I've made it clear that I think eliminative materialism (EM) is a "lunatic philosophy of mind" to borrow a phrase from A. W. Collins. Peter Lupu basically agrees though he may not care to put the point in such an intemperate way. What follows is an excerpt from a recent e-mail of his. Since I want to be fair to EM-ists, I want to suggest a way they may be able to counter the following objection Peter raises.
Continue reading “Eliminative Materialism and Belief: Another Wrinkle”
But it isn't! Permit me to explain.
Just so everything is perfectly clear, my title is a takeoff on the refrain of a quasi-eponymous Carly Simon number from the early '70s. I am not saying de re of any particular person, Tom, Dick, or Mary, or anyone, that he or she is vain. I am saying de dicto that all of the seed of Adam are vain sons-of-bitches.
An inflated ego may manifest itself in ostentation, self-promotion, and domination of others. But it is no less manifested by oversensitivity to the slights, real or imagined, of the ostentatious, the self-promoting, and the domineering.
You will be judged by the company you keep ___ and the company you keep away from.
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.
Ah, but it had to have been intended because you were aware of it and let it stand. Otherwise you would not have uttered 'no pun intended.' The difference between 'pun intended' and 'no pun intended' is merely verbal.
The young scholar may pepper his prose with foreign expressions so as to appear erudite. But as the years pass, a different ideal may appear choice-worthy, namely, to write as simply as possible, using only the resources of the mother tongue.
The following is from William G. Lycan, A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM:
[. . .] I contend that the Eliminativist is refuted by Moore's technique, in just the same way as was the temporal idealist. The argument will now be quite straightforward: Numerous common-sense mental ascriptions, such as that Granny wants a beer and believes there is one under the sofa, are individually more plausible, and always will be more plausible, than are the purely philosophical premises of any argument designed to convince us to the contrary. As Moore saw, purely philosophical assumptions have very weak epistemic credentials and cannot by themselves outweigh simple common-sense facts.
The Eliminativist may protest that her/his case is not purely philosophical, but rests on scientific considerations of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, connectionist modelling, and the like. Indeed, that flaunted feature is what often makes Eliminativism sound so hip. But this is to misunderstand the Moorean argument a third time. Moore would not deny that arguments for Eliminativism contain premises that are endorsed, perhaps simply established, by science. The point is that each argument also contains at least one purely philosophical premise. Make no mistake: In order to reach the staggering conclusion that there has never been a belief, a desire, or any other propositional attitude, any argument for Eliminativism will have to rest on one or more a priori principles connecting scientific truths to negative ontology. And it is terminally unlikely that any such principle could be more credible for me than that Granny wants beer. Come to think of it, I want beer.8. Notice that my Moorean argument is immune to the customary Churchland-Churchland counterblow, a comparison to alchemy, witchcraft, and other folk but false theories. However beloved such theories were to their proponents, they do not qualify as Moorean common sense. To count as Moorean-commonsensical, a belief must be the sort of belief that every normal human being holds every day of her/his life, such as "Here is one hand and here is another" or "I had breakfast before I had lunch" or "The sun is shining." Thus, to address the Conference topic directly: Whatever science can show about the mind, it cannot show that there is none.
Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind. I believe he is very wrong about that, but that's a different story. The above Moorean argument, however, does in my opinion decisively refute eliminativism in the philosophy of mind. For those of you who protest that no refutation can be so quick and easy, I will ask, Why not? The more preposterous the thesis, the quicker and easier the refutation! Lunacy can and ought to be dispatched laconically. Indeed, the simplicity of Lycan's argument makes it all the stronger. It is a case of simplex sigillum veri. He who maintains what is plainly false ought to be prepared for an unceremoniously facile reply. And please don't call such a reply 'puerile' or 'sophomoric' since the very fact that any boy or sophomore can make it is precisely what makes the objection so powerful.
Peter Lupu e-mails:
A comment to mull over regarding your premise (A) in your recent post about Eliminative Materialism.
A. If a proposition is true, then it is possibly such that it is believed by someone.
Premise (A) says that in order for a proposition to be true, it is a necessary condition that it can be the content of someone's belief. But there may be true propositions that cannot be for one reason or another the content of our beliefs. For instance, perhaps there are true mathematical propositions that are so complicated or so long or require such a complicated proof that it would be simply impossible for the human mind to believe. Perhaps some other mind, for instance God's mind, can comprehend them, know them, and hence believe them: but no mortal mind can do so. Thus, it seems that premise (A) requires the existence of a deity in order to make it work.
Good point. (A) is subject to scope ambiguity as between:
A*. If a proposition p is true, then there exists a subject S such that, possibly, S believes that p.
