LECTURE FOUR
ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM
取消式唯物主义（或译为“消除式唯物主义”）
SOME WORDS ON THE LAST
LECTURE…
I mentioned the term “supervenience” in the last
lecture, and maybe not all of you have gotten the
very idea of it.
Don’t mind it now, I believe that we have other
chances to talk it later.
But this video may be related to this topic,
although the title of the video is literally on the
movie Inception.
Here is the link for watching it on-line:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjE0NDM2NzA4.ht
ml
(The interview is in Chinese)
THE FIRST APPROXIMATION
TO ELIMINATIVE
MATERIALISM (对取消式唯物主义
的权宜性表达)
Eliminative materialism
(or eliminativism 取消主义) is the
radical claim that our ordinary,
common-sense understanding of
the mind is deeply wrong and
that some or all of the mental
states posited by common-sense
do not actually exist.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELIMINATIVE
MATERIALISM AND THE MIND/BRAIN
IDENTITY THEORY (I)
According to identity theory, we can legitimately
talk about mind, but we need to keep the very
fact in mind that any talk about metal states is
just another way of talking about the
corresponding brain states.
Parallel to this case: it is fairly okay to talk about
water, but you need to know that water is
nothing but H2O.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELIMINATIVE
MATERIALISM AND THE MIND/BRAIN
IDENTITY THEORY (II)
According to eliminative materialism, we cannot
legitimately talk about mind, and we need to keep the
very fact in mind that any talk about the mental
states is nonsense, and hence should be eliminated,
rather than be reduced to another vocabulary (say, of
the brain states).
Parallel to these cases: it is wildly wrong to talk about
Phlogiston (燃素) in modern chemistry or ether(以太is
the term used to describe a medium for the
propagation of light) in modern physics, since they do
not exist at all.
By the way, the Michelson–Morley experiment (麦克
尔逊—默雷实验) was performed in 1887 by Albert
Michelson and Edward Morley in Cleveland, Ohio. Its
results are generally considered to be the first strong
evidence against the theory of ether.
SO THE CONCLUSION IS:
ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM IS DEFINITELY
MORE RADIAL THAN IDENTITY THEORY,
INCLUDING TYPE-TO-TYPE IDENTITY THEROY
AND TOKEN-TO-TOKEN THEORY.
BUT WHAT DOES “RADICAL”
MEAN IN THIS CONTEXT?
How radical a species of materialism is, is
measured in terms of how remote it is from
dualism. In this sense, the token-to-token identity
theory is the least radical one, the eliminative
materialism is the most radical one, and the typeto-type materialism is something in the middle.
There are other species of materialism which are
weaker or less radical than eliminative
materialism, but we will talk about them later.
A COUPLE OF ELIMINATIVISTS IN CALIFORNIA (UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO , OR UCSD)
Patricia Smith
Paul Churchland (保尔· 邱
Churchland (帕琪夏娅· 邱
琪兰德， born Oct. 21,
琪兰德， born July 16, 1943,
1942, Canada)
Canada)
BUT THERE IS A PROBLEM FOR
CHURCHLANDS:
As we know, the target of eliminative
materialism is our commonsensical account of
mentality, which is expected to be eliminated.
 And the elimination of this sort is also supposed
to be parallel to the elimination of phlogiston in
chemistry.
 But our commonsensical account of mentality is
not something like a theory of ether or a theory of
Phlogiston, since they are typical scientific
theories, whereas our common sense is just a
loose talk.
 Did Churchlands choose a wrong target?

THERE IS A CHEAP FIX FOR
THIS PROBLEM:
Just say that our commonsensical account of
mentality suffices for a theory, i.e., FOLK
PSYCHOLOGY (俗成心理学).
Folk psychology is assumed to consist of both
generalizations (or laws) and specific theoretical posits,
denoted by our everyday psychological terms like ‘belief’
or ‘pain’. The generalizations are assumed to describe
the various causal or counterfactual relations and
regularities of the posits. For instance, a typical
example of a folk psychological generalization would be:
If someone has the desire for X and the belief that the
best way to get X is by doing Y, then (barring certain
conditions) that person will tend to do Y.
If I have the desire for water and the belief that the
best way to get water is to buy a bottle of water from the
super market, then (barring certain conditions) I will
tend to buy a bottle of water in a supermarket.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOLK
PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORISM
Both tend to generalize what an agent would
regularly do when a mental process is going on in
his mind, but behaviorists tend to say something
more:

The behavioral generalizations can replace our
talk about mentality;
 While folk psychologists would say:

The behavioral generalizations are still about
mentality. We still need to keep our mental
vocabulary in our philosophical dictionary.

