Eliminative materialism (oreliminativism) is the radicalclaim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind isdeeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited bycommon-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in amature science of the mind. Descartes famously challenged much of whatwe take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we canbe confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminativematerialists go further than Descartes on this point, since theychallenge the existence of various mental states that Descartes tookfor granted.

• 1. A Brief History
• 2. Contemporary Eliminative Materialism
  • 2.1 Folk Psychology and the Theory-Theory
  • 2.2 Eliminative Theory Change
  • 2.3 Kind Dissolution
• 3. Arguments For Eliminative Materialism
  • 3.1 General Theoretical Problems With Folk Psychology
  • 3.2 Specific Problems With Folk Psychology
  • 3.3 Eliminative Materialism and the Phenomenal
• 4. Arguments Against Eliminative Materialism
  • 4.1 The Self-Refutation Objection
  • 4.2 Rejecting the Theory-Theory
  • 4.3 Defending the Virtues of Folk Psychology
  • 4.4 Eliminativism Eliminated?
• 5. Concluding Comments
• Bibliography
  • Cited Works
  • Further Readings
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. A Brief History

In principle, anyone denying the existence of some type of thing is aneliminativist with regard to that type of thing. Thus, there have beena number of eliminativists about different aspects of human nature inthe history of philosophy. For example, hard determinists likeHolbach (1770) are eliminativists with regard to free will because they claimthere is no dimension of human psychology that corresponds to ourcommonsense notion of freedom. Similarly, by denying that there is anego or persisting subject of experience,Hume (1739) was arguably an eliminativist about the self. Reductivematerialists can be viewed as eliminativists with respect to animmaterial soul.

Nevertheless, contemporary eliminative materialism—the sort ofeliminativism that denies the existence of specific types of mentalstates—is a relatively new theory with a very short history. Theterm was first introduced by James Cornman in a 1968 article entitled“On the Elimination of ‘Sensations’ andSensations” (Cornman, 1968). However, the basic idea goes backat least as far as C.D. Broad’s classic,The Mind and itsPlace in Nature (Broad, 1925). Here Broad discusses, and quicklyrejects, a type of “pure materialism” that treats mentalstates as attributes that apply to nothing in the world (pp.607–611). Like many future writers (see section 4.1 below),Broad argued that such a view is self-contradictory since it(presumably) presupposes the reality of misjudgments which arethemselves a type of mental state.

Apart from Broad’s discussion, the main roots of eliminativematerialism can be found in the writings of a number of mid-20thcentury philosophers, most notablyWilfred Sellars,W.V.O. Quine,Paul Feyerabend, andRichard Rorty. In his important 1956 article, “Empiricism and the Philosophyof Mind”, Sellars introduced the idea that our conception ofmentality may be derived not from direct access to the inner workingsof our own minds, but instead from a primitive theoretical frameworkthat we inherit from our culture. While Sellars himself regarded thistheoretical framework as empirically correct, his claim that ourconception of the mind is theory-based, and at least in principlefalsifiable, would be influential to later supporters ofeliminativism.

In articles such as “Mental Events and the Brain” (1963),Paul Feyerabend explicitly endorsed the idea that common-sensepsychology might prove to be radically false. Indeed, Feyerabend heldthat practically any version of materialism would severely underminecommon-sense psychology. Like many of his contemporaries, Feyerabendargued that common-sense mental notions are essentially non-physicalin character. Thus, for him, any form of physicalism would entail thatthere are no mental processes or states as understood by common-sense(1963, p. 295).

