A Reductio for Eliminative Materialism

Can arguments for eliminative materialism be made without employing some aspects of so-called “folk psychology” and does it matter if they cannot? These are questions I want to explore. 

To help me in this exploration I will rely primarily on Paul M. Churchland’s “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes” (The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2., Feb. 1981, pp. 67-90. see copy here)

What is eliminative materialism? As far as I can tell, eliminative materialism is the hope that one day our common-sense statements about belief, desire, hope, fear, and other mental attributions will be replaced by an accurate language informed by a thorough understanding of neuroscience. As Churchland puts it:

“Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience” (Churchland p.67).

This “radically false theory” is often referred to as “folk psychology” (henceforth FP). What is FP? The argument is that FP is a common way of explaining or predicting behavior using mental attributions: “…believes that p”, “…desires that p”, “…fears that p”, “…is happy that p”, and so on (Churchland p.70). So for instance if I say, “I believe that eliminative materialism is a project with little hope of being realized” then I have employed FP in explaining why I am writing this blog post by reference to belief and desire. Of course this kind of mental attribution is so common that we hardly notice that we use it.

If you ask me, as I am driving, why did I just swerve to miss the squirrel running across the road I might respond by saying, “I didn’t want to kill it.” This is an explanation that rests on a mental attribution regarding something I desire, i.e. my not wanting to kill squirrels. It is my desire to not kill squirrels that explains my swerving. So what is the problem?  Isn’t it true that we all have desires? Most people would say we do have desires, all kinds of desires.

Let’s try another. You ask me, “Is your friend Phil coming over tonight?” I respond, “Probably not, he thinks I am out of town for a week.” Here I am predicting Phil’s behavior (i.e. that he will not come over) based on his belief that I am out of town. My predicting Phil’s behavior is based on a mental attribution concerning what Phil believes, and again this seems perfectly acceptable.

Here is the truth of the matter as far as I can tell: If we did not have an ability to explain and predict the behavior of others, as well as our own, it is difficult to see how we would function adequately in this world. So-called “folk psychology” has a great track record of being able to give us just this ability. Does FP work all of the time? No, it does not. Sometimes we are wrong when we attribute beliefs, desires, hopes, and etc. to others. Likewise, we can also be wrong about our own beliefs, desires, and so on. Nonetheless, our ability to make these kinds of attributions does work and it works well enough that virtually everyone does it without a second thought. So again, what is the problem?

In my humble assessment, the perceived problem with using mental attributions to predict and explain is precisely the fact that they are mental. The mental is exactly what is hoped will be eliminated by eliminative materialism. It is not my intention in this post to argue, in any kind of detailed analysis, for FP or even against eliminative materialism. All I really want to do is simply show that we can hardly do without FP, or at least something very much like it. In fact, mental attributions so permeate our everyday thinking and speaking that in order to argue against mental attributions one seems almost forced to actually employ them.

Now to be fair I am not saying much here that Churchland has not already addressed. Here is what Churchland says about the reductio I have in mind:

“As I receive it, the reductio proceeds by pointing out that the statement of eliminative materialism is just a meaningless string of remarks or noises, unless that string is the expression of a certain belief, and a certain intention to communicate, and a knowledge of grammar of the language, and so forth. But if the statement of eliminative materialism is true, then there are no such states to express. The statement at issue would then be a meaningless string of marks or noises. It would therefore not be true. Therefore it is not true. Q.E.D” (Churchland p.89).

Churchland has a response to this reductio that I will not repeat here. And the reason for not pressing on to Churchland's response is that there is something initially appealing about this reductio. Isn’t it the case that Churchland believes that FP is false? That seems to be the thesis, remember? “Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory…” (Churchland p.67).

Of course, if we were to ask Churchland, “Do you believe folk psychology is false?” he would certainly deny such is the case. The reason he would deny believing that FP is false is not because he believes that FP is true, but because he denies having beliefs of any kind! So how does one account for Churchland’s claim that FP is false if he doesn’t in fact believe it is false? One wonders.

Some will say I am begging the question and in fact employing the very argument I am supposed to defend. But the truth is I find no reason to defend FP since nothing has been presented to replace it. The onus of argumentation is on the side of the proponent of eliminative materialism. And as things stand at this time, it is difficult to explain Churchland’s behavior, at least in any way that would make sense to the general run of humanity, without using something very much like FP. 

But maybe there is some hope after all, if in fact anything like hope exists? Churchland provides three possibilities that he hopes (or so I say) will replace FP, but the possibilities provided are so foreign to anything we commonly think of as explanations that one can hardly explain them. As Churchland admits on his own account, “Here follows three scenarios in which the operative conception of cognitive activity is progressively divorced from the forms and categories that characterize natural language” (Churchland 84). In other words, the possibilities that Churchland is holding out for are so different from the way we usually talk about such things that there is really no way to say them in so many words, or at least not by using the words and sentence forms we are all accustomed to using.

So until some new language is developed that explains the inexplicable, I guess we’ll just have to keep on talking about beliefs, desires, hopes, feelings, and so on. In fact, I am willing to argue further that even if this new language covers an ontology provided by neuroscience that undercuts or even eliminates the ontological assumptions behind our employment of FP, if this new language is unwieldy and impractical then it will not replace the practical advantages of FP. Or at least, that is what I believe.