Eliminative materialism

An analysis of arguments for pain eliminativism reveals two significant points of divergence between assumptions underlying biomedical research on pain and assumptions typically endorsed by eliminativist accounts. The first concerns the status of the term 'pain,' which is a description of a phenomenon, rather than an explanatory construct. The second concerns reductive explanation: pain is explained causally, in terms of mechanisms or factors that produce or determine it, rather than by identifying it with a physical structure, process or mechanism. These discrepancies undermine several arguments for pain eliminativism.

Majority of the philosophers regard neurophilosophy as a highly marginal philosophical school of thought and reject it based on either principled reasons or alleged facts about the human brain. Principled objections typically include categorical rejections based on assumptions about the nature of philosophical problems and their solutions. Another objection is based on the extremely complex structure of the nervous systems, the idea that if neurophilosophical hypotheses are correct, it would mean the death of philosophy as a separate discipline and the perceived exclusion of human psychological, sociological, and historical existence and meaning by neurophilosophers. Here, I argue that these rejections are largely the result of either textual misreading of Churchlands’ publications or possibly of the farfetched interpretations by Churchlands’ critics stating that “wherever Churchlands do talk about necessary conditions of understanding the mind, these conditions should be read as expressions of the sufficient conditions.” Once I show that these various objections are mistaken, I propose an objection about a serious defect in neurophilosophical practice and offer a positive suggestion for removing the defect. 

Keywords
Churchland, neurophilosophy, common objections to neurophilosophy, cultural neurophilosophy, macro-social sciences.


Özet.
Nörofelsefe felsefe dünyasında halen çok uçta bir görüş olarak değerlendirilmekte ve ezici bir çoğunluk tarafından ya ilkesel olarak veya beyne ilişkin bazı olgular gerekçe gösterilerek sert şekilde reddedilmektedir. İlkesel itirazlar genelde felsefi problemlerin ve çözümlerin doğasına ilişkin kategorik itirazlardır. İkinci tipte iddialarsa daha çok sinir sisteminin aşırı karmaşık yapısı, nörofelsefi hipotezin doğru çıkması ihtimalinin doğal bir sonucunun felsefenin tarihten silinmesi olduğu veya nörofelsefenin beynin ötesine geçmeye gerek görmeyerek insanın psikolojik, tarihsel ve sosyal varoluşunu bir kenara iterek insanı açıklama şansını elinden kaçırması şeklindedir. Bu sonuncu itiraz, nörofelsefenin zihnin veya davranışın doğasını anlayabilmek için " fizik veya beyin bilimden başka bir bilime ihtiyaç olmadığını savunduğu " şeklindeki iddialar olarak da kendini göstermektedir. Bu çalışmamda ben bu eleştirilerin ya Churchland çiftinin metinlerinin düpedüz yanlış okunması veya nörofelsefecinin gerekli koşullardan bahsettiği yerlerde eleştirmenlerin zoraki bir akıl yürütmeyle onun cümlesini yeterli koşulların ifadesi olarak görmeleridir. Bu eleştirilerin hatalı olduğunu gösterdikten sonra benim bakış açımdan nörofelsefenin en ciddi eksiğini tartışıyor ve o eksiği gidermek için kendi kültürel nörofelsefe önerimi sunuyorum. Anahtar Sözcükler Churchland, nörofelsefe, nörofelsefeye dönük yaygın eleştiriler, kültürel nörofelsefe, makro-sosyal bilimler.

Following recent work by Don Ross (Ross, 2000; Ross & Spurrett, 2004), I contrast the influential theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland in information-theoretic terms. Dennett makes much of the fact that the morphological shorthand which emerges before a witness as she looks upon cohesive aggregates of matter commands some measure of predictive power. This, for him, speaks against eliminating recourse to an intentional vocabulary. By contrast, the eliminative materialism defended by Churchland does not gloss such informational compressibility as an explanatory desideratum, and thus regards the informational noise which accrues at higher levels of description as patently unacceptable. Yet, since it is unlikely, as Ross et al. (2007) have recently suggested, that anything remains once we subtract the appeal to patterns, I argue that the ubiquity of informational compression in scientific explanation seriously undermines the claim that talk of the mental could be eliminated.

