Naturalism from Churchland's point of view

"It is within this context that certain intriguing problems arise- problems concerning how to study the brain, how to conceive of what it is up to, and how our commonsense conceptions of ourselves might fit or fail to fit with what we discover. Some of these have traditionally been recognized as philosophical problems. For example: Are mental states identical to brain states? Are mental states reducible to brain states? What sort of business is reduction? What are emergent properties and are there any? What, if anything, is special about the subjective point of view? Are conscious experiences physiologically understandable? What are representations and how can a brain represent the world outside itself? Such philosophical questions are synoptic in character, in the sense that they are very general and very broad. But they are not of an entirely different nature from synoptic problems traditionally characterized as empirical: How is color vision produced? How does the brain learn and how does it store information? What are representations and how does a brain represent the world outside itself? Is the human brain more complicated than it is smart? The questions, whether asked by philosophers or by neuroscientists, are all part of the same general investigation, with some questions finding a natural home in both philosophy and neuroscience. In any case it is the same curiosity that bids them forth, and it is perhaps best to see them all simply as questions about the brain and the mind - or the mind-brain - rather than as questions for philosophy or for neuroscience or for psychology. Administrative distinctions have a purpose so far as providing office space and salaries is concerned, but they should not dictate methods or constitute impedimenta to easy exchange. This is not to deny that there are divisions of labor indeed, within neuroscience itself there are divisions of labor- but it is to argue that such divisions neither imply nor justify radical differences in methodology."

Patricia Smith Churchland, Neurophilosophy: toward a unified science of the mind-brain (MIT Press, 1986), p. 2.

See also: http://patriciachurchland.com/