A**. If a proposition p is true, then, possibly there exists a subject S and S believes that p.
Given Peter's point above, (A*) would seem to require for its truth that there be a divine mind. But all I need for my argument against eliminative materialism is (A**), which does not require for its truth that there exist any mind, let alone a divine mind. What (A**) says is that a necessary condition of a proposition's being true as that it be possible that there exist a believer of it.
My point was that the concept of truth is the concept of something that cannot be coherently conceived except in relation to the epistemic concepts of belief and knowledge. Now there needn't be any beliefs for there to be true (or false) propositions. But if beliefs are not possible, then neither are true propositions. Now eliminative materialism implies not only that there are no beliefs, but that there cannot be any. But then there cannot be any true propositions either.
Recall the argument against beliefs. It went like this: (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs. Since each of the premises is a necessary truth if it is a truth, the conclusion, which validly follows, is a necessary truth if it is a truth.
Thus the EM-er does not merely claim that, as a matter of fact, there are no beliefs; his claim is that there cannot be any. Of course, that renders his position even more absurd. But that's not my problem!
CORRECTION (12/18): Peter rightly points out that (A**) needs tweaking. Consider its contrapositive which is logically equivalent: If it is not possible that there exist a subject S such that S believes that p, then it is not the case that p is true. Unfortunately, the consequent of the contrapositive conditional could be taken to mean that p is not true, and thus (assuming Bivalence) false, when the idea is rather that p lacks a truth-value. So (A**) ought to be replaced by
A***. If a proposition p has a truth-value, then, possibly there exists a subject S such that S believes (disbelieves, entertains, etc.) that p.
When one is in the grip of a desire one typically knows it. He who wants a cold beer on a hot day knows what he wants and is likely to deem unhinged anyone with the temerity to deny that there are desires. Anywhere on the scale from velleity to craving, but especially at the craving end, there is a qualitative character to desire that makes it phenomenologically undeniable. If the beer example doesn't move you, think of lust. Lust is an intentional state: one cannot lust unless one lusts after someone or something. But although lust flees itself, voids itself in a rush towards its object — as Sartre might have said — there is nonetheless something 'it is like' (T. Nagel) to be in the state of lust. In this respect, desire is more like the non-intentional state of pain than it is like the intentional state of belief. There is most decidedly something it is like for me to desire X; but what is is like for me to believe that you desire X? Is it like anything? Not so clear.
Continue reading “Is Folk Psychology a Theory? The Case of Desire”
David Gordon reviews Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008. The following is a particularly interesting portion of the review in which Gordon comments on a certain status-obsessed careerist's puerile fulminations against a real philosopher:
In an earlier post, I provided a rough characterization of eliminative materialism (EM). Here is a more technical exposition for the stout of heart. If EM is true, then there are no beliefs. But what about the belief that EM is true, a belief that one would expect eliminative materialists to hold? If we exfoliate this question will we find an objection to EM? Let's see.
Continue reading “Eliminative Materialism: Can You Believe It?”
Another guest post by Peter Lupu who apparently is as exercised as I am about the pseudo-philosophy that Rosenberg's been peddling. Minor editing and comments in blue by BV.
Prompted by your recent post on Rosenberg, I checked again what he says about scientism. Here is the actual statement (emphasis added):
Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality. You don’t have to be a scientist to be scientistic. In fact, most scientists aren’t.
Continue reading “Lupu on Rosenberg on Scientism: The Mother of All Self-Defeating Notions”
A guest post by Peter Lupu. Minor edits by BV. His comments in blue at the end.
Suppose I am a naturalist. Then I take science seriously just as Alex Rosenberg counsels.I also provisionally trust Rosenberg's argument, thereby, I find myself inclined to believe the conclusions of Rosenberg’s argument. One of these conclusions is
1) There are no beliefs.
Continue reading “A Conundrum for Eliminativist Naturalists”
Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 19:
This [eliminative materialism] looms as a lunatic philosophy of mind, as behaviorism does not, because it does not merely attack the thought that beliefs and desires are inner realities . . . but it also attacks the idea that people have beliefs and desires, which seems to be an ineliminable truth and a truth which is not attacked by analytical behaviorism. The only excuse for this outrageous thesis is that it stems from a recognition that mental phenomena are not going to be identified successfully by any theory. Having accepted the mistaken preliminary notion that beliefs and the like would have to be inner realities of some kind, the eliminativist materialist heroically, if ill-advisedly, concludes that there are no beliefs at all, that no one actually believes anything.
Continue reading “Eliminativism: A ‘Mental’ (Lunatic) Philosophy of Mind?”
