elaborate on the is-ought gap when it comes to his discussions on morality
and seems to take it as a given that moral progress in the normative dimension is
possible. To resolve these issues, this research attempted to bridge Churchlands
early writings on morality (19892000) and his latter writings on epistemology
(20012012) to: 1) comprehensively provide a more extensive examination of his
view of morality, and 2) to address Churchlands evident lack of elaboration on the
is-ought gap, which the researcher claims can be found in his latter writings on
epistemology. Having established the method and aim of this thesis, the researcher
then proceeded to introduce Churchlands neurophilosophy to present a general
ground for the discussions in this thesis.
In Chapter II, where Churchlands neurophilosophy is introduced, it is stated
that his neurophilosophy developed within the zeitgeist of the contemporary debates
regarding the nature of the mind. Three contemporary materialist views emerged
from these debates, namely: 1) reductive materialism, 2) functionalism, and 3)
eliminative materialism. The researcher determined that Churchlands aim to reach
a naturalistic view of human nature is what led him to subscribe to eliminative
materialism, thinking that it is the most empirically grounded of all three modern
materialist views.
Churchlands subscription to eliminative materialism hinges on three major
premises: 1) He thinks that our current assumptions about human nature are theories
rooted on what he calls folk psychology (FP); 2) Being a theory, it can be radically
false; and 3) Similar to how our old theory about nature (folk physics) became
obsolete and was displaced by more powerful scientific theories, he claims that our
folk psychological assumptions can be subjected to a similar fate.
Churchland thinks that there is a need to displace FP simply because it lacks
explanatory power in uncovering the very basic aspects of human nature such as
learning and mental illness. The problem, he asserts, hinges on FPs assumption
that our mind is fundamentally grounded on language and propositions. For
Churchland, language is not the basis of human cognition; rather, it hinges on an
entirely different kinematics that neuroscience is already revealing. Such
kinematics, he claims, can be found in neural phenomena, in the vast and complex
system with 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections that fire or
activate 100 times per second.
The proper method to uncover the kinematics of this complex system,
according to Churchland, is to adopt a bottom-up approach, in particular making
assumptions from the mechanics of the brain (bottom) and then determining its
implications on human nature (up). The examination of such mechanism will
largely depend on neuroscience facts. Churchland points out that computational
neuroscience provides adequate facts for us to understand the nature of neural
phenomena. Indeed, such science has revealed that cognitive activity can be
realized by simply simulating the basic mechanism of neurons in computers.
Based on the findings of computational neuroscience, Churchland argues
that one can sufficiently understand the complex nature of neural phenomena if one
adopts a mathematical and geometrical perspective, similar to how science uses
several mathematical and geometrical models to account for the mechanisms of the
natural world (for example, Einsteins geometrical view of gravity as a curvature in
space). With this in mind, he conceives of a model he calls activation-vector-space
framework, which basically amounts to what he calls the neurocomputational
perspective. In this perspective, neural firings in the brain are activation vectors,
and synaptic configurations are activation spaces. Practically, this means that
cognitive activity is conceived as certain activations in a specific area of the brain
wired for a particular task. For Churchland, these neural activations are the
fundamental kinematics of cognition. This kinematics, he asserts, is free from
traditional language and logic.
From this neurocomputational perspective, cognition and practical skills in
general are basically represented as activation spaces in the brain, with each space
designated to fulfill a particular task. This is evidently demonstrated in clinical
accounts where damage in certain areas in the brain impairs a very specific
cognitive ability. For example, lesions in a specific area only impairs ones ability
to speak but not ones ability to understand speech or not even ones ability to utter
non-verbal sounds. This shows that the brain is most likely divided into activation
spaces, as Churchland states, and if those activation spaces are damaged or non-
existent, cognitive activity cannot be realized.
Now, if cognitive activity in general is realized through neural activations,
what does this insight imply for our overall view of morality? Chapter III and IV
were devoted to answer this question. Overall, both these chapters aimed to
establish Churchlands naturalistic account of morality.
Knowing how moral character is conceived through neurophilosophy (that
is, bottom-up) entails knowing how moral character is acquired, which first leads to
the question of how we learn. Chapter III explored this topic in detail.
From a neurocomputational perspective, learning is the sculpting of
activation spaces that allow one to do a particular cognitive task (e.g. learning how
to walk or learning how to read); sculpting being the synapse adjustments in ones
brain. Neuroscience research shows that these synapse adjustments are dictated by a
mechanism called Hebbian learning. This mechanism can be summarized as
neurons that fire together, slowly wire together.553 Or, roughly, the more a group
of neurons is activated, the more synaptic connections are made for that activation.
In this sense, the more a neural network is exposed to a particular activation, the
more sufficient the network becomes at it. This implies several things for the nature
of learning.
In Churchlands neurocomputational framework, cognitive activity is
basically a series of activations. Thus, if Hebbian learning is a principle that lets
neural networks learn through the sheer statistics of activations, this means that, at
the most fundamental level, learning requires repeated exposure to and immersion
in a particular task. Indeed, this evidently reflects in higher levels of learning.
Generally, this process explains why cognitive skills and motor skills take time and
553
experience to learn. For Churchland, this simply means that it takes several
exposures to and immersions in a certain task to sufficiently sculpt the activation
spaces appropriate to do such a task.
Now, if learning is governed by the process just described, how does this
affect our view of morality, particularly how morality is learned by a human being?
Because Hebbian learning is a process that lets neural networks develop
based on the experience of the environment, a person whose brain is driven by
Hebbian learning will learn how to grasp and navigate the world simply by being
exposed and immersed in it. However, a person is not only immersed in a physical
world, but also in a highly social world; thus, as Hebbian learning dictates, a person
will and must grasp not only the physical structure of the world, but also its social
structure.
Being immersed in a social world, a human being will learn to be social, in
particular learning the required social skills to interact with other human beings. For
example, an infant will and must sculpt the appropriate activation spaces to acquire
the necessary skills to socialize. As Hebbian learning dictates, the more an infant is
exposed to and immersed in social interactions and social experiences, the more he
or she will become efficient at it. This is seen with how an infant eventually learns
to socialize, by inducing reactions from his or her parents through crying or smiling
for example. This process eventually gets more complex as the infant grows up.
Becoming an adult would require that same infant to learn the intricate structure of
the social world, particularly its rules, practices, and commerce, to effectively
interact with several people. Particularly, a growing child must learn the necessary
but advanced social knowledge and skills to grasp and navigate the social world
effectively (for example, discriminating between good and evil in complex social
situations). From a neurocomputational perspective, all these knowledge and skills
are learned by having the necessary activation spaces that endow a person with
appropriate moral and social skills. In this sense, moral learning would be the
acquisition of knowledge and skills driven by Hebbian learning. So, as Hebbian
learning dictates, this process requires experience in the social world; the more
experience one gets, the more skilled and knowledgeable one becomes at it. In
Churchlands framework, these hard-earned knowledge and skills are what make
us moral. Simply put, being moral is acquiring a set of social skills; for Churchland,
this ultimately means knowing the structure of social space and how to best
navigate ones way through it. 554
Conceivably, if moral learning is driven by Hebbian learning, moral
character, then, would be the culmination of acquired social and moral
activation spaces that constitute the socio-moral skills and knowledge acquired by
an individual. Ones moral character, then, in Churchlands framework, is evidently
based on two factors: 1) the brain or neural phenomena (ones nature), and 2) social
experience (nurture). As Hebbian learning dictates, without one of these, moral
character cannot be formed. Hence, even if ones moral character is driven by
554
Churchland, Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge, 300; Churchland, Toward a
Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues, 44.
nature (neural phenomena) it undoubtedly needs to be nurtured through experience
to reach its appropriate shape.
Now that it is established how morality is acquired by an individual, the
next question that needs to be asked is how morality is conceived collectively from
a neurocomputational perspective. The answer to this question hinges on
Churchlands account of moral knowledge, which is one of the major foundations
of his concept of moral progress. Chapter IV was devoted to illustrate this topic.
As depicted in Chapter III, morality is something learned through many
years of learning sets of social and moral knowledge and skills. For Churchland, the
moral knowledge learned from such a process is something that is fundamentally
non-discursive. His argument is based on two points: 1) that the moral know-how
such as moral perception or discrimination is something automatic and immediate
in its execution, and not the result of discursive contemplation; 2) that the overall
embodiment of a persons moral knowledge is engraved in the hard-earned
configuration of 100 trillion synaptic configurations that took a person years to
sculpt through Hebbian learning. Such knowledge, Churchland claims, cannot be
articulated in language. In this sense, moral knowledge, and even morality in
general, are not fundamentally grounded on language or some discursive rules one
must follow. However, the researcher clarifies that Churchland is not denying the
importance of language, as will be shown below.
Language is, for Churchland, a regulative machinery that enhances the
normal learning process realized through Hebbian learningenhance in a sense