Like Feyerabend, Quine also endorsed the idea that mental notions likebelief or sensation could simply be abandoned in favor of a moreaccurate physiological account. In a brief passage inWord andObject (1960), Quine suggests that terms denoting the physicalcorrelates of mental states will be more useful and, as he puts it,“[t]he bodily states exist anyway; why add the others?”(p. 264). However, Quine goes on to question just how radical aneliminativist form of materialism would actually be, implying nosignificant difference between explicating mental states asphysiological states, and eliminating mental state terms in favor ofphysical state terms. He asks, “Is physicalism a repudiation ofmental objects after all, or a theory of them? Does it repudiate themental state of pain or anger in favor of its physical concomitant, ordoes it identify the mental state with a state of the physicalorganism (and so a state of the physical organism with the mentalstate)” (p. 265)? Quine answers this question by rejecting it,suggesting there is no interesting difference between the two cases:“Some may therefore find comfort in reflecting that thedistinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism isunreal” (p. 265).

Here we see a tension that runs throughout the writings of many earlyeliminative materialists. The problem involves a vacillation betweentwo different conditions under which mental concepts and terms aredropped. The first scenario proposes that certain mental concepts willturn out to be empty, with mental state terms referring to nothingthat actually exists. Historical analogs for this way of understandingeliminativism are cases where we (now) say it turned out there are nosuch things, such as demons and crystal spheres. The second scenariosuggests that the conceptual framework provided by neurosciences (orsome other physical account) can or should come to replace thecommon-sense framework we now use. Unlike the first scenario, thesecond allows that mental state terms may actually designate somethingreal—it’s just that what they designate turn out to bebrain states, which will be more accurately described using theterminology of the relevant sciences. One possible model for this wayof thinking about eliminativism might be the discontinuance of talkabout germs in favor of more precise scientific terminology ofinfectious agents. Given these two different conceptions, earlyeliminativists would sometimes offer two different characterizationsof their view: (a)There are no mental states, just brainstates and, (b)There really are mental states, but they arejust brain states (and we will come to view them that way).

These alternative ways of understanding eliminative materialismproduced considerable confusion about what, exactly, eliminativematerialism entailed. Moreover, since it was difficult to see how thesecond version was significantly different from various forms ofreductive materialism (hence, Quine’s skepticism about thedifference between elimination and explication) it also raised doubtsabout the distinctiveness of eliminative materialism.

Much of this was brought to light in the discussion generated by aninfluential 1965 article by Richard Rorty entitled, “Mind-BodyIdentity, Privacy, and Categories”. Rorty’s so-called“disappearance” theory appeared to openly endorse bothconceptions of eliminative materialism, suggesting that sensations donot actually exist and that they are nothing but brain processes (p.28). As one might expect, the ensuing discussion focused on gettingclear on what Rorty’s theory actually claimed (for doubts aboutRorty’s status as a true eliminative materialist, see Ramsey(2020). For example, Cornman’s article introducing the phrase‘eliminative materialism’ claimed that Rorty was arguingthat talk about sensations denotes brain states in much the same waythat talk about Zeus’s thunderbolts (allegedly) denoteselectrical discharges. Unfortunately, besides suggesting aquestionable perspective on reference, this interpretation raisedfurther questions about what distinguished eliminativism fromreductionism. In one helpful article by William Lycan and GeorgePappas (1972)—entitled, appropriately enough, “What IsEliminative Materialism?”—the authors convincingly arguedthat you can’t have it both ways. You can either claim thatcommon sense mental notions do not pick out anything real and thatmental terms are empty, in which case you are a true eliminativematerialist; or you can claim that mental notions can be, in some way,reduced to neurological (or perhaps computational) states of thebrain, in which case you are really just a good-old fashionedmaterialist/reductionist. In a follow-up article, Steven Savitt (1974)introduced the distinction between ontologically conservative(reductive) and ontologically radical (eliminative) theory change,which helped to further clarify and distinguish the central claims ofeliminative materialism as it is understood today.

