Naturalism by Lane Craig William; Moreland J. P.;

Author:Lane Craig, William; Moreland, J. P.; [WILLIAM LANE CRAIG & J. P. MORELAND]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Problems with eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism is not as popular as it was some decades ago. A major problem has been the task of developing a version of eliminative materialism that is not self-refuting or self-contradictory. Some eliminativists appear to be in the unenviable position of claiming to believe that there are no beliefs. Another difficulty is the problem of being able to accommodate human reasoning. A further worry still is that eliminativism is flatly refuted by experience.9

The next section of this paper will consider the problem of treating consciousness and experience within a form of reductive or identity materialism. Insofar as experience does have the characteristics I shall argue that it does, this counts as a problem for eliminativism as well. But here I wish to consider a problem with the way eliminativism is articulated in the literature. Eliminativism has been advanced in a fashion that appears to leave little unsettled in our everyday discourse and our understanding of social relations and the like. I believe this is deeply problematic. Consider, for example, Paul Churchland’s The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul.

At the outset, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul appears non-eliminative. Churchland asks: “How does the brain work? How does it sustain a thinking, feeling, dreaming self?”10 This seems to involve a straightforward acknowledgment of thinking, feeling, dreaming, and of a unitary subject that engages in each. Indeed, some of Churchland’s depiction of the findings of the brain sciences seem compatible with a philosophy of mind and body that is either a form of non-eliminative materialism or even dualism:

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