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Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists claim that no neural correlates will be found for many everyday psychological concepts, such as belief and desire, and that behaviour and experience can only be adequately explained on the biological level. Various arguments have been put forth both for and against eliminative materialism over the last forty years. Most of the arguments in favor of the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory, to be compared and constrasted with other scientific theories as to its explanatory success, accuracy and ability to allow us to make correct predictions about the future. Eliminativists argue that, based on these and other criteria, commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced with explanations derived from the neurosciences. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence to sustain their thesis. Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Some argue that folk psychology is not a theory and should not be compared to one. Others argue that folk psychology is, in fact, a theory and a very successful, even indispensable, one. Another view is that since eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate", it must be self-refuting.
Overview
Problems with folk theories Eliminativists such as Paul and Patricia Churchland argue that folk psychology is a fully developed but non-formalized theory of human behavior. It is used to explain and make predictions about human mental states and behavior. This view is often referred to as the theory-theory, for it is a theory which theorizes the existence of an unacknowledged theory. As a theory in the scientific sense, eliminativists maintain, folk psychology needs to be evaluated on the basis of its predictive power and explanatory success as a research program for the investigation of the mind/brain.Carruthers, P. & Smith, P. (1996) Theories of Theories of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressHeal, J. (1994) "Simulation vs. Theory-Theory: What's at Issue?" In C. Peacocke (ed.), Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness Oxford: Oxford University Press. Such eliminativists have developed different arguments to show that folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory and needs to be abolished. They argue that folk psychology excludes from its purview or has traditionally been mistaken about many important mental phenomena that can, and are, being examined and explained by modern neurosciences. Some examples are dreaming, consciousness, mental disorders, learning processes and memory abilities. Furthermore, they argue, folk psychology's development in the last 2,500 years has not been very significant and it is therefore a stagnating theory. The ancient Greeks already had a folk psychology comparable to ours. But in contrast to this lack of development, the neurosciences are a rapidly progressing science complex that, in their view, can explain many cognitive processes that folk psychology cannot.Churchland, P.M. (1981) Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes. Journal of Philosophy 78(2): 67-90. Folk psychology retains characteristics of now obsolete theories or legends from the past. Ancient societies tried to explain the physical mysteries of nature by ascribing mental conditions to them in such statements as "the sea is angry". Gradually, these everyday folk psychological explanations were replaced by more efficient scientific descriptions. Today, eliminativists argue, there is no reason not to accept an effective scientific account of our cognitive abilities. If we had such an explanation, then there would be no need for folk-psychological explanations of behavior, and the latter would be eliminated the same way as the mythological explanations the ancients used.Jackson, F. & Pettit, P. (1990). "In Defense of Folk Psychology". Philosophical Studies 59: 31-54. Another line of argument is the meta-induction based on what eliminativists view as the disastrous historical record of folk theories in general. Our ancient pre-scientific "theories" of folk biology, folk physics and folk cosmology have all proven to be radically wrong. Why shouldn't the same thing happen in the case of folk psychology? There seems no logical basis, to the eliminativist, for making an exception just because folk psychology has lasted longer and is more intuitive or instinctively plausible than the other folk theories. Indeed, the eliminativists warn, considerations of intuitive plausibility may be precisely the result of the deeply entrenched nature in society of folk psychology itself. It may be that our beliefs and other such states are as theory-laden as external perceptions and hence our intuitions will tend to be biased in favor of them. Specific problems with folk psychology Much of folk psychology involves the attribution of intentional states (also known as propositional attitudes). Eliminativists point out that these states are generally ascribed syntactic and semantic properties. An example of this is the language of thought hypothesis, which attributes a discrete, combinatorial syntax and other linguistic properties to these mental phenomena. Eliminativists argue that such discrete and combinatorial characteristics have no place in the neurosciences, which speak of action potentials, spiking frequencies, and other effects which are continuous and distributed in nature. Hence, the syntactic structures which are assumed by folk psychology can have no place in such a structure as the brain. Against this there have been two responses: on the one hand, there are philosophers who deny that mental states are linguistic in nature and see this as a straw man argument; on the other, those who subscribe to something like a language of thought assert