{"id":11986,"date":"2009-12-19T18:05:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T18:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/19\/eliminative-materialism-and-belief-another-wrinkle\/"},"modified":"2009-12-19T18:05:52","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T18:05:52","slug":"eliminative-materialism-and-belief-another-wrinkle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/19\/eliminative-materialism-and-belief-another-wrinkle\/","title":{"rendered":"Eliminative Materialism and Belief: Another Wrinkle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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Let us begin with this simple thought. No one can sincerely assert a sentence expressing the following proposition without falling into pragmatic inconsistency:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(i) I believe that there are no beliefs. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

The reason is obvious but it is worth stating explicitly. The content of what is asserted in (i) is:<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

(ii) There are no beliefs. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, the reason nobody can self-consistently assert (i) is this: if the assertion \u2018I believe there are no beliefs\u2019 were true, then its content expressed by (ii); namely, that there are no beliefs, would have to be false. And, conversely, if the content expressed by an assertion of (i); namely, that there are no beliefs, were true, then the whole assertion of (i) would have to be false. Thus, the whole assertion and its content cannot be simultaneously true and, therefore, (i) is not sincerely and self-consistently assertible by anyone.  <\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>But what if the EM-ist were to distinguish between two senses of 'believes' and cognates, a mentalistic sense and a topic-neutral sense?  What the EM-ist must deny is that there are beliefs and other mental items in the sense in which we anti-materialists affirm that there are.  And what sense is that?  When an anti-materialist affirms that there are beliefs, desires, pains, and the like he understands his affirmation in such a way that mental items exhibit properties (intentionality, non-spatiality, privacy, qualia, etc.) that make it impossible that they turn out to be physical items.  (For example, it just makes no sense to say of a brain state, no matter how complex, that it is of or about the Boston Common.) That there are mental items in this sense is what the EM-ist denies.  Suppose our EM-ist now distinguishes between mentalistically construed beliefs (M-beliefs) and topic-neutrally construed beliefs (TN-beliefs).  Like us, the EM-ist uses 'belief', but he attaches a different sense to it, a thinner, neutral sense: there is nothing about mental items in virtue of which they must be physical or must be non-physical: which category they belong to is a contingent matter.<\/o:p><\/span>  Accordingly Peter's (i) and (ii) become<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

(i*) I TN-believe there are no M-beliefs<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

and<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

(ii*)  There are no M-beliefs.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

It seems clear that if the EM-ist sincerely asserts (i*) he does not fall into pragmatic inconsistency.  For the belief he self-ascribes is not an M-belief, but a TN-belief.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

What say you Peter?<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Eliminative Materialism and Belief: Another Wrinkle”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[372,267,701],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belief","category-eliminative-materialism","category-lupu-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}