Eliminative Materialism

Question 1

What is eliminative materialism?

Answer 1

Eliminative Materialism argues that future scientific developments in the field of neuroscience will show that how we discuss the mind is fundamentally flawed.

Question 2

What is Folk psychology?

Answer 2

Folk psychology refers to the common-sense understanding and explanation of human behavior. It involves the use of mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions to explain why people act in certain ways:
- He ran away because he was scared
- She got a drink because she was thirsty

Question 3

Why does Eliminative Materialism reject Folk psychology?

Answer 3

Eliminating materialism rejects folk psychology because it argues that mental states like beliefs and desires (central to folk psychology) don’t exist as real entities.
Instead, it claims that everything can be explained in purely physical or neurological terms.

Question 4

What ‘elimination’ means in terms of scientific theory?

Answer 4

Elimination refers to the process of completely rejecting or discarding a theory because it is found to be incorrect or replaced by a better explanation, meaning that the theory is no longer considered a valid explanation for the phenomena it aimed to describe.

Question 5

What does Eliminative materialism say about Folk Psychology?

Answer 5

Most physicalist theories reduce mental states to something else: type identity theory (pain to c-fibres) etc.
Eliminative Materialism argues that ‘folk’ psychology concepts do not reduce to anything and should therefore be ELIMINATED.
Churchlands argue we should look to replace it with a more rigorous scientific theory, such as neuroscience.

The Churchlands aren’t saying ordinary people should stop using words like ‘belief’ and ‘pain’. However, they 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.

Question 6

What are 4 Paul Churchland’s observations on Folk psychology?

Answer 6

1. Folk psychology does not always make accurate predictions.
2. Folk psychology cannot explain several aspects of mental life.
3. Folk psychology hasn’t changed or improved in thousands of years.
4. The mental property of intentionality is inconsistent with other accurate scientific theories

Question 7

What are 3 problems for Eliminative Materialism?

Answer 7

1. Direct certainty of folk psychology
2. Folk psychology has good predictive power
3. Self refuting

Question 8

What is the DIRECT CERTAINTY OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY problem for eliminative materialism? And possible response?

Answer 8

This argument is saying that eliminative materialism (the view that common-sense mental states like beliefs and desires don’t really exist) goes against something that feels deeply intuitive to us.

Descartes famously argued that the one thing he could not doubt was his own thinking—cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). This suggests that our awareness of our own mental states is the most certain thing we know.

The problem with eliminative materialism is that we seem to have direct awareness of our own thoughts and feelings. If we clearly experience them, how can we just dismiss them as an illusion in favor of a purely physical description of the brain (How can we just say they don’t exist)? This suggests that our own experience of mental states should be more important than any theory that tries to deny them

Possible response:

However, this response misunderstands eliminative materialism. The Churchlands are not denying the existence of the mental phenomena we refer to as ‘beliefs’, ‘pain’, ‘thought’, etc., they’re just saying this folk psychology isn’t the technically correct theory as to their nature.

Question 9

What is the FOLK PSYCHOLOGY HAS GOOD PREDICTIVE POWER problem for eliminative materialism?

Answer 9

The Churchlands criticise folk psychology as a scientific theory because of its explanatory and predictive failures. But we can respond that folk psychology does explain and make fairly accurate predictions about how people behave, such as the following:

• When he feels nervous he talks really fast
• If she has a belief that eating animals is wrong, she won’t order the chicken
• He shouted and stomped about because he was angry
• If she wins the lottery she will be happy and jump about cheering
• When he is in pain he swears loudly

Right now, neuroscience isn’t very good at predicting behavior. The brain is extremely complex, making it hard to model even simple actions. Even the best neuroscientists with the most advanced technology would probably struggle to predict human behavior better than folk psychology

Question 10

What is the SELF-REFUTING problem for eliminative materialism?

Answer 10

1. (Belief) Eliminative materialism says that beliefs don’t exist—they’re just a mistake from folk psychology. But when the Churchlands argue for this theory, they are showing belief in it. Why argue for something if you don’t believe it’s true? Since arguments are based on belief, their own argument proves that beliefs must exist, which contradicts their theory.
2. (Intentionality) Eliminative materialism criticizes folk psychology for using concepts like intentionality (how thoughts can be about something) but doesn’t offer a neuroscientific replacement. We might eliminate beliefs, but getting rid of intentionality seems impossible. To even say, “eliminative materialism is true” or “folk psychology is false,” we need intentionality—we need to understand what these statements refer to.

This means eliminative materialism is self-refuting: to argue for it, you have to use intentionality, which eliminative materialism tries to eliminate. Since neuroscience doesn’t offer an alternative, folk psychology can never be fully replaced.