Churchland & Eliminative Materialism

This gets again at what I was talking about in the Harman thread about levels of analysis. While I agree 100% that our concepts should change based on science (though it should be noted that even with physics, often the old labels are kept, but given new, more formal meanings — as in concepts like force, mass, energy, or even light – whereas Paul, and to a slightly lesser extent, Patricia Churchland have tended to call for the elimination of “folk” psychological terminology altogether), the problem with the Churchlands’ position is that it approaches the science of the mind as a problem of neuroscience, rather than a problem of cognitive science more generally. This is not surprising, since Pat is a neuroscientist (and a good one), but it ignores a reality of the mental, which is that it has multiple levels of description and explanation which are incomplete when taken by themselves. And when it comes to higher order cognitive functions, this assumes that there are very small grain generalizations about the brain that are possible. And that is just an assumption. There is no empirical evidence for this, or any real philosophical reason for assuming it. It’s merely a prejudice of neuroscientists and a certain kind of physicalist reductionist. Which gets, I think, to the point about metaphysics from the earlier post. I can understand the tendency of “Continental” folk to react to this negatively because it really is a pretty poor excuse for a philosophical approach. But this reaction doesn’t necessarily entail that the continental types are “[holing] up in an inner phenomenal sphere that science cannot touch.” It may just be a reaction to a particular approach to carrying over the methods and materialism of science into the sphere of the mind, and an approach that while heavy philosophically, is quite light on reflection.

Clark, I agree, that’s why I wish there was more quality engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science. Both would benefit. As it is, most if not all of the current engagement is really, really flaky. It’s a shame.

There are even tentative roadmaps, such as what you get in the work of J.J. Gibson, though its use in cognitive science has tended to fit firmly in that flaky category.

In the issue of Trends in Cogntive Sciences that I linked in the previous comment section, there’s an interesting and somewhat relevant paper on consciousness as well.

I agree that philosophy has suffered from taking existing language, ordinary or otherwise, as the object of discussion. Hopefully we can blaze new trails.

I think this willingness to think in really new ways has been important in science. There are certainly some terms that scientists were once quite committed to, which have simply disappeared from the language and theories of today – phlogiston, luminiferous ether, the celestial sphere(s). From biology, the “elan vital” which separates living matter from the inanimate (and leaks out upon death).

I am not sure what sources are available now for a definition of eliminative materialism. A version that matches my best guess would seem quite reasonable to me (which I admit might be why that is my best guess). That would be: even apparently fundamental aspects of the way we now think about our own minds, like “qualia” or a simple unitary “self,” might not be respectable terms of art in the science of mind of the future in much the way that we no longer talk about phlogiston or the “essence of life.” Whether this will take 100 years or perhaps 20 is up for grabs, and intuitions will surely differ.

In this light, I take Paul’s efforts to put forth a connectionist model thirty years ago, and Pat’s references to current neuroscience, as examples rather than final positions. They intend to demonstrate that alternative theories of mind are entirely possible, that we might well come to ways of thinking about our thoughts that don’t look much like the way we are currently accustomed to thinking about them.

I also take it that new third person descriptions aren’t intended to *replace* first person experience, but may well prove more reliable. We already accept this for optical illusions, it seems odd to assume that no other cognitive illusions are possble or even likely. (More of a challenge: if you think everything is theory-laden, including one’s own perceptions, then even our first person experience itself might change as our personal theories of mind evolve.)

What future science will actually look like is, of course, waiting to be discovered. But there are those who can’t imagine that the way they now think about their minds is anything but the last word on the subject. Sometimes they think this is so more or less by definition. I think this ties back cleanly to the OP’s express desire to move past ordinary language philosophy, but I’m interested to here how it wouldn’t be. Meanwhile, these people are actually pretty lucky, because there are already fascinating empirical surprises for them to learn about.