3.4.3 Eliminative materialism Flashcards
Define what it means to eliminate something
completely remove or get rid of something
What does the term folk psychology refer to?
the everyday psychological concepts and explanations we use for behaviour
the terms we use to refer to certain mental states
Give two examples of folk psychological concepts
- He winced because he was in pain
- She studied for the test because she wanted to get good grades
What do other theories of mind such as dualism and MBTIT do to folk psychological terms?
They reduce them
eg MBTIT reduces pain to c fibres firing
What does eliminative materialism do to folk psychological terms?
eliminates them completely
Define Eliminative materialism
Some or all common-sense (“folk-psychological”) mental states/properties do not exist and our
common-sense understanding is radically mistaken
Which philosophers defended EM?
Patricia and Paul Churchland
Example of reduction vs elimination in history
water and demons
People used to define water simply in terms of itself, now we can ontologically reduce it to H2O.
Conversely, in the Gospels the notion of demon possesion has been postulated to explain the behaviour of people who we would now think of as perhaps having epilespy for example. So the demon possesion theory has not been reduced but instead eliminated.
What is Patricia Churchland’s example of elimination in (scientific) history?
‘Caloric’ Analogy
Common sense shows us that in order for something to heat up, heat must pass from an already hot object to a colder one to heat it.
Hypothesis was that head is some kind of gluid that flows between objects to make them hot.
However, hot things would weigh more in their hot state; they do not. Two cold things can become hot being rubbed together.
Hence the theory was eventually rejected because better theories came along.. and it just didnt really work.
What does the Caloric Analogy tell us about elimination of (scientific) theories
The nature of scientific progress requires bad theories to be replaced by better ones.
Paul Churchland on folk psychology
- he defined folk psychology as a ‘theory’
- it was not a theory developed consciously by a specific theorist or scientis but rather one that had been collectively developed by millenia culture.
- there is lots of evidence suggesting FP is a bad theory yet we still talk about people being happy or sa, having beleifs, being concsious etc.
(which is weird considering we have abandonded stuff like the ‘caloric fluid’ which was also a bad theory… so why are we holding on, em says we shouldnt) - churchland calls FP a ‘degenerating research programme’
What is the mistake Paul Churchland says reductionist materialists make?
He argued thay had unwittingly subscribed to the theory of folk psychology, beleiving that it would eventually be proven by neuroscience. But Churchland claims that this was ultimately unreasonable.
DISCUSSION POINT
IS FP a ‘degenerating research programme?’
degenrating; decline or deteriorate physically, mentally, or morally
argueably, language and concepts about the mind has not remained static, let alone declining over the years.
For example, Freud made us more accustomed to accept unciousness motives and defence mechanisms etc..
What are the three arguements against FP (argue to eliminate it) thus in favour of EM?
- Folk psychology lacks explanatory power
- Folk Pyshcology is stangnat
- Folk pyshcology is not compatible with other succesful scientific theories
1.
Folk psychology lacks explanatory power
There are many aspects of mental life that folk psychology cannot explain, such as mental illness, the nature of intelligence, memory and sleep.
“So much of what is central and familliar to us remains a complete mystery from within FP.”
- Patricia Churchland
Explain how FP cannot provide sufficient explanation for sleep
why do we need sleep? ‘Rest’ is mistaken, even if people are allowed to rest continuously they still need to actually sleep. Apparently sleep serves some deeper functions but we do not yet know what they are.
2.
Folk psychology is stagnant
Argued that if we look at the history of FP, it reveals NO progress since the ancient Greek authors 2.5k years ago. By contrast, neuroscientific powers and constanlty growing in scope and power.
“FP’s failure to develop its resources and extend its range of successes is therefore darkly curious and one must query the integrity of its basic categories.” - Paul Churchland
3.
Folk Psychology is not compatible with other successful scientific theories
To demontrate this we can draw on intentionality, when we explain why people do certain things we might refer to a ‘wider network of story structures’ like will, desires, superegos, segos etc.. But what are these states in neurological terms? We cannot expplain intentionality in physicalist terms, so it intentional states cannot be accomodated within the rest of science, then this gives us good reason to eliminate them.
to clarify
*According to EMivists do we have feelings?
YES, because we know we feel things.
They are just suggesting that there is no reason to believe that the thing we feel can be meaningfully described in terms used in FP like happy and sad.
While FP may be useful as a shorthand, we shouldn’t take it as literally true. Exmaple: engineers often use Netwons equations to make their calculations quicker, instead of Einsteins which are technically more accurate, but the difference is so small the outcome is the same. But even though Newton’s equations make accurate predictions in this way, they’re not technically accurate.
So.. the Churchlands are saying that if we want to be accurate when we’re doing science or philosophy of mind, we shouldn’t use folk psychology terms because they’re not technically accurate. We should look to eliminate them in favour of the correct explanations.
What are the three problems eliminative materialism faces?
- our certainty about the existence of our mental states takes priority over other considerations
- folk-psychology has good predictive and explanatory power (and so is the best hypothesis)
- the articulation of eliminative materialism as a theory is self-refuting.
objections to EM
Explain the problem of direct certainty of folk pschology
Rejecting FP means EM goes against many intuions we have. Descartes for example took ‘I think’ to be his very first certainty. We could argue that the direct certainty we have about our own mental states should take priority over physicalist considerations.
*Repsonse to the problem of direct certainity of FP
This objection misunderstands EM. The Churchlands are **not denying the existence of mental phenomena **we refer to as ‘beleifs’, ‘pain’, ‘thought’ etc, they are just sayong this FP isn’t the technically correct theory a
(Consciousness and folk psychology are separate issues, and it is possible to take an eliminative stance on one but not the other.)
objections to EM
Explain the problem that FP has GOOD predictive power
The Churchlands criticse FP as a scientific theory because of its explanatory and predictive failures. (Sleep)
But we can respond to this by sayinf that in some cases, FP does make fairly accurate predictions about how people behave, eg:
- When he feels nervous, he talks really fast
- She has the belief that eating animlas is wrong so she wont order chicken
Neuroscience on the other hand- bad at predicting behaviour (atm)
The brain is sooo complex that its really hard for the neurocience model to predict even very simple behaviour. SO can neruoscince predict behaviour better than FP? Perhaps not.
objections to EM
Explain the problem that EM is self-refuting?
Churchlands are arguing that we should **believe **EM is true-> self refuting
EM claims that concepts such as beleif should be eliminated.
EM criticses FP for talking about intentional content…
but to even be able to talk about eliminative materialism requires intentionality, which is a folk psychology concept. It’s not clear how neuroscience could ever offer an alternative account of intentionality, and so folk psychology cannot ever be fully eliminated.