that it allows a person to artificially regulate activation spaces. Overall, this makes
learning faster and deeper than without these artificial elements. In this sense,
language allows a person to regulate the supposedly mindless Hebbian learning
process.
But besides enhancing learning at the individual level, language, through
oral tradition in ancient times and written texts in modern times, allows the
preservation and accumulation of knowledge over time. In this sense, language is
also a tool that lets humans collectively accumulate knowledge. This accumulation
evidently led us to cultural and societal development.
With the help of language, human civilization eventually built social
institutions with long traditions and accumulated knowledge. This enabled us to
refine and improve on the knowledge that evidently brought us humans up from
cavemen to rocket scientists. Particularly, as applied to moral knowledge, this
process is made possible by social institutions that teach moral rules or social
policies, adopting hundreds or even thousands of years of accumulated moral
wisdom. For Churchland, this accumulated knowledge is what constitutes the
discursive elements of morality. A child born in a society that uses these discursive
elements will roughly learn, no matter how limited, the accumulated wisdom in the
society, precisely because Hebbian learning by nature is driven entirely by
experience of the social and physical environment. In this sense, the accumulated
rules, policies, practices, customs, and culture play a role in shaping the Hebbian
learning process of a person living in society. Society regulates and enhances the
supposedly non-discursive moral knowledge one has through discursive elements,
resulting in unique moral character for each person. Indeed, even if two persons are
equipped with a similar neural system, their moral character can be radically
different depending on their experience (A Muslims moral character will be
different from a Christians, for example).
Overall, moral knowledge can be seen as a mix of external and internal
factors. This knowledge is internally realized through a non-discursive neural
system, and externally regulated, accumulated, and developed through discursive
elements society uses. Thus, moral knowledge is an inextricable mix and interplay
between discursive and non-discursive elements at both the collective and
individual level. It is through this dynamic that moral knowledge develops.
Besides showing how moral knowledge develops in society, Churchland
argues that such knowledge is evidently similar to scientific knowledge. This claim
is where Churchlands argument for moral realism lies, which constitutes the major
premise of his concept of moral progress.
Churchlands argument for the similarities of the scientific domain and
social domain is grounded on two points: 1) their similarity at the collective level,
and 2) their similarity at the neural level. The first point hinges on Churchlands
premise that scientific and socio-moral institutions share an important attribute,
with both having a lasting institution that can critically evaluate and improve on
their respective current knowledge. In scientific institutions, the critical approach is
clearly seen in refereed journals, conferences, laboratory experiments, and