BUT WHY?



Because for folk psychologists, there are something
special about our beliefs.
First, there are various causal properties concerning
beliefs. Beliefs are the sort of states that are caused in
certain specific circumstances, interact with other
cognitive states in various ways, and come to generate
various sorts of behavior, depending on the agent's
other desires and mental states.
Second, beliefs have intentionality(意向性); that is,
they each express a proposition or are about a
particular state of affairs. This inherent
intentionality (also called “meaning”, “content”, and
“semantic character”语义学特征), is commonly
regarded as something special about beliefs and other
propositional attitudes.
AND WHY FOLK PSYCHOLOGY IS WRONG,
ACCORDING TO ELIMINATIVISM?

Eliminative materialists argue that the central
tenets of folk psychology radically misdescribe
cognitive processes; consequently, the posits of
folk psychology pick out nothing that is real. Like
dualists, eliminative materialists insist that
ordinary mental states can not in any way be
reduced to or identified with neurological events
or
processes.
However,
unlike
dualists,
eliminativists claim there is nothing more to the
mind than what occurs in the brain. The reason
mental states are irreducible is not because they
are non-physical; rather, it is because mental
states, as described by common-sense psychology,
do not really exist.
ARGUMENT NO.1

Patricia and Paul Churchland have offered a number
of arguments based on general considerations about
theory evaluation. For example, they have argued
that any promising and accurate theory should offer a
fertile research program （能 带 来成 果的 研 究规 划 ）
with considerable explanatory power(足够大的解释力).
They note, however, that common-sense psychology
appears to be stagnant, and there is a broad range of
mental phenomena that folk psychology does not
allow us to explain. Questions about why we dream,
various aspects of mental illness, consciousness,
memory and learning are completely ignored by folk
psychology. According to the Churchlands, these
considerations indicate that folk psychology may be in
much worse shape than we commonly recognize.
ARGUMENT NO.2

Another argument that appeals to general
theoretical considerations offers an inductive
inference（归纳推理） based on the past record of
folk theories. Folk physics, folk biology and the
like all proved to be radically mistaken. Since
folk theories generally turn out to be mistaken, it
seems quite improbable that folk psychology will
turn out true. Indeed, since folk psychology
concerns a subject that is far more complex and
difficult than any past folk theory, it seems
wildly implausible that this one time we actually
got things right.
ARGUMENT NO.3 (I)
There is a problem with propositional attitudes
(命题态度).
 propositional attitudes appear to have a form
similar to public language sentences, with a
compositional structure and syntax. For example,
a person‘s belief that, say, the president dislikes
terrorists appears to be composed of the concepts
“THE PRESIDENT”, “DISLIKES”, and
“TERRORISTS”. A belief-structure mirrors the
sentence-structure.
 By the way, beliefs resemble public sentences in
that they have semantic properties.

ARGUMENT NO.3 (II)

Some writers have emphasized the apparent
mismatch between the sentential structure of
propositional attitudes on the one hand, and the
actual neurological structures of the brain on the
other hand. Whereas the former involves discrete
symbols (离散符号) and a combinatorial syntax
(组合句法), the latter involves action potentials
（动作电位）, spiking frequencies （脉冲频） and
spreading activation （激活扩散）. As Patricia
Churchland (1986) has argued, it is hard to see
where in the brain we are going to find anything
that even remotely resembles the sentence-like
structure that appears to be essential to beliefs
and other propositional attitudes.
A CASE STUDY OF PAIN OFFERED
BY DANIEL DENNETT

Daniel Clement Dennett (born
March 28, 1942)[1][2] is an American
philosopher, writer and cognitive
scientist whose research centers on
thephilosophy of mind, philosophy of
science and philosophy of biology,
particularly as those fields relate
to evolutionary biology and cognitive
science.[3] He is currently the Codirector of the Center for Cognitive
Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher
Professor
of
Philosophy,
and
a University Professor at Tufts
University.
FOR CHINSE READERS:

原作名: Consciousness
Explained
作者: 丹尼尔·丹尼特
译者: 苏德超 / 李涤
非 / 陈虎平
出版社: 北京理工大学
出版社
出版年: 2008-9-1
页数: 598
定价: 39.00元
装帧: 平装
丛书: 盗火者译丛
ISBN: 9787564009618
HOW TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYZE PAIN?