I argue that S knows that p implies that S is properly committed to the truth of p, not that S believes that p.  Belief is not required for knowledge because it is possible that one could know that there are no beliefs.  Being ‘properly committed’ to the truth of a proposition is a matter of having a certain normative status, not occupying a particular psychological state.  After arguing that knowledge requires commitment instead of belief, I go on to demonstrate the theoretical utility of this hypothesis.

Eliminative materialism seeks to replace our familiar categories of mentality, "folk psychology," with those of cognitive science. One of the objections to this project has been that is self-defeating. Any attempt to argue for, defend, present, or even contemplate eliminativism in one's own mind can only get started by employing the very categories it decries. Counterarguments to this objection include that to accuse eliminativism of being self-defeating begs the question (the Churchlands) and that it can be reduced to other objections to eliminativism (Ramsey). I argue that these counterarguments are unsuccessful and that eliminativism is in fact self-defeating. Eliminative materialism denies that certain self-evident properties of mind are real or veridical. Intentionality, qualia, beliefs (understood as mental depictive representations) and other mental properties are illusory. There are no beliefs and there never have been, because materialism cannot accommodate them. If belief content is abandoned, then any claims of truth-value go with it. Such concepts ("belief," "truth" and "con-cepts" itself) constitute the common-sense way of thinking about our minds. Eliminativists call this "folk psychology" and reject it as a failed theory of mind. The elements of folk psychology will be eliminated, not merely reduced, as we discover via neurological studies what exactly is happening in the brain when we think we're thinking. The immediate response most people have to the claim that there are no beliefs is, "Do they expect me to believe that?" In order to be consistent , it would seem that the eliminativist would have to say that she is not asking us to believe eliminativism, that she does not even believe it herself and that, at any rate, eliminativism is not true (truth being one of the things scheduled for elimination). But then it becomes exceedingly difficult to continue paying attention to them. Eliminativists, however, have given several responses to this type of argument. Some seem to find it incredible, not to mention offensive, to accuse them of falling victim

ABSTRACT: 'New wave' reductionism aims at advancing a kind of reduction that is stronger than unilateral dependency of the mental on the physical. It revolves around the idea that reduction between theoretical levels is a matter of degree, and can be laid out on a continuum between a 'smooth' pole (theoretical identity) and a 'bumpy' pole (extremely revisionary). It also entails that both higher and lower levels of the reductive relationship sustain some degree of explanatory autonomy. The new wave predicts that reductions of folk psychology to neuroscience will be located in the middle of this continuum; as neuroscientific evidence about mental states checks in, theoretical folk psychology will therefore be moderately revised. However, the model has conceptual problems which preclude its success in reviving reductionism, and its commitment to a syntactic approach wrecks its attempt to rescue folk psychology. Moreover, the architecture of the continuum operates on a category mistake that sneaks in an eliminativist conclusion. I argue that new wave reductionism therefore tends to be eliminativism in disguise.

The antireductionist arguments of many philosophers  for example, Fodor and Davidson,  are motivated by a worry that successful reduction (whatever that would be) would eliminate rather than conserve or explain the mental. This worry derives from an misunderstanding of the classic deductive-nomological empiricist account of reduction. Although this account does not, in fact, underwrite "cognitive suicide," it should be rejected as positivist baggage. Philosophy of psychology and mind needs to have more detailed attention to issues of reduction on philosophy of sciences and natural scientific analogies that serve as models for reduction. I consider a range of central cases often considered, such was water and H2O, genes and DNA, and common sense versus scientific solidity. The last case is illuminated by Sir Arthur Eddington's Two Tables Paradox, a solution that suggests the plasticity of the mental under reduction. To be quite clear, I do not argue for reduction of the mental, but discuss what it would involve if it were to occur. If the reduction of the mental was like any of the cases considered, it would be neither empiricist nor eliminative.