independent replication of those experiments. Overall, scientific knowledge is
objective because it takes a critical approach in formulating its theories, and such
theories are tested through experimentation, with the natural world itself as its most
authoritative guide. Churchland points out that socio-political institutions also have
such practices. The development of laws, policies, and constitutions by legislative
bodies is also a critical endeavor. Such critical approach is similar to science in a
sense that these socio-political institutions also refine and improve their laws and
policies over time, with past social experiences as their authoritative guide.
On the other hand, the second point is related to what was illustrated in the
last chapter, particularly on how our brains learn both the physical and social
dimensions of our world. For Churchland, both physical and social cognition are
realized through the same neural mechanism. Thus, for him, there is no
fundamental difference between our social and physical knowledge of the world.
Churchland claims that the same is also true for morality, which is a higher form of
social knowledge, and science, which is a higher form of physical knowledge. Both
scientific and moral knowledge are realized through the same neural mechanisms,
and, at the collective level, both have a critical approach for the ongoing
improvement and evaluation of knowledge. This, for Churchland, means that both
scientific and moral knowledge are not fundamentally different as modes of
knowing. The only difference between them is their object of knowledge, with
the physical world for scientific knowledge, and the social world for moral
knowledge. This similarity can be further illustrated through Churchlands
epistemology.
As illustrated in the discussion on Hebbian learning, neural networks learn
to grasp and navigate the world through repeated experience. The more experience
the network is at a particular task, the more efficient it is in its performance. For
Churchland, this means that knowledge overall is measured by its performance,
particularly how well and how far that knowledge lets a person grasp and navigate
the world. Thus, according to Churchland, since moral knowledge is realized
through the same mechanism as all other forms of knowledge, its objectivity must
also be measured through its performance.
Overall, the similarities of science and morality at the collective and neural
level led Churchland to affirm the objectivity of moral knowledge, thereby
advocating a form of moral realism. Consequently, these striking similarities
between scientific and moral knowledge (similarities at the collective and at the
neural level), compelled Churchland to conclude another radical point: because
science is almost similar to morality, progress in the moral domain is as possible as
progress in the scientific domain. This claim, however, was criticized by Owen
Flanagan, who states that it is overly optimistic to think that moral progress is
possible simply because it is similar to scientific knowledge. On the contrary, the
researcher argues that there is a reason for Churchlands optimism. This can be
found by further examining his view of parallelism between science and morality.
Apparently, there is a gap between the quality of our knowledge of the
moral domain and the scientific domain. Churchland acknowledges this gap. He
claims that this gap exists because the development of our moral knowledge is
limited by 1) a scarce understanding of human nature which is founded on folk
psychology, and 2) the lack of sufficient and powerful tools the sciences have, like
mathematics and advanced technologies such as the telescope and microscope.
Churchland, however, did not elaborate on how to address this gap, but the
researcher claims the answer can be found by looking at his latter naturalistic
epistemology.
For Churchland, the brain represents the world through neuronal maps of
activation spaces. He claims that the brain represents the intricate structure of the
world similar to how geographical maps resemble and depict a particular area in the
world. The important point to emphasize in this analogy is that actual maps can
represent the world without being 100% accuratefor example, a single map of the
Philippines can be less detailed and less accurate than a whole atlas of it; still, that
single map can roughly represent the Philippines regardless. Neuronal maps, in a
roughly similar manner, can also represent reality without being 100% accurate.
This means that representational success is not a one-to-one correspondence but is
realized through degrees of accuracy. The only requirement for truth in this
framework is the possibility of indexing a map to reality. If it cannot be indexed,
then such a map is fictional. Just as how a map of Atlantis is likely fiction because
it cannot be indexed to any place on earth, a neuronal map must be something that
has a proper object to indexotherwise, it is fictional.
Overall, based on Churchlands naturalistic epistemology, all neuronal
maps, even though crude and limited, are rough representations of the world. As
long as such maps can be indexed, they are objective representations of a certain
aspect or dimension of reality. Applying Churchlands premise that all cognition
and knowledge are driven by a common neural mechanism, our moral neuronal
maps, then, will also be rough representations of the social world, as much as our
scientific neuronal maps are rough representations of the natural world.
Evidently, however, our scientific maps are more accurate and offer a more
penetrating grasp and navigation of the world as compared with our moral maps.
The reason for this difference can be understood when one looks at how science has
progressed throughout the centuries.
Based on his neuronal map epistemology, Churchland argues that
progress in knowledge means attaining neuronal maps that provide a deeper and
more penetrating grasp of reality. Churchland claims that science has been
progressing in this manner for hundreds of years. This can evidently be seen in how
the Ptolemaic model was changed to the Copernican model, then modified by
Kepler, unified and augmented by Newton, then further unified and augmented
again by Einstein. The sciences show how our knowledge can progress by aiming to
attain a more objective knowledge of the world. Neurocomputationally, this means
developing better theories or neuronal maps that can be indexed to reality.

