Eliminative Materialism

Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: 43-49, 56-66.

Eliminativism like Functionalism in that it doubts that there will be one-to- one identities between mental and physical types.

Functionalists argued against identities across species or people.

Eliminativism like Dualism in that it denies that the mental will, in any sense, be reducible to the physical

Eliminativism unlike all other theories in that it denies that there are any mental states to be reduced.

43: "As the eliminative materialists see it, the one to one match ups will not be found, and our common sense psychological framework will not enjoy intertheoretic reduction, because our common-sense psychological framework is a false and radically misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity."

Eliminative materialist's deny that there will be such identities because it takes "folk psychology" to be a "radically false and misleading" conception of the causes of behavior and the nature of cognitive activity.

Old framework of folk psychology to be eliminated not reduced.

Parallels:

Caloric (heat = fluid substance contained in bodies)

Phlogiston lost -> oxygen gained

Crystal spheres

Witches

44: "The concepts of folk psychology -- belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy, and so on -- await a similar fate."

44-5: "When neuroscience has matured to the point where the poverty of our current conceptions is apparent to everyone, and the superiority of the new network is established, we shall then be able to set about reconceiving our internal states and activities, within a truly adequate conceptual framework at last."

Introspection will be transformed by new knowledge.

Arguments for Eliminativism

Explanatory and predictive failure of folk psychology (e.g.: sleep, learning, intelligence, memory, mental illness) No progress made in over 2000 years.

Bad track record of our folk theories of just about everything else.

Demanding character of reduction.

Criticisms of Eliminativsm.

Introspection finds beliefs

Church: but ancients also 'saw' witches and crystal spheres ("observation only as good as the conceptual framework they employ")

Incoherent to make claims to knowledge and then claim that such terms don't denote.

Church: could make similar argument in support of vital spirits, etc.

It is not self-refuting to claim that "we just believe we have beliefs" in the way that it is not self-refuting to claim that "we just believe that there are witches". The claim is self-refuting as stated because stated in old vocabulary. Once new vocabulary developed, one could coherently state the thesis.

For instance if we found out that there was no psychological state corresponding to 'belief' and three different types of states feliefs, meliefs, keliefs which played various functions we associate with 'belief' (compare case of 'pain' which picks out three distinct kinds of factors). Once this vocabulary was developed, the self refuting claim could be stated as "there are no beliefs, we just melieve that we have beliefs."

Continuum.

Folk psychology may not be completely bankrupt.

Possible midway point between pure reduction and eliminativism.

Psychological Terms as Theoretical

Much of the argument for eliminativism is based on the assumption that psychological terms are theoretical.

Still, this assumption has some plausibility given that the most obvious alternatives (psychological terms are observational (and get their meaning by inner ostension) and psychological terms are operationally defined (behaviorism)) face serious difficulties.

Once it is admitted that the terms are theoretical, we must face the question "what reason do we have for thinking that folk psychology is a true theory?"

The fact that it does a good job predicting and explaining human behavior doesn't make it true. After all, Newtonian mechanics did an even better job of explaining the behavior of physical objects, even if quantum mechanics and relativity theory have shown it to be, strictly speaking, false.

What reason do we have for thinking that folk psychology isn't just like Newtonian Mechanics: a false theory that still lets us get by in most everyday situations.

In this light, the fact that folk psychology can't seem to explain some aspects of human behavior might point to its falsity.