Paul Churchland's epistemology contains a tension between two positions, which I will call pragmatic pluralism and eliminative materialism. Pragmatic pluralism became predominant as Churchland's epistemology became more neurocomputationally inspired, which saved him from the skepticism implicit in certain passages of the theory of reduction he outlined in Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. However, once he replaces eliminativism with a neurologically inspired pragmatic pluralism, Churchland 1) cannot claim that folk psychology might be a false theory, in any significant sense 2) cannot claim that the concepts of Folk psychology might be empty of extension and lack reference. 3) cannot sustain Churchland's criticism of Dennett's "intentional stance" . 4) cannot claim to be a form of scientific realism, in the sense of believing that what science describes is somehow realer that what other conceptual systems describe.

An appropriate description for the Buddha's philosophy of persons within the frame of materialist philosophy of mind, prima facie, would understandably be a kind of reductionism. Seeing as the Buddha reduced the self to nothing but a collection of impersonal and impermanent psycho-physical elements. In this paper, I argue that this view is only appropriate for understanding the self within conventional reality, as is the term used by Buddhists, and does not tackle the other half, namely, ultimate reality. I claim that eliminative materialism provides a more accurate description of the Buddha's prescriptive practice,  and although falling prey to the same problems that reductionism faces, creates a good basis for an alternative position of the Buddha as a Hard Eliminitavist.

ABSTRACT: This chapter argues that appeals to actual scientific practice show that higher-level psychological explanations are not precluded by reductive explanation, much less rendered extinct. To exemplify this conclusion, the case of mesocorticolimbic dopamine is discussed at length.

According to Gold and Stoljar, one cannot both consistently be reductionist about psychoneural relations and invoke concepts developed in the psychological sciences. I deny the utility of their distinction between biological and cognitive neuroscience, suggesting that they construe biological neuroscience too rigidly and cognitive neuroscience too liberally. Then I reject their characterization of reductionism: reductions need not go down past neurobiology straight to physics, and cases of partial, local reduction are not neatly distinguishable from cases of mere implementation. Modifying the argument from unification-as-reduction, I defend a position weaker than the radical, but stronger than the trivial neuron doctrine.

[This is an edited and improved version of "You Are Not Your Brain: Against 'Teaching to the Brain'" previously published in *Review of Higher Education and Self-Learning* 5(15), Summer 2012.]

Since educators are always looking for ways to improve their practice, and since empirical science is now accepted in our worldview as the final arbiter of truth, it is no surprise they have been lured toward cognitive neuroscience in hopes that discovering how the brain learns will provide a nutshell explanation for student learning in general. I argue that identifying the person with the brain is scientism (not science), that the brain is not the person, and that it is the person who learns. In fact the brain only responds to the learning of embodied experience within the extra-neural network of intersubjective communications. Learning is a dynamic, cultural activity, not a neural program. Brain-based learning is unnecessary for educators and may be dangerous in that a culturally narrow ontology is taken for granted, thus restricting our creativity and imagination, and narrowing the human community.

Nörofelsefe denilen akım felsefeciler tarafından bazen indirgemeci, bazen eleyici ama çoğunlukla hem indirgemeci hem eleyici olarak nitelenir. Bunun kuvvetle muhtemel gerekçesi eleştirmenlerin itirazlarının altında yatan şu varsayımdır: Bir kuram veya ona içkin varlık kategorisi indirgeniyorsa, artık o varlık yok sayılmaktadır ve bilimsel terminolojimizden elenmektedir. Halbuki bir şeyin indirgenmesi hiçbir şekilde onun varlığının inkarı değil aksine ilanıdır. İşte bu nedenle, bu çalışmada ben, nörofelsefenin indirgemeci ve eleyici materyalizm olarak adlandırılmasının son derece yanıltıcı sonuçlar yarattığını ve bu olumsuz sonuçlardan kurtulmanın yolunun, birkaç defa kendilerinin önerdiği gibi, Churchland tipi nörofelsefeyi nitelemek için birleştirici ve yenileyici materyalizm ifadesinin kullanılması gerektiğini savunacağım.

In passing remarks, some commentators have noted that for Nagel, physicalism is true. It has even been argued that Nagel seeks to find the best path to follow to achieve future physicalism. I advance these observations by adding that for Nagel, we should discuss the consciousness problem not in terms of physical and mental issues but in terms of our desire to include consciousness in an objective/scientific account, and we can achieve this only by revising our self-conception, i.e., folk psychology, to develop a more detached view of experience. Through the project of objective phenomenology, Nagel aims to achieve some sort of objective, detached, and scientific explanation of the subjective nature of experience. This project seeks to make the truth of physicalism intelligible and consciousness more amenable to scientific study, potentially raising an even broader concept than the one physicalism originally proposes.