Churchland emphasizes that the reason the sciences progressed was because they
are equipped with the proper armamentarium (for example, mathematics and
advanced technological tools such as the telescope and microscope). Equipped with
such tools, along with a methodology geared toward objectivity, science obtained a
deeper grasp and navigation of the physical world. This method and technology
radically enhanced our understanding of the natural world.
The researcher suggests that the same level of development in the moral
domain is possible. The key to advancing our moral knowledge in a similar manner
is to obtain better tools to properly grasp the socio-moral world. Adopting
Churchlands claim that all knowledge is driven by the same neural mechanism, the
researcher concludes that as long as our pursuit of moral knowledge is accompanied
with the right tools and methods, there is no reason why our knowledge of the
moral domain cannot attain the same quality of knowledge we have gained in the
scientific domain. Similar to how the sciences based its study of the physical world
on natural facts, the pursuit of moral knowledge, the researcher further claims, must
be geared toward natural facts about morality. Following Churchlands
epistemology, this means that we must attempt to index our moral neuronal maps to
socio-moral realitiesthat is, we must base our moral assumptions on natural facts,
similar to how science has indexed its theories to natural physical phenomena.
Through this, we may possibly overcome our folk psychological assumptions about
morality similar to how science overcame folk physics, thereby freeing us from a
scarce understanding of human nature. The overcoming of folk psychology may

