Eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist.[1] Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.[2] Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.[3]

Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that the class of entities does not exist.[4] For example, materialism tends to be eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; modern biologists are eliminativist about élan vital; and modern physicists are eliminativist about luminiferous ether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s–70s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that common sense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist.[5][6] The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland,[7] and eliminativism about qualia (subjective interpretations about particular instances of subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett, Georges Rey,[3] and Jacy Reese Anthis.[8]

In the context of materialist understandings of psychology, eliminativism is the opposite of reductive materialism, arguing that mental states as conventionally understood do exist, and directly correspond to the physical state of the nervous system.[9] An intermediate position, revisionary materialism, often argues the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena—with some changes needed to the commonsense concept.[1][10]

Since eliminative materialism arguably claims that future research will fail to find a neuronal basis for various mental phenomena, it may need to wait for science to progress further. One might question the position on these grounds, but philosophers like Churchland argue that eliminativism is often necessary in order to open the minds of thinkers to new evidence and better explanations.[9] Views closely related to eliminativism include illusionism and quietism.

  1. ^ a b Ramsey, William (2016-01-01). "Eliminative Materialism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  2. ^ Lycan, W. G. & Pappas, G. (1972) "What is eliminative materialism?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50: 149-59.
  3. ^ a b Rey, G. (1983). "A Reason for Doubting the Existence of Consciousness", in R. Davidson, G. Schwartz and D. Shapiro (eds.), Consciousness and Self-Regulation Vol 3. New York, Plenum: 1-39.
  4. ^ Ramsey, William. "Eliminative Materialism". plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2022-07-08.
  5. ^ Rorty, Richard (1970). "In Defence of Eliminative Materialism" in The Review of Metaphysics XXIV. Reprinted Rosenthal, D.M. (ed.) (1971).
  6. ^ Feyerabend, P. (1963) "Mental Events and the Brain" in Journal of Philosophy 40: 295-6.
  7. ^ Churchland, Patricia; Churchland, Paul (1998). On the contrary : critical essays, 1987-1997. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262531658. OCLC 42328879.
  8. ^ Anthis, Jacy (2022). "Consciousness Semanticism: A Precise Eliminativist Theory of Consciousness". Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2021. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Vol. 1032. pp. 20–41. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-96993-6_3. ISBN 978-3-030-96992-9. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  9. ^ a b Ramsey, William (2022), "Eliminative Materialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2022-08-13, These alternative ways of understanding eliminative materialism produced considerable confusion about what, exactly, eliminative materialism entailed. Moreover, since it was difficult to see how the second version was significantly different from various forms of reductive materialism (hence, Quine's skepticism about the difference between elimination and explication) it also raised doubts about the distinctiveness of eliminative materialism.
  10. ^ Tümkaya, Serdal (2022). "The united shades of eliminative materialism". The Philosophical Forum. 53 (2): 95–113. doi:10.1111/phil.12310. ISSN 0031-806X.