Eliminative Materialism

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  • Created by: Elena.S
  • Created on: 02-06-17 15:18

Eliminative Materialism

Advantages

  • P: account of human mind; E: folk psychology doesn't explain human mind so we need explanation from neuroscience + genetics; E: schizophrenia considered demonic possession
  • P: progress in understanding; E: folk psychology hasn't changed in 1000 years whereas mind sciences progressed rapidly in past 50 years; E: medieval alchemists had different ideas from early psychological thought to current thought
  • P: contemporary science; E: mental states are intentional states which are "about" objects but nothing else in physical world shares this property ∴ we should discard bad psychology to keep good science; E: molecules in brain aren't "about something"
  • P: intuitive certainty of existence of mind; E: explanation of mental phenomena is incorrect; E: terms i.e believing + desiring are language of defunct theory (referring to real things but scientific underpinnings are suspect)
  • P: eliminates itself; E: scientifically complete account of mind will provide us with non-intentional account of understanding

Disadvantages

  • P: intuitive certainty of existence of mind; E: we can be sure of existence of own mind + without it, entire edifice of human knowledge collapses; E: we have mental state of believing so mind must exist to believe something
  • P: predicative + explanatory power; E: until birth of modern psychology, folk psychology was only real account of mind + explaining many elements of day-to-day behaviour
  • P: eliminates itself; E: very exposition of theory requiring cognising argument aiming to change beliefs by same argument denies such thing as beliefs (intentional states)
  • P: eliminates itself (response); E: no such account exists + impossible to conceive of such an account bc entire conceptual framework based on intentional content + folk psychology is precondition of any reasoning taking place

Evaluation

Eliminative materialism weak and therefore not strong enough to withstand criticisms 

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