enable us to develop our moral knowledge as radically as scientific knowledge
developed, as Churchland envisions.
Overall, what has been illustrated in the past chapters is a naturalistic
account of how morality is learned at the individual level and developed at the
collective level. Evidently, this only covers the descriptive dimension, and not the
normative dimension of morality. Chapter V attempted to address the normative
dimension of morality by reconsidering Churchlands concept of moral progress.
Churchland defines moral progress as the slow change and development,
over historical periods, of the moral prototypes we teach our children and impose
on derelict adults.555 Churchland claims that this type of progress is not only
possible but actual. He makes his case by comparing the legislative and social
practice during the ancient times (e.g. Hebrews and the Ten Commandments) with
the modern times (state governments, constitutions, laws and policies). Churchland
points out that the scope of the law in the Ten Commandments is evidently smaller
than the scope of modern laws, which account for more dimensions of the social
world (e.g. the rights of children or women). This gap, for Churchland, shows that
morality has indeed progressed. He claims that this progress is genuine and actual
because our development of moral knowledge and skills enabled us to better grasp
and navigate through the social world more so than our ancestors.
Seeing that moral progress is actual, Churchland further advocates that we
should seek future moral progress as radical as science has attained. While
555
Churchland is confident that moral progress is no less possible and no less likely
than scientific progress,556 he admits that radical progress is yet to be achieved in
the socio-moral domain. For Churchland, what prevents radical moral progress, as
also stated earlier, is our lack of knowledge of socio-moral phenomenon, and our
lack of tools to properly gain knowledge of that phenomenon. Nevertheless,
because of his assumption that scientific knowledge is highly similar to moral
knowledge, Churchland is optimistic that future radical moral progress is possible.
The only thing we need, he claims, is a more powerful grasp of the social world,
which the sciences (particularly cognitive neuroscience, social psychology,
neuropathology, and neuropharmacology) can provide. For Churchland, this
powerful grasp has the potential to change our moral practices and our moral
conceptions...our legal practices, our correctional practices, our educational
practices, and perhaps even our recreational and romantic practices. 557 In this
sense, Churchland is claiming that a more developed understanding provided by the
sciences can change not only our descriptive understanding of morality, but also our
normative assumptions and practices. Thus, it would seem that for Churchland,
moral progress in both the normative and descriptive dimension is possible.
Churchlands critics, however, disagree with his vision of moral progress.
Owen Flanagan argues that Churchland failed to consider the critical implications
of the normative factors surrounding moral progress. 558 Particularly, he failed to
556
557
558
Flanagan, The Moral Network, 192215.
consider the fact that the ends of morality are filled with varying value judgments
across different cultures. Because of this, Flanagan asserts that moral progress
cannot necessarily be unified, linear, and global like scientific progress because
each society has different aims (unlike in science, where the clear aim is attaining
more accurate and objective knowledge). Flanagan thus concludes that the
development of morality should be non-linear, local, diverse and geared toward the
values of a particular society.
On the other hand, Andy Clark critiques Churchlands lack of distinction
between morality and socialization. 559 For Clark, moral progress is not merely
about being better at navigating social space at the collective level, but also about
increasing the collective moral understanding of humans. In this sense, moral
progress, for Clark, should be geared toward attaining a deeper moral understanding
of other humans, and not merely an increase in peoples knowledge and ability to
handle the social world, as Churchland seems to advocate.
The researcher admits that Clark and Flanagan show the lack in
Churchlands concept of moral progress as a prescriptive concept. However, the
researcher argues that Churchland is not prescribing a standard of how moral
progress ought to be; rather, he is aiming to describe what moral progress is. This
tendency can be clearly seen in his appeal to scientific progress.
The researcher argues that Churchlands discussion of scientific progress is
not a prescription of how science ought to have developed, but a description of how
559
Clark, Making Moral Space, 307312.
science actually developed in history. In a sense, scientific progress is clearly an
observable phenomenon. The same is also true for Churchlands discussion of
moral progress. This is seen in his appeal to the actuality of moral progress through
historical grounds, and his tendency to show the parallelism between science and
morality. Hence, it can be said that for Churchland, moral progress, similar to
scientific progress, is an observable phenomenon that is not measured solely by a
self-imposed standard.
Based on the above points, the researcher claims that Flanagan and Clark
have misunderstood Churchland. He is not imposing that moral progress ought to
be unified and global, as Flanagan asserts. Also, he is not imposing that moral
progress ought to be only the increase of societys collective ability to navigate
social space, as Clark argues. On the contrary, Churchland is simply describing the
ongoing global developments in our moral laws and policies, and the respective
increase in our ability to navigate the social world that follows.
The researcher further points out that Churchlands claim that the normative
dimension of morality will be changed by a developed descriptive understanding is
also part of his description of how moral progress can happen; his view is not
merely an advocacy of how moral progress ought to happen. The support to this
strong claim can be found in Churchlands latter writings.
Churchland accepts the principled distinction between is and ought;
however, he argues that every ought assumes a background descriptive
presupposition. Thus, a change in that background presupposition will also yield a

change in the ought that assumed it. Although outside his discussion of moral
progress, Churchland claims that it is natural for our normative assumptions to be
transformed by greater descriptive understanding. He further explains that a deeper
understanding of biology has changed our normative views.
For example, the medieval oughts concerning the discrimination of
women based on the assumption that they are lesser beings. Or, the medieval
oughts concerning the treatment of witches who are assumed to be possessed by
Satan. Clearly, these normative assumptions are misinformed and are based on a
superficial descriptive understanding. Churchland claims that the developments in
the sciences have changed these misinformed normative assumptions. Indeed, as he
points out, the discovery that the male chromosome (XY) is actually a derivation of
the original female chromosome (XX), and the discovery that witches are actually
mentally ill patients, have evidently changed our oughts on the treatment of
women and the mentally ill (previously witches). It is thus clear that, for
Churchland, the normative dimension can and was already transformed by attaining
a deeper descriptive understanding of natural facts (i.e., biological facts in the
above examples).
Based on the above points, it is understandable for Churchland to be
optimistic about the possibility that our normative moral practices will change
further with a more powerful descriptive understanding, precisely because he thinks
that history has shown us that it is natural for our oughts to be transformed by a
more developed and scientifically informed is. This change in both dimensions
(is and ought), as stated before, is basically Churchlands concept of moral
progress.
Now, if, in Churchlands framework, natural facts in general can transform
our normative assumptions, the question is, how can a naturalistic account of
morality specifically change our current normative moral assumptions? The
researcher claims that Churchlands naturalistic account of morality provides a
ground for envisioning the possible radical moral progress he describes, particularly
the possible normative transformation that neuroscience can give to morality.
First, it gives possibility to the idea called moral pathology. Since morality
is grounded on neural phenomena as shown in Chapter III, deficits in the brain may
impair the capacity of a person to be moral. Indeed, there are clinical cases of
patients suffering from damage in social areas (or activation spaces) in their brain
that made them lose some of their fundamental social skills, consequently changing
their moral lives for the worse. This loss of social and moral abilities due to brain
damage shows that moral capacity is not something freely given to all people. As
shown in Churchlands framework, one cannot be moral without the natural factors
that grant the ability and skills to be such. This opens the possibility that some
criminals may merely be victims of such impairment. More generally, some
supposed evil people may simply be victims of moral pathology. Perhaps, these
people simply cannot be moral like normal people because their pathology prevents
them from doing so.

