Eliminative Materialism Flashcards
Intentionality
The idea of ‘directedness’.
How a thought or mental state aims at objects or events in the world.
Beliefs, desires and emotions are all have intentionality.
Eliminative Materialism
Argues that developments in neuroscience will show that the way we think and talk about the mind is fundamentally flawed, so much so that at least some of it should be eliminated and they be shown to not exist.
Beyond reduction to elimination.
We argue for, but is consequential.
Reduction and Elimination Analogy
History of the science of heat.
Used to think that heat was a fluid called ‘caloric’
Over time, scientific developments showed heat is actually kinetic energy.
We wouldn’t say we reduce caloric fluid to kinetic energy. Instead, we have eliminated caloric fluid.
Although reduction and elimination will likely be more complex, as with genes.
Folk Psychology
The common-sense theory about why people as they do, helps understand, explain and predicts people’s behaviour in certain circumstances by referring to beliefs, desires, emotions, etc, e.g ‘when Tom is thirsty he will look for water’.
As it is an empirical theory, may turn out to not be true.
Churchland believes that the central concepts of folk psychology will turn out to not exist, and there are good reasons for this:
- Cannot explain all mental phenomena, e.g. mental illness.
- Hasn’t progressed significantly in 2500 years.
- Not coherent with other successful scientific theories. E.g. intentional content is not coherent with physical objects.
If we reduce these beliefs and desires to brain states, we encounter problems. Therefore, we do not need to reduce mental states to brain states and simply replace them (eliminate them) with neuroscience.
Eliminative Materialism Issue 1
Our certainty about the existence of our mental states takes priority over other considerations.
Simply counter-intuitive, what could be more certain, more directly and immediately obvious than our own thoughts, desires and emotions. D’s first certainty was ‘I think for good reason. We shouldn’t give up on such concepts.
Issue 1 Counter
Objections misunderstands Churchland’s claim.
Not denying existence of psychological phenomena. We do experience thinking or pain, but folk psychology is not the correct theory of their nature. Instead, neuroscience will provide the correct claim of what these are. Will be a revolution in our mental concepts, but we won’t cease to feel pain just because we understand the neurophysiological nature of it.
Issue 1 Eval.
All we can we certain of the is the existence of the phenomena we want to explain. Churchland’s argument does have more ground to justify why neuroscience will be able to explain what folk psychology cannot. But this does not mean it will happen as she argues, likely at best.
Eliminative Materialism Issue 2
Folk psychology has good predictive and explanatory power, and so is the hypothesis.
Churchland’s criticisms of folk psychology are unfair, not intended to be a theory of aspects, such as mental illness, only meant to explain human behaviour, specifically human action. Here it is incredibly successful at predicting and understanding behaviour, example, where neuroscience is not.
Furthermore, many scientific theories use and base their work of folk psychology, almost fundamental. To eliminate folk psychology is to eliminate many scientific theories too.
Issue 2 Counter
Not very strong.
First need to know how human action relates to the rest of mental life. To very different theories, folk psychology and neuroscience, explaining different parts of the mind is unsatisfactory. Still far less powerful than kinds of explanations we find elsewhere in the sciences. Neuroscience can address this problem.
Issue 2 Eval.
The good reasons for folk psychology to be eliminated turn out to be not so great.
We can accept Churchland’s insistence that we should only retain concepts that are part of the most powerful explanatory theory, but aspects of folk psychology will likely remain.
Is instead likely that neuroscience will excel in explaining the causes of human behaviour, especially the biology, but other scientific theories, including that of folk psychology, will excel at predicting this behaviour. It seems wise to not eliminate all mental concepts, such as intentionality, as they are highly successful in predicting behaviour.
Eliminative Materialism Issue 3
The articulation of eliminative materialism as a theory is self-refuting.
If we turn Eliminativism’s prediction of the elimination of folk psychology into a solid claim, Eliminativism claims that there are no beliefs. But if this is true, what does Eliminativism express and what is it trying to change? If there are no beliefs linked by reasoning, then Eliminativism itself is meaningless. It refutes itself, concludes there are no beliefs but simultaneously relies upon there being beliefs.
Issue 3 Counter
This objection presupposes folk psychology as the correct theory of mental states.
Compare to the 19th century argument between people who believed to be alive required some sort of vital force and those who argued there was no such force. The vitalists could argue that if what their opponents said was true, they would all be dead. Yet we know that life does not require a special force and is instead just a certain process. Eliminativism simply claims we need a new theory of what it means to assert a claim or argument.