A wide range of theories, starting from American naturalism and pragmatism (Dewey, 1935), Sellars’ views on the myth of the given (1956), epistemological behaviorism and Rorty’s anti-representationalism (1965, 1979) etc. have directly or indirectly lead to the formation of various “classical” positions of hard or soft eliminativism (Churchland - 1981, Churchland - 1986, Stich - 1983, Dennett - 1988).

These theories, by eliminating mental phenomena, also eliminate their basic criterion, intentionality, which based on “classical” views (Brentano, 1874) constitutes the main distinctive feature between the mental and the physical. The problem of intentionality within a materialistic framework, is the inability to explain how a material-biological structure such as the brain, is related to something out of itself and furthermore represents this something in the form of mental content, or, as Searle (1983) has formulated the question: How can “atoms and void” possibly refer to or be directed to or in the end understand something that is outside themselves?

Modern answers “rescuing” intentionality, either resort to mental realism (ontological or functional) and the retention of mental representations of the world within the subject (Fodor, 1981), or they extend the notion of intentionality in positions of flow of information (Dretske, 1980 et al.), or they limit intentionality to the referentiality of language (Quine, 1975). Of particular importance in eliminative materialism is Dennett’s argument (1987), in which he defends the instrumental quality of intentionality in a functional framework, while ruling out its reduction, eliminating in the end any of its potentially natural character.

Today, the problem of intentionality is becoming again relevant in the realm of cognitive science, as during the past decade, important views on embodied cognition attract interest, eliminating mental phenomena and internal representations (Dreyfus - 2002, Chemero - 2009, Rowlands - 2012 et al.), broadening the horizon of eliminative theories at the same time. However, the philosophical tradition of these positions on embodied cognition, situated largely on phenomenology, gives intentionality a key role.

Some pain researchers, unconvinced that self-report of pain is reliable, have urged its replacement with brain-markers of pain. This suggestion is compatible with a radical philosophy called Eliminative Materialism, which asserts that folk psychological claims and generalizations about the nature and causal powers of pain are false and face elimination by a mature, neuroscientific theory of pain. Some eliminativists draw inspiration from our intellectual history, which shows that any theory can appear correct or beneficial even when it is false. However, the eliminativist accusation that pain folk psychology is explanatorily stagnant is mistaken given that folk psychology has motivated important psychological and clinical research programs in pain science that have led to new knowledge and improved outcomes for some pain patients. Pain folk psychology turns out to be compatible with advances in pain neuroscience, as evident in successful patient education programs, which replace maladaptive beliefs about pain with adaptive folk beliefs informed by accurate pain neurophysiology. Eliminative Materialism is merely one possible theoretical outcome on a continuum with many possibilities. The eliminativist needs to produce independent reasons for thinking that pain neuroscience will replace pain folk psychology in the way eliminativism thinks, which is a difficult task given that a central premise required for the outcome envisaged by the eliminativist is unknown. Facts of scientific history alone cannot inoculate eliminative materialism from the unjustifiably promissory nature of its central claims.

Jacobs, Isenhower and Hayes (2016) advocate for the use of recent theoretical and methodological proposals in the field of ecological psychology to overcome long-standing problems in the conceptualization of private events in radical behaviorism, and in the experimental and applied analysis of behavior. They conclude that the notion of patterns of tensegrity at the level of the cell, tissue, or muscle, spreading to higher levels according to the principles of multifractal geometry allows for a better answer to the Skinnerian question " What is inside the skin? " Unfortunately, it is not in the understanding of such bodily events that the problem with privacy lies, but in the abundant conceptual difficulties it brings about, an issue that will not be solved by appealing to (mostly) hypothetical physiological mechanisms. Furthermore, Jacobs et al., overestimate the implications of such analysis for the issue of privacy, and in so doing, have failed in demonstrating how their multiscale approach provides an advantage over other approaches to privacy, particularly the Skinnerian approach.