In light of this descriptive insight, the researcher advocates that our
treatment of some criminals or evil people (through our norms, laws, and overall
correctional practices) needs to be changed and reconceived.
As to how more knowledge of moral pathology can specifically change our
normative assumptions, the researcher suggests that future neuroscience research
may deem our current treatment of criminals obsolete. Similar to how the burning
of witches in the medieval period is now deemed unjust in the light of modern
science, enforcing the death penalty on some criminals who are merely victims of
moral pathology may be deemed unjust by future matured neuroscience.
It is important to note, however, that besides neural phenomena, social
experience is also an important factor, as stated in Chapter III. Even when one has a
normal brain, failure to acquire the normal moral education can lead to
corruption in moral character. Evidently, the interplay between ones biology
(especially the brain) and the environment is an important part of acquiring proper
moral character. Considering the importance of this interplay, Churchland suggests
that the nature of learning as conceived by neuroscience can improve our moral
educational practices. He claims that there is one important insight neuroscience
can give to education. Young people are shown to have greater capacity to learn
than older people because of neural factors that fade with age. Thus, moral
correction and moral education must be administered as soon as possible to the
child. Based on this, Churchland suggests that instead of merely focusing on how to
correct and treat immoral people after it may already be too late, policies should
also focus on how to prevent children from being led to immorality by proper
education from the start. This will make education childwards, as Churchland
calls it.560
Overall, the discussed points show a glimpse of how a naturalistic account
of morality can possibly transform our normative assumptions. As to how it will
affect our moral culture overall is something that can only be estimated. Certainly,
the future radical progress that Churchland is predicting is difficult to foresee, but
we can be certain of one thing: his confidence that the normative moral landscape
will inevitably change by attaining a deeper, more naturalistic understanding of
morality. Similar to how knowledge of chromosomes (XX for female and XY for
male) changed our normative views on women, or similar to how knowledge of
psychology changed our normative views on the mentally ill (previously witches),
the descriptive knowledge that neuroscience can provide has the real potential to
change our normative views about morality. The real potential change this deeper
understanding of morality can bring in the future is where, in Churchlands
framework, the normative significance of a naturalistic understanding of morality
can be found.
Nevertheless, the researcher cautions that it is important to remember that
Churchlands naturalistic account of morality is a philosophical speculation.
Churchland himself admits that this is the case and acknowledges that current
neuroscience is still developing, and future research may prove that his overall
560
neurocomputational framework is completely wrong. On this issue, the researcher
claims that even if Churchlands naturalistic account of morality is wrong, he has
nonetheless shown us how morality can be naturalized, and that neuroscience does
matter in our understanding of the moral domain. Most importantly, as asserted in
this thesis, Churchlands framework shows the possible drastic change that a deeper
naturalistic understanding of morality can lead to. Indeed, if we take Churchlands
vision of radical moral progress seriously, especially the possibility that our norms
and practices can be drastically changed by a deeper understanding of the natural
world, the path to a naturalistic understanding of morality may someday lead us to a
world with radically different moral conceptions, moral practices, and even moral
culture. The researcher argues that even if Churchlands naturalistic account of
morality turns out to be wrong, his vision of radical moral progress, despite its
arguably over-optimistic character, is something that can be difficult to deny
precisely because it is a historically and scientifically informed vision of the future
of morality.
B. Conclusion
For Churchland, moral progress is possible as a whole, meaning it
constitutes developing both the descriptive and normative dimension of morality.
As depicted in this thesis, Churchland is not merely prescribing how morality
should progress but describing how morality has progressed and can further
progress in the future. Thus, it is clear that Churchland is confident that moral
progress as a whole is a real possibility and not merely a hopeful prescription.
Throughout this thesis, the researcher attempted to show that Churchland is not
being overly optimistic about his vision, as some critics have claimed. Indeed, as
seen in his adamant parallelism between science and morality (as justified through
historical events, social structure or phenomena, and most especially on
neurocomputational grounds), it is clear that Churchland is attempting to situate
moral progress with as many natural factors as possible. However, the problem with
Churchlands appeal to the parallelism between sciences and moralitys progress is
that, currently, morality is not at par with science in terms of progress. Churchland
claims that this gap exists because we are currently ill-equipped to understand the
nature of morality, as we are still burdened by folk psychology, a weak framework
for understanding morality. Nevertheless, despite this bottleneck, Churchland is
still optimistic that someday we will overcome folk psychology and finally attain
radical moral progress, a progress that is as radical as that in science.
The researcher attempted to ground Churchlands optimism by showing
how science, which was once also burdened with a weak framework, transcended
folk physics. Evidently, science overcame folk physics by adopting new regulative
machineries other than language, namely mathematics and technology. Indeed, as
history tells us, mathematics and technology radically transformed our physical
understanding of the world. Our transition from attributing natural phenomena to
the passions of the gods toward systematically understanding their operations

