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Paul Churchland (born 1942 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He currently works at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under the direction of Wilfrid Sellars. He is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland.

Along with his wife, Churchland is a major proponent of eliminative materialism, which claims that everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings and desires are theoretical constructs without coherent definition; hence we should not expect such concepts to be a necessary part of a scientific understanding of the brain. Just as a modern understanding of science has no need for concepts such as luck or witchcraft to explain the world, Churchland argues that a future neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" or "feelings" to explain the brain. Instead, the use of objective phenomena such as neurons and their interaction should suffice. He points out that the history of science has seen many previous concepts discarded, such as phlogiston, caloric, the luminiferous ether, and vital forces.

• Neurophilosophy at Work, Cambridge University Press, 2007
• On the Contrary, MIT Press, 1998 (with Patricia Smith Churchland)
• The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain, MIT Press, 1995.
• A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science, MIT Press, 1989.
• Images of Science: Scientific Realism versus Constructive Empiricism, University of Chicago Press, 1985.
• Matter and Consciousness, MIT Press, 1984.
• Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1979.

• Paul Churchland's homepage

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