Eliminative materialism Flashcards
What is eliminative materialism ?
Thinking of the mind as having MS (beliefs and desires) is a mistake and these kinds of MS don’t exist at all
Folk psychology
MS (beliefs, desires, intentions) are part of our ordinary non-scientific way of understanding and explaining minds
Fodor thinks that FP is fundamentally on the right track
Think that the scientific psychology will appeal to many of the same kinds of states
Eliminative materialists (Churchland) think that FP is wrong and the scientific will completely abandon the way of thinking in FP (MS play no role in scientific psychology)
FP is nothing more than a culturally entrenched theory of how we work
It has no special features that make it empirically invulnerable
Churchland’s argument for EM
P1) FP is a theory about the mind that takes there to be beliefs, desires, intentions and other kinds of propositional attitudes
P2) This theory is terrible and radically false
C) We should conclude that propositional attitudes are not real
What is getting eliminated ?
What kinds of MS is denied?
Weak eliminativism
The MS posited by FP do not exist (belief, desires, intentions, hopes)
Strong eliminativism
The MS posited by FP or by any scientific psych that appeals to the same general kinds of states do not exist
Both forms completely reject the idea of the LOT since it completely rejects the thoughts that the LOT is meant to explain
Is FP a theory?
1) Allows us to explain and predict behaviour
- For any psychological agent X and any proposition of P : If X fears that P then X desires that it not be the case that P
Explanations make reference to unobservable entities to explain phenomena
The explanations appeal to a network of common-sense laws
We can use the theory to argue for their being minds by appealing to these explanatory relations
Criteria of evaluating theories
1) In terms of their explanatory successes and failures
2) In terms of their growth, fertility and current promise of future development
3) In terms of their coherence and continuity with other theories
“FP suffers explanatory failures on an epic scale”
FP can’t explain but a good theory can :
- Nature and dynamics of mental illness
- How imagination works
- What individual differences in intelligence
- Nature and function of sleep
- How minds control bodies
- How we see the world in 3 dimensions
- Why there are perceptual illusions
- How memory and learning work
“FP has been stagnant for at least 25 centuries”
FP has hardly changed in 2500 years
” Perfect theories have no need to evolve. But FP is profoundly imperfect “
FP is retreating (used to explain clouds and weather) but now it explains less
Isn’t it obvious that belief and desires exists?
Referencing ancient Greek ideas that starts are move through the night sky because they are linked to one or more giant celestial spheres
“ one’s introspective certainty that one’s mind is the seat of beliefs and desires may be as badly misplaced as was the classical man’s visual certainty that the star-flecked sphere of the heavens turns daily.”