through mathematical theorems and confirming such theorems through technology,
revolutionized science forever.
If morality and science indeed share the same neural mechanism, as
Churchland supposes, there is no reason why morality cannot be revolutionized and
progress in the same way science did. It is important to remember that once upon a
time, science was also ill-equipped and burdened with folk physics, so even if our
moral knowledge is currently ill-equipped and burdened with folk psychology,
there is a possibility that we can overcome folk psychology and attain a similar
revolution that science has achieved. The researcher suggests that this is possible by
following the footsteps of sciencethat is, by developing new, more powerful
regulative machineries (like that of mathematics and technology), and, most
important of all, by naturalizing morality the same way science naturalized the
physical world. By doing so, our descriptive understanding of morality will
radically increase, perhaps as radical as our understanding of science. As illustrated
at length in this thesis, Churchlands neurocomputational account of morality has
shown us that a naturalistic account of morality is not far from our grasp.
Connected to the earlier points is Churchlands take on the is-ought gap.
Churchland claims that all normative assumptions are based on background
descriptive knowledge of natural facts. Hence, if ever these natural facts are
superficial or mistaken, the normative assumptions made from them will be
misinformed and misguided. On the other hand, if ever these natural facts are
powerful and truly penetrating, Churchland argues that they will have the potential
to increase our normative wisdom a thousand-fold. 561 Following this premise, if
we manage to increase our descriptive understanding to the point that we can
overcome folk psychology (our current commonsense assumptions), there is a
possibility that our normative assumptions will be transformed in a way we may
have never imagined, perhaps to the point that it will transform our overall moral
culture.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the development of
knowledge hinges on the social institutions that teach, evaluate, and develop the
accumulated knowledge of humankind. Thus, aside from attaining a more
developed naturalistic understanding of morality, a society that promotes the
development and implementation of such understanding is also required. As
Churchland puts it, a deeper descriptive understanding provided by the human-
related sciences has the potential to radically change our moral practices...our
moral conceptions...[and] reconfigure our legal practices, our correctional practices,
our educational practices, and perhaps even our recreational and romantic
562
practices... [But] [t]he science alone wont build it...we can. Overall, this
process, with all its developments and changes, is what constitutes Churchlands
vision of radical moral progress.
Based on the discussed points, the researcher concludes that, at least within
Churchlands framework, it is without question that a deeper naturalistic
understanding holds the potential to radically change our normative assumptions to
561
562
the point that it can change our whole moral landscape. This massive potential is
where the normative significance of a naturalistic account of morality lies and
where it can clearly be established. It is thus clear that Churchlands vision of moral
progress holds the answer to the main problem.
C. Recommendations
This thesis aimed to show how morality can be naturalized in Churchlands
framework, and establish the normative significance of such naturalistic account;
however, this pursuit is but a small part of the overall discussion surrounding
Churchlands framework and the study of morality and neuroscience in general.
With the intention of further expanding the discussion, the researcher recommends
further exploration of the following topics that were not expounded on, but are
related to this research:
1) The difference between social and moral cognition in Churchlands
neurophilosophy. Although it has been illustrated in Churchlands
framework that basic social skills are the foundation of morality, the
detailed difference between social skills and moral skills was not clearly
established. The issue here is how to separate very complex social cognition
from moral cognition in general. In Churchlands activation-vector-space
framework, both can possibly be found high up in the hierarchy of
activation spaces. This blurs the distinction between moral cognition and
complex social cognition, precisely because social activation spaces are