It may be claimed for the sake of folk psychology that
we need to keep “pain” in our psychological
vocabulary, given that my feeling of my pain is
always infallible and awful.
By contrast, Daniel Dennett (1978) has argued that
our concept of pain is fundamentally flawed. In
certain conditions, drugs like morphine (吗啡) cause
subjects （被试） to report that they are experiencing
excruciating pain, but that it is not unpleasant. It
seems we are either wrong to think that people
cannot be mistaken about being in pain (wrong about
infallibility), or pain needn't be inherently awful
(wrong about intrinsic awfulness). Dennett suggests
that part of the reason we may have difficulty
replicating pain in computational systems is because
our concept is so defective that it picks out nothing
real.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST ELIMITIVISM



Many writers have argued that eliminative
materialism is in some sense self-refuting（自相矛
盾）. If eliminative materialism to be asserted as a
thesis, the eliminativist herself must believe that it is
true. But if the eliminativist has such a belief, then
there are beliefs and eliminativism is thereby proven
false.
Reply: the objection begs the question by assuming
that eliminativists do have beliefs about
eliminativism. But they would say: we, like any other
one, do not genuinely possess any belief. Our belief in
eliminativism should be formulated on a level higher
than that of the public language.
By the way, paradoxes of this sort are not novel in the
history. Think about the Liar Paradox. “This sentence
is false." If the quoted sentence is true, then false,
vice versa.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST ELIMITIVISM

Philosophers influenced by the writings of
Wittgenstein (1953) and Ryle (1949) will insist
that (contra many eliminativists) folk psychology
is not a quasi-scientific theory used to explain or
predict behavior, nor does it treat mental states
like beliefs as discrete inner causes of behavior
(Bogdan, 1991; Haldane, 1988; Hannan, 1993;
Wilkes, 1993). What folk psychology actually does
treat beliefs and desires as is much less clear in
this tradition. One perspective (Dennett, 1987) is
that propositional attitudes are actually
dispositional states that we use to adopt a certain
heuristic stance toward rational agents.
FURTHER READINGS:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialismeliminative/#FolPsyTheThe
Eliminative Materialism and the
Propositional Attitudes
 Paul M. Churchland
 The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Feb.,
1981), pp. 67-90.
 (YOU CAN FIND THE PDF OF THE PAPER IN
THE PUBLIC E-MAIL BOX)

SOME WORDS ON THE FINAL EXAM




I will evaluate every student by doing two things.
First, I will evaluate everybody’s writing skills. That
means, you need to submit a paper to me before the end of
this semester, hopefully just before the final exam. The
topic should be on any topic that I have discussed in the
class, or that is covered by Prof. Searle’ book. It should be
written in English, no matter whether you are a native
speaker of English or not. The paper is expected to be
composed of 3,500 words or above.
And you are expected to write it by using Microsoft Word. I
need not only the Hard Copies, but also the electronic
versions, which are expected to send to my e-mail box
before the final exam.
Second, a final exam is indispensible, by which your
comprehensive understanding of different topics in
philosophy of mind will be evaluated. Chinese students
should write in Chinese in the final exam, while native
speakers of English can use English.
SOME MORE WORDS ON THE
PAPER-WRITING
The paper should be written in accordance with
the so-called Chicago-style(芝加哥文体), and
double-spaced（间距两行）.
 Anybody who wants to know what Chicago-style
is, please read the following link:
 http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citatio
nguide.html
 More importantly, the paper should be written in
the analytical way. You need to formulate a
thesis, defend it by explicit arguments, and
evaluate its potential rival positions. Both an
abstract and a bibliography are required.

CAVEATS!!
Don’t use British English! Don’t get sentences
more complicated than necessary!
 Please follow the pattern of Searle’s writing!
 If you are a native speaker of Chinese, just try to
express what you want to say directly in English!
 Please don’t write it in Chinese first, then
translate it into English!

A HOW-TO MANUAL










1. You need to find a topic that can really interest you. You need to
have motivations which are strong enough to propel your research!
That means, you need find fun in it!
2. Read the corresponding entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia
Dictionary, so you will know the literature related to the topic.
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
3. Read the most cited papers on the topic, and find the most
favorable position among all of the possible ones.
Please also pay attention to this resource, which is extremely useful:
http://consc.net/
4. Try to explicate your thesis in a sentence. It cannot be too long.
5. Try to argue for it, and tell the audience how the thesis can survive
critics’ criticisms.
6. If you have any problems in your research, please don’t hesitate to
write to me.
xuyingjinstone@sina.com
THE END
ENJOY YOUR SHORT-TERM VOCATION OF
QINGMING!
清明节快乐！