Examples Of Eliminative Materialism

In principle, anyone denying the existence of some type of thing is an eliminativist regarding that type of thing. Thus, there have been several eliminativists about different aspects of human nature in the history of philosophy. Hard determinists deny free will and so they are eliminativists regarding free will. Nevertheless, contemporary eliminative materialism consists of two main ideas. The first is that folk psychology is a theory, and the second is there is a difference between elimination and reduction. When a new theory in science is adopted, the entities posited by the old theory—the theory’s theoretical posits—are regarded as not existing. The posits are thus eliminated. Contemporary eliminative materialists regard propositional
attitudes, like beliefs and desires, as theoretical posits. But to be posited in theory, they must belong to a theory, this is where the first main idea comes in—folk psychology is a theory. According to folk psychology, mental states constitute the causes or reasons for behaviours. So, if Adolf opens a refrigerator, the folk psychological explanation for why he did so would be that he desires some ubermensch juice and believes there is some in it. As we can see, one important feature of folk theories that distinguishes them from scientific theories is that folk theories are tacit or implicit.
There are two relations the posits of an old and the posits of new theory can have to each other. The first is reductive—posits of the old theory are reduced to the posits of the new theory. For example, the theory of atoms being reduced to the theory of protons, electrons and neutron. The other type of relation is elimination—this is when other old theory is eliminated and replaced with a new one. For example, it used to be widely accepted that the earth was flat, but that theory has now been eliminated. When theoretical posits of an old theory are eliminated, the new theory posits neither the old entities nor anything that the old entities can be reduced to (p. 143).

For the eliminative materialist, these two ideas result in the idea that folk psychology will become eliminated by a superior theory. This theory is one that neither posits mental states nor posits anything that mental states can be reduced to. The Churchlands predict that this superior theory will be provided by neuroscience.

We will now be looking at the three main arguments for this view. A scientific research program is considered stagnant when a considerable time elapses without making significant progress in answering key questions in its domain. The first claim is that is exactly what folk psychology is- a stagnant scientific research program, because it is thousands of years older but is no farther along in answering some the initial profound questions raised. Some being—why do humans and animals need to sleep? Why do they have dreams when they sleep?

According to the second line of thought, folk psychology is committed to the existence of a language of thought, a commitment contradicted by neuroscience, especially neuroscientific research inspired by connectionism.
To illustrate this, we will consider the propositional attitude of thinking that the sun is round. Here, there is an attitude of thinking and the propositional content of the moon being round. According to the language of thought hypothesis, thinking that the sun is round involves utilizing two distinct mental representations, one is a mental representation of the moon and the other is a mental representation of roundness. In contrast, connectionists, inspired by neuroscience hold that there is no reason to think that there are two distinct mental representations, but rather both are represented in a holistic
way.

The last argument for this view is that folk psychology makes commitments to features of mental states that lead to an unacceptable epiphenomenalism.
The general idea here is based on the supposition that science doesn’t have room for posits that don’t do anything. This combined with the explanatory exclusion argument gives us another argument supporting eliminative materialism. If every bodily motion is caused by a brain state that no mental state is identical to, then whatever mental states are posited by folk theory are non-efficacious to behaviour, only the brain states are causally efficacious. So, the eliminative materialist suggests eliminating any mention on mental states altogether.

Now we turn to some criticisms of this view; the first is that eliminative materialism is self-refuting. Eliminative materialists assert that beliefs do not exist, it is necessary for them to believe what they assert. However, this requires the existence of at least one belief, which contradicts their only
belief.

The last criticism is that the “theory” theory is false. The “theory” theory or TT, which refers to the proposal that fold psychology is a theory, is an important component of many arguments for eliminative materialism. So many people try to argue against TT; this is done by offering alternatives to it, such as the simulation theory. According to the simulation theory, we do not understand one another’s mental states by reference to a theory about such states, but instead, by simulating such states inside ourselves (p. 147). So, if someone sees a second person opening a fridge they don’t consult a theory to realize that the person desires a can of coke and believes there is one in the fridge. Instead, the person imaginatively simulates themselves opening the fridge and discover what mental states they would have if they were in the second person’s position. The ideas that there are no propositional attitudes seem so perverse. Nonetheless, eliminative materialism is a position that must be dealt with in one way or another in philosophy of mind, especially by those philosophers who hold that the basis for asserting the existence of psychological phenomena must ultimately be grounded in scientific facts. We must take seriously the possibility that—perhaps—science will overturn our common-sense and philosophical ideas about minds.