supposed to be at a lower tier than moral activation spaces. The solution to
this issue can possibly give light as to why Churchland did not deliberately
separate moral cognition from social cognition.
2) The possibility of freedom in Churchlands neurophilosophy.
Although freedom is arguably a metaphysical issue, the possibility of how it
can be conceived through a neurocomputational perspective is a relevant
topic precisely because the implications of naturalizing freedom may give
deeper descriptive insights on the nature of moral acts and human acts in
general. Following Churchlands claim that normative assumptions are
dependent on natural facts, knowing the nature of freedom can possibly
develop not only our descriptive understanding of human acts, but also our
normative understanding in a sense that it may change our standard
assumptions about responsibility and accountability.
3) An in-depth discussion of moral pathology. Although it has been
shown how moral pathology can transform our normative understanding of
morality, the topic itself was only briefly discussed. A detailed
examination, through Churchlands framework or even beyond his
framework, of how moral pathology arises can be a substantial contribution
to the neurophilosophy and neuroscience of morality.
4) The possible contributions of neuroscience to moral education.
Although the importance of neural factors in shaping our learning process
was illustrated in this thesis, the possible contributions it can give to our
moral educational practices was only briefly discussed. Exploring the
relevance of neural factors to moral education through Churchlands
framework, or even through computational neuroscience in general, is a
topic worth exploring.
5) The ethical issues surrounding the possibility of moral enhancement.
One of the consequences of successfully naturalizing morality through
neuroscience facts is that it allows the manipulation of neural factors that
make us moral, through neuropharmacological means, as Churchland has
illustrated. While this manipulation helps in treating morally pathological
patients, it can also lead to the possibility of humans being morally
enhanced to achieve moral excellence. Seeing the rapid developments in
neuroscience and technology, the ethical issues surrounding this
transhumanist possibility is arguably an urgent topic.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Source:
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Churchland, Paul and Churchland, Patricia Smith. On the Contrary: Critical
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Churchland, Paul M. A Deeper Unity: Some Feyerabendian Themes in

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UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE i

TOWARD A NATURALISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MORALITY:

to the Graduate School

University of Santo Tomas

of the Requirements for the Degree

Masters of Arts in Philosophy

My parents who continuously encouraged me in times of hardship in writing

Our Trinity + 1: Carlo, Tan, and Paulo, my closest friends, who

My VN brethren: Andres and Luitor, who gave me a fun and relaxing

All of my professors who taught me and inspired me in this course,

This thesis aimed to synthesize Churchlands overall account of morality

Keywords: Paul Churchland, Neurophilosophy, Neuroscience, Morality, Moral

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1

2. Human Nature, Is It Innate or Acquired? ............................................................................. 122

A. Background of the Study

them. 1 In fact, the quantity of possible synaptic configurations surpasses the

human culture, can be grounded, and perhaps be reduced to these neurons?

Nevertheless, since the era of rationalism, philosophers like Rene Descartes

neuroscience and other biological sciences in explaining the physical attributes of

the body (physical states), cannot be denied as a possibility. Functionalism 4

arguments, functionalism dominated the study of human nature, particularly

philosophy of mind, for more than forty years.5

In those years of dominance, Paul Churchland, a Canadian philosopher and

one of the forefathers of neurophilosophy, offered a compelling alternative.

Hume, Churchland conceived of a more radical form of materialism. He argued that

salient dimensions functionally, semantically, structurally, and

epistemologically. 6 In this sense, even though prevailing claims about human

assumptions about human nature are subject to falsification.

Subject to such scrutiny, where should philosophy or any field striving to

progressed so much since its inception. Its significance and remarkable

contributions to cognitive science and philosophy of mind can no longer be denied.9

Nevertheless, it is commonly assumed that neuroscience facts are fundamentally

unrelated to our normative moral assumptions, simply because value judgments

lies in its descriptive dimension.13

On the contrary, Churchland asserts that developments in neuroscience hold

changing our normative moral assumptions. For Churchland, this development is

the importance of developing a neuroscientifically informed account of morality as

a requirement for moral progress. Although Churchland was committed to develop

possible precisely because he neglected the normative factors that surround

normative significance of a naturalistic account of morality through Churchlands

concept of moral progress.

B. Statement of the Problem

The possibility of moral progress is a disputed topic. Some would even go

His optimism, he claims, is grounded on natural facts, particularly neuroscience

establish a rejoinder to some of the disputes in Churchlands view of moral progress

descriptive dimension, is possible in Churchlands framework. Ultimately, this

thesis aimed to answer the question: Can the normative significance of a

naturalistic account of morality be established through Churchland's concept of

a. What makes Churchlands neurophilosophy different from traditional

b. How is Churchlands neurophilosophy grounded on neuroscience facts?

c. What are the implications of Churchlands neurophilosophy on human

2) What are the neurophilosophical grounds that make morality possible?

a. What is learning in the context of neural phenomena?

b. What is moral learning, as conceived in Churchlands neurophilosophy?

3) What is moral knowledge from a neurophilosophical point of view?

a. What is moral knowledge, as depicted by Churchland?

b. How did Churchland show the objectivity of moral knowledge?

c. What is moral realism in the context of Churchlands overall

a. What is moral progress, as depicted by Churchland?

b. What is the role of a naturalistic understanding of morality in developing

our normative moral assumptions?

C. Significance of the Study

Churchland is primarily an epistemologist; thus, his works on morality,