that the mental states can be multiply realized and that functional characterizations are just higher-level characterizations of what's happening at the physical level. It has also been urged against folk psychology that the intentionality of mental states like belief imply that they have semantic qualities. Specifically, their meaning is determined by the things that they are about in the external world. This makes it difficult to explain how they can play the causal roles that they are supposed to in cognitive processes. In recent years, this latter argument has been fortified by the theory of connectionism. Many connectionist models of the brain have been developed in which the processes of language learning and other forms of representation are highly distributed and parallel. This would tend to indicate that there is no need for such discrete and semantically-endowed entities as beliefs and desires. Intuitive reservations The thesis of eliminativism seems to be so obviously wrong to many critics, under the claim that people know immediately and indubitably that they have minds, that argumentation seems unnecessary. This sort of intuition pumping is nicely illustrated by simply asking what happens when one asks oneself honestly if one has mental states.Lycan, W. "A Particularly Compelling Refutationion of Eliminative Materialism" ((online)). Retreived Sept. 26, 2006. Eliminativists object to such a rebuttal of their position by claiming that intuitions very often are completely wrong. Analogies from the history of science are frequently invoked to buttress this observation: It may appear obvious that the sun travels around the earth, for example, but for all its apparent obviousness this conception was proved wrong nevertheless. Similarly, it may appear obvious that apart from neural events there are also mental conditions. Nevertheless, this could equally turn out to be false. But even if one accepts the susceptibility to error of our intuitions, the objection can be reformulated: If the existence of mental conditions seems perfectly obvious and is central in our conception of the world, then enormously strong arguments are needed in order to successfully deny the existence of mental conditions. Those who accept this objection say that the arguments in favor of eliminativism are far too weak to establish such a radical claim; therefore there is no reason to believe in eliminativism. Quine's strategy for replying to such "introspective" arguments was to show how to account for the activities of introspection and science in appropriately sanitized terms, such as the replacement of "belief" by "dispositions to utter certain sentences in certain circumstances". Sentences, on this view, are just sequences of certain sounds, and theories just sets of sentences. Introspective claims may be replaced by dispositions to utter certain sentences as a result of physical events in one's body. Self-refutation Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have attempted to show that eliminativism is in some sense self-refuting, since the theory itself presupposes the existence of mental phenomena. If eliminativism is true ,then the eliminativist must permit an intentional property like truth, supposing that in order to assert something one must believe it. Hence, for eliminativism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativist must believe that it is true; if that is the case, then there are beliefs and the eliminativist claim is false. Georges Rey and Michael Devitt reply to this objection by invoking deflationary semantic theories that avoid analysing predicates like "x is true" as expressing a real property. They are construed, instead, as logical devices so that asserting that a sentence is true is just a quoted way of asserting the sentence itself. To say, "'God exists' is true" is just to say, "God exists". This way, Rey and Devitt argue, in so far as dispositional replacements of "claims" and deflationary accounts of "true" are coherent, eliminativism is not self-refuting. Qualia Another problem for the eliminativist is the consideration that human beings undergo subjective experiences and, hence, their conscious mental states have qualia. Since qualia are generally regarded as characteristics of mental states, their existence does not seem to be compatible with eliminativism.Nagel, T. 1974 "What is it like to be a Bat?" Philosophical Review, 83, 435-456. Eliminativists, such as Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey,respond by rejecting qualia.Rey, G. (1988). A Question About Consciousness, in H. Otto & J. Tuedio (eds), Perspectives on Mind. Dorderecht: Reidel, 5-24.Dennett, D. (1978). The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This is problematic, since the existence of qualia also seems perfectly obvious. Many philosophers consider the "elimination" of qualia implausible, if not even incomprehensible. They assert that, for instance, the existence of pain is simply beyond denial. The classical refutation of this objection comes from Daniel Dennett. Admitting that the existence of qualia seems obvious, Dennett states, nevertheless, that "qualia" is a theoretical term from an outdated metaphysic stemming from Cartesian intuitions. He argues that a precise analysis shows that the term is in the long run empty and full of contradictions. The eliminativist's claim with respect to qualia is that there is no unbiased evidence for such experiences when regarded as something more than propositional attitudes. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Dennett and Rey have defended eliminativism about qualia, even when other portions of the mental are accepted. Efficacy of folk psychology Some philosophers simply argue that folk-psychology is a quite successful theory. 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