eliminative materialism

explain eliminative materialism

Some or all common-sense (“folk-psychological”) mental states/properties do not exist and our common-sense understanding is radically mistaken (as defended by Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland).

stems from the view that there are no such match ups from folk psychological concepts to neuroscience - that hope is unfounded

the concepts of mind are irreducible to neurophysciological concepts

Folk psychology – our everyday framework or scheme of beliefs and desires and volitions and emotions – “is an outright misrepresentation of our internal states and activities”.

If folk psychology radically misrepresents what is really going on with our inner lives, we cannot expect folk psychology to be in any way vindicated by any neuroscience intent on the accurate explanation of what’s going on with our inner lives and outward behaviour.

we can’t explain cognition and behaviour through desires, volitions, memories, emotions etc. - they don’t exist

no one feels happy, no one believes that it is april etc.

• built on faliures of other theories ofthe mental

historical defence of eliminative materialism

historical cases of the outright elimination of the ontology of an older theory in favor of the ontology of a new and superior theory”.

people used to think heat was just a fluid substance called ‘caloric’ - bit now we know it is just the motion of milions of tiny molecules that make up the heated substance.

we know this because this is a much more successful theory in explaining and predicting thermal behaviours

and the theory of ‘caloric’ was just ontologically eleminated because there was nothing in the new theory that worked with the old one

witches - theory of witches was just eliminated, we weren’t wrong about what witches do, what they look like etc. - we were merely wrong about their existence so we ontologically eliminated the theory

benefits of eliminative materialism - historic defence

• big conceptual revolution

• beneficial though - we could understand the neural basis of emotions, intelligence, the varieties and causes of mental illness etc.

• would increase human understanding

• reduce the sum total of misery

• lead to a peaceful and humane society

the faliures of folk psychology are widespread - defence

• we don’t know the most central things to us

• what sleep is

• how memory works

• don’t know much about the causes and varieties of mental illness

• how learning happens

• brain damaged people’s behaviour

churchland says neuroscience promises to tell us a great deal

folk psychology is a stagnant theory - defence

hasn’t changed much since plato vs forward looking and fertile neuroscience

 folk psychology fails to cohere with and be continuous with “fertile and well-established theories in adjacent and overlapping domains – with evolutionary theory, biology, and neuroscience”

issue - our certainty about the existence of our mental states takes priority over other considerations

• the phenomenology/vividity of our own experience, introspective or reflective experience must take precedence over any undermining claim made on a purely theoretical or empirical basis as it is so strong -ie. I am CERTAIN of my mental states and they are very to me.

• I just know that I hate spiders. It is not however on the grounds of my behaviour such as running away when I see one that I know this - I can control myself and not do so.

• i know i hate spiders because i feel abhorrence in the presence of spiders, and no one is going to convince me that i feel otherwise, for I am certain of it

response to certainty objection

introspection is a form of observation and observation is unreliable as a source of knowledge

counter response to certainty objection

• introspection may not lead to knowledge about the precise nature of mental states, but that does not mean it leads to absolutely nothing or is false

• if observation is unreliable, then sense-based observation is unreliable, and if this is the case then science is unreliable because observation plays an essential role in science

• so the entire basis of Churchland’s theory, that theories about human cognition and behaviour must solely be derived from neuroscience, is refuted by his own objection that ‘observation is an unreliable source of knowledge’. moreover, how are we to believe his theory that folk psychology is false because it does not ‘match-up’ with scienfic observation, when he himself states that ‘observation is an unreliable source of knowledge’.

• or: what leads you to believe that all introspection is mistaken? [look at V’s essay plan but you don’t rly need to know this]

folk psych has good predictive and explanatory powers so is the best hypothesis - what is churchland’s inital argument

folk psych is a theory

as a theory it aspires to the level of a genuine scientific theory

it must fail to achieve this theory (for all sorts of reasons)

therefore it should be rejected

therefore folk psychology’s ontology of beliefs, thoughts, volitions, feelings etc. should be rejected

in his justification that folk psych is a theory, he basically says that we use it very effectively and successfully to preditct behaviour - but his intention is to discredit folk psychology

folk psych is not a theory criticism

• Typically, people have to piece theories together – a process which takes time and hard work.  But it seems that no-one has pieced together folk psychology.  It’s just always been around.

• Typically, theories need to be taught to us or otherwise learnt.  But none of us were ever taught folk psychology, and if we learnt it at all, we did so simply by growing up in our communities.

