If we think carefully about examples such as the following, I think we can come to agree that it is useful to make a distinction between eliminativist and reductivist claims. The distinction is useful because it allows us to disambiguate claims that otherwise would be ambiguous. Roughly, the distinction is between claims of the form There are no Fs and of the form There are Fs but Fs are Gs.
1. God is an anthropomorphic projection. (Feuerbach) This could be construed as implying that there is an x such that x = God and x is an anthropomorphic projection. This would be a reductivist construal. It has absolutely nothing going for it given that the concept of God is the concept of a being that exists a se, and thus independently of human beings and their thoughts and projections. If you think that God could be an anthropomorphic projection, then you simply do not understand the concept of God — whether or not anything instantiates the concept.The Feuerbachian claim is to be read eliminatively as implying that there is no x such that x is God.
So here we have a very clear example of a sentence which, though it appears to be predicating something of God, and thus presupposing the existence of God, is really a negative existential in disguise.
2. The self is a bundle of perceptions. (Hume) This example, unlike the first, can be read either way with some plausibility. I would argue that a mere bundle of perceptions (or of other mental data) cannot constitute a self because a self is that which supports and unifies and is aware of such data. But other philosophers will disagree. So for present purposes I judge this example to be susceptible of both readings.
3. Causation is regular succession. Someone who claims that events e1, e2 are such that e1 causes e2 iff the e1-e2 event sequence instantiates a regularity is arguably leaving out something so fundamental — the notion that the cause produces or brings into existence the effect – that the claim is tantamount to a denial of causation. Or so I would argue. But regularity theorists will vigorously disagree. They will take the dictum (suitably expanded and qualified) to express the nature of causation. They will insist that there is causation but that what it is is regular succession. So, in an irenic spirit, I will classify this example as open to both readings.
4. Properties are sets. (David Lewis) Accordingly, the property of being red is the set of all actual and possible red things. A cruder form of the theory is that the property of being red, e.g., is the set of all red things. The theory in either form is hopeless, but that is not the question. The question is whether it is eliminativist or reductivist. Is it tantamount to a denial of properties, or does it imply that there are properties but that what they are are sets? I say the former, but David Lewis is one formidable opponent! Here is a quick little argument: Properties are instantiable entities by definition; no set is instantiable; ergo, no property is a set! My considered opinion is that 'Properties are sets' boils down to a denial of properties. If you understand the concept property, then you know no property could be a set. It is just like #1 above: if you understand the concept God, then you know that God could not be an anthropological projection.
5. Mental events are brain events. I suddenly remember an evening spent on the banks of the River Charles with a pretty girl . . . . That sudden remembering is a mental event token. There are those who want to say that it is identical to a brain event token. These philosophers speak of 'token-token identity theory.' The philosophers who maintain this do not intend to deny the existence of mental events; their intention is to inform us as to the nature of mental events on the presupposition that they exist.
But although their intention is reductive identification and not elimination, one can reasonably wonder whether the reduction does not collapse into an elimination. Indeed, that is what I would maintain. For if every mental state is identical to some brain state, and if the identification is supposed to be a reduction of the mental to the physical, then what you have in the final analysis is just the brain state: the mental state has been eliminated.
Even if you disagree with me that in this case the reduction collapses into an elimination, to even understand what the debate is about you must understand the distinction between elimination and reduction.
6. The tree in the quad is a cluster of ideas in the mind of God. (Berkeley) The good bishop is not denying that there are physical things; he is telling us what he thinks physical things are. They reduce to clusters or bundles of divine ideas. It shows a complete lack of understanding to think that stone-kicking is so much as relevant to the idealist thesis. So this is a clear case of a reduction.
Could one argue that in this case too the reduction collapses into an elimination? If the mind-brain identity thesis collapses into an elimination of the mind (as was claimed in #5), then why shouldn't the Berkeleyan identity thesis (Physical objects are a clusters of divine ideas) collapse into an elimination of physical objects? Perhaps we can say the following. That the existence of a tree is its existence for the divine mind is consistent with everything we know about trees. (We do not know about trees that they can exist independently of any mind.) But that a mental state is identical to a brain state is not consistent with what we know about mental states. Thus we know that they exhibit intentionality while physical states do not. Mental states cannot be identical to brain states; therefore, a materialist about the mind must be an eliminativist. But an idealist about physical objects needn't be an eliminativist.
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