William Hirstein

William Hirstein is an American philosopher primarily interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy, director of the Cognitive Science Lab, and the current chair of the Philosophy Department at Elmhurst College.

1 Training
2 Books
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

Training

William Hirstein received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, Davis under the direction of Richard Wollheim.^[1] He then did post-doctoral work under the supervision of Patricia Churchland and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran at the University of California, San Diego, exploring neurological syndromes that lead to confabulation, such as in split-brain patients, patients with anosognosia or Capgras delusion. With Ramachandran, Hirstein has also done significant research into the perception of phantom limbs, and the treatment of phantom limb pain. He draws heavily on the interaction between his philosophical training and his clinical experience in his book Brain Fiction to develop a comprehensive theory of the neural basis of confabulation, and argues that prefrontal executive processes fail to correct false memories or perceptions, resulting in a confabulation.

Books

On Searle (Wadsworth Philosophers Series, 2001)
On The Churchlands (Wadsworth Philosophers Series, 2004)
Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation (The MIT Press, 2005)
Cognitive Science: An Introduction to Mind and Brain (with Daniel Kolak, Peter Mandik, and Jonathan Waskan) (Routledge, 2006)
Confabulation (Oxford University Press, 2009)

References

^ UC Davis Philosophy Department PhDs

Persondata
Name	Hirstein, William
Alternative names
Short description	Philosopher
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death

William Hirstein

Contents

Training

Books

See also

References

External links