In more recent history, eliminative materialism has received attentionfrom a broader range of writers, including many concerned not onlywith the metaphysics of the mind, but also the process of theorychange, the status of semantic properties, the nature of psychologicalexplanation and recent developments incognitive science. Much of this attention has been fostered by the husband-wife team ofPaul and Patricia Churchland, whose writings have forced manyphilosophers and cognitive scientists to take eliminativism moreseriously. In his 1981 article, “Eliminative Materialism and thePropositional Attitudes”, Paul Churchland presents severalarguments in favor of dropping commonsense psychology that have shapedthe modern debate about the status of ordinary notions like belief.Patricia Churchland’s provocative 1986 book,Neurophilosophy, suggests that developments in neurosciencepoint to a bleak future for commonsense mental states. Anotherinfluential author has been Stephen Stich. His important 1983 book,From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case AgainstBelief, argues that even conventionalcomputational psychology—which is often assumed tovindicate common-sensepsychology—should reject taxonomies for cognitive states thatcorrespond with belief-desire psychology. These authors’ viewsare discussed in more detail in Sections 3 and 4 below.

2. Contemporary Eliminative Materialism

Modern versions of eliminative materialism claim that our common-senseunderstanding of psychological states and processes is deeply mistakenand that some or all of our ordinary notions of mental states willhave no home, at any level of analysis, in a sophisticated andaccurate account of the mind. In other words, it is the view thatcertain common-sense mental states, such as beliefs and desires, donot exist. To establish this claim, eliminativists typically endorsetwo central and controversial claims which we will examine below. Muchof our discussion will focus upon our notion of belief, since itfigures so prominently in contemporary discussions of eliminativematerialism. However, many of the arguments presented below arethought to generalize to other mental notions—especially otherpropositional attitudes.

2.1 Folk Psychology and the Theory-Theory

The standard argument for eliminative materialism begins with theSellarsian thesis that we employ a theoretical framework to explainand predict intelligent behavior. Because this position claims that weuse a theory when employing mental idiom, it is often referred to asthe “theory-theory” (see the entry onfolk psychology as a theory), and is endorsed not only by eliminative materialists, but by manyrealists about mental states as well (like Sellars). Folk psychologyis assumed to consist of both generalizations (or laws) and specifictheoretical posits, denoted by our everyday psychological terms like‘belief’ or ‘pain’. The generalizations areassumed to describe the various causal or counterfactual relations andregularities of the posits. For instance, a typical example of a folkpsychological generalization would be:

If someone has the desire forX and the belief that the bestway to getX is by doingY, then (barring certainconditions) that person will tend to doY.

Advocates of the theory-theory claim that generalizations like thesefunction in folk psychology much like the laws and generalizations ofscientific theories. At the same time, many theory-theorists allowthat the laws of folk psychology are learned more informally thanscientific theories, as part of our normal development (see, forexample, P. M. Churchland, 1981 and Lewis, 1972).

According to theory-theorists, the posits of folk psychology aresimply the mental states that figure in our everyday psychologicalexplanations. Theory-theorists maintain the (controversial) positionthat, as theoretical posits, these states are not directly observed,though they are thought to account for observable effects like overtbehavior. Theory-theorists also claim that common-sense assigns anumber of properties to these states, such as causal, semantic andqualitative features. For instance, the theory-theory claimscommon-sense assigns two sorts of properties to beliefs. First, thereare various causal properties. Beliefs are the sort of states that arecaused in certain specific circumstances, interact with othercognitive states in various ways, and come to generate various sortsof behavior, depending on the agent’s other desires and mentalstates. As functionalists have claimed, these causal roles appear todefine our ordinary notion of belief and distinguish them from othertypes of mental states. Second, beliefs haveintentionality; that is, they each express a proposition or are about a particularstate of affairs. This inherent intentionality (also called“meaning”, “content”, and “semanticcharacter”), is commonly regarded as something special aboutbeliefs and other propositional attitudes. Moreover, as we will seebelow, it is also a popular target of eliminative materialists whochallenge the propriety and explanatory value of beliefs.