Typically, different people hold different theories, disagree about which theories are true, and so on.  But folk psychology seems to be universal, and universally accepted, among human beings.

more like a natural phenomenon rather than a theory

given that the predictions of folk psychology are so vitally useful to us, it seems to be a product of evolution

the reason it is so useful could be that it’s theoretical entities that succesfully predict behaviour really do exist

premise is false

invalid conclusion

doesn’t follow that because a theory is false, it should be rejected. falsity of witch theory licensed the elimination from witches from our ontology. but there are many cases where the falsity of a theory does not license its ontological elimination. a child may think clouds are made of cotton candy. the falsity of that theory does not show that there are no such things as clouds.

invalid argument

folk psych does have good predictive and explanatory power

• churchland himself concedes this

• 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

  In contrast, neuroscience is pretty bad at predicting behaviour – at least at present. The brain is a highly complex structure and this makes it incredibly difficult for neuroscience to model and predict even the simple behaviours in the bullet points above. It’s doubtful whether a team of the best neuroscientists in the world, using the most advanced equipment available today, could more accurately predict a typical human’s behaviour than folk psychology.

• our ability to predict and explain behaviour eg. when he is nervous he talks really fast would be impoverished without folk psychology

• same is truer of us, and trying to explain our own behaviour - eg. how to explain why i revise for tests exept in terms of my own mental states - a beloef in the importance of education, a desure to do well - seems impossible

self refuting issue

• talks about people being mistaken in believing in withces, caloric etc.

•  But of course, if eliminative materialism is true, it is not the case that anyone held such beliefs, for the simple reason that there are not and have never been any beliefs.

• Churchland writes of identity theory being called into doubt, “not because the prospects for a materialist account of our mental capacities were thought to be poor” – but ‘doubt’ is a mentalistic word, as is ‘thought’, and ‘poor’ is a value term (and so vicariously mentalistic), and, given the truth of eliminative materialism, these terms have no reference.  So if eliminative materialism is true, identity theory wasn’t called into doubt, and the prospects for a materialist account of our mental capacities were neither poor nor thought to be poor.

• Eliminative materialism claims that beliefs don’t exist – they’re a mistaken folk psychology concept. But, in arguing for eliminative materialism, Churchland is expressing his belief in the truth of this theory. After all, why would anybody argue that something is true if they didn’t believe it was true? Arguments are expressions of belief and so, if Churchland believes that eliminative materialism is true, then this disproves his own theory: Churchland has proved that beliefs exist.

• However, this response clearly commits the fallacy of begging the question. It assumes the very thing it’s trying to prove: that beliefs exist. Churchland could just reply that what his opponent is calling a belief is actually something else (some neuroscience explanation).

• But we can push this objection further. Eliminative materialism criticies folk psychology for talking about intentional content (i.e. how thoughts can be about something) but offers no neuroscientific alternative. We may be able to eliminate beliefs, but eliminating intentionality is seemingly impossible. To even make sense of statements like “eliminative materialism is true” or “folk psychology is false” or “this is a more accurate scientific theory” we must presuppose intentionality – we must understand what these statements are about.

  So, the argument that eliminative materialism is self-refuting reemerges: 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.

• says neuroscience will aid with understanding ‘the factors involved in learning’ - learning involves aquiring beliefs, understanding etc.

• Eliminative materialism is a theory.  What is a theory but a set of claims reflecting the beliefs of whoever puts forward the theory?  If there is another definition of ‘theory’, then Churchland most certainly has not provided it.  So it looks like the very fact of eliminative materialism as a theory refutes the content of that theory: it is a set of beliefs which includes the belief that there are no beliefs, and no mental states of any other sort.

putnam response to self-refutation

says his critics will say this: The eliminative materialist has beliefs and desires, therefore eliminative materialism can’t be true.

straw man - it is not what they are saying

it is that his theory itself is steeped in folk psychology, the only way to accept it is to BELIEVE it to be true. the whole idea of a theory involves accepting a belief that beliefs do not exist. moreover, he promises that neuroscience will better the world and reduce global misery, but misery itself is a feeling

how does patty change the theory

• neuroscience might struggle to locate only some of the mental states referred to in folk psychology; and

• even then, neuroscience needn’t eliminate them ontologically, because it might yet turn out that, while the will, say, is not just one brain state, or type of brain state, it supervenes on “a whole lot of areas of the brain that cooperate and integrate when decisions and choices are made” – a position, note, not much distinguishable from mind-brain token identity theory, but utterly distinguishable from the original eliminative materialism; and

• even if neuroscience is driven to stop thinking and talking in terms of the will, say (does neuroscience talk about the will anyway?), there is no need, and no real option, for ordinary people to follow suit – whereas, of course, Paul Churchland was adamant that one day we will all be speaking neuroscientific language.

is paul churchland a physicalist?

• yes - nothing exists except apart from physical world

• not a physicalist about the mind because he doesn’t believe there is a mind