Although eliminative materialists have traditionally appealed tosomething like the idea that our folk conception of the mind is atheory, as suggested by the theory-theory, it does not actuallyrequire that our commonsense mental notions are embedded in atheoretical framework used for explaining and predicting. Virtuallyany sort of embedding conceptual framework could be proposed insupport of the first step of the eliminativist argument, as long asthat conceptual framework treats mental states as real. In fact,although it is seldom recognized, the only thing eliminativematerialism actually requires is the relatively weak assumption thatwe have mental concepts (i.e., concepts of mental states andprocesses) and that those concepts assign certain properties to thosemental states and processes that are assumed to actually exist. Evenopponents of the theory-theory will typically allow that we possesssome sort of conception of mental states like beliefs orpains and that such a conception (at least tacitly) assigns to theircorresponding mental entities a variety of intrinsic, relational,intentional, phenomenal, causal, and temporal properties.

2.2 Eliminative Theory Change

The second component of eliminative materialism is the thesis thatfolk psychology is profoundly wrong about the actual nature of themind/brain. Eliminative materialists argue that the central tenets offolk psychology radically misdescribe cognitive processes;consequently, the posits of folk psychology have no role to play in aserious scientific theory of the mind because the posits pick outnothing that is real. Like dualists, eliminative materialists insistthat ordinary mental states cannot be reduced to or identified withneurological events or processes. However, unlike dualists,straightforward eliminativists claim there is nothing more to the mindthan what occurs in the brain. The reason mental states areirreducible is not because they are non-physical; rather, it isbecause mental states, as described by common-sense psychology, do notreally exist.

To see all of this a little better, it will help to return to theimportant distinction made by Steven Savitt discussed in Section 1between ontologically conservative (or retentive) theory change on theone hand, and ontologically radical (or eliminative) theory change onthe other hand. Ontologically conservative theory change occurs whenthe entities and posits of the replaced theory are relocated, oftenwith some degree of revision, in the replacing theory. For example, asour theory of light was gradually replaced by our understanding ofelectro-magnetic radiation, our conception of light was dramaticallytransformed as we recognized ways in which our old conception wasmistaken or incomplete. Nevertheless, at no point did we come to saythat there is really no such thing as light. Rather, light waseventually identified with a form of electro-magnetic radiation.

By contrast, our notion of demons did not come to find a new home incontemporary theories of mental disorder. There is nothing in thetheories of schizophrenia, Tourette’s Syndrome, neuro-pathologyor any of the other modern explanations for bizarre behavior, that wecan sensibly identify with malevolent spirits with supernaturalpowers. The notion of a demon is just too far removed from anything wenow posit to explain behavior that was once explained by demonology.Consequently, the transition from demonology to modern accounts ofthis behavior was ontologically radical. We dropped demons from ourcurrent ontology, and came to realize that the notion isempty—it refers to nothing real.

Eliminative materialists claim that an ontologically radical theorychange awaits the theoretical posits of folk psychology in a mannersimilar to these cases. With straightforward eliminativism, just as wecame to understand that there are no such things as demons (becausenothing at all like demons appear in modern accounts of strangebehavior), so too, eliminative materialists argue that various folkpsychological concepts—like our concept of belief—willeventually be recognized as empty posits that fail to correspond withanything that actually exists. Since there is nothing that has thecausal and semantic properties we attribute to beliefs (and many othermental states) it will turn out thatthere really are no suchthings.

It should be noted that a somewhat similar framework for understandingeliminative materialism is provided by David Lewis’s discussionof functional definitions in psychology (1972) (see the entry onfunctionalism). In Lewis’s account, our commonsense mental notions can betreated as functionally defined theoretical terms that appear in achain of Ramsey-sentences. The Ramsey-sentences are a formalreconstruction of the platitudes of commonsense psychology. Theyprovide a set of roles or conditions that more or less must be met forthe instantiation of any given state. If nothing comes close toactually filling the roles specified by this framework for a certainstate, then we are warranted in saying that the theoretical posit inquestion doesn’t refer and there is no such thing. Eliminativematerialists claim that this is precisely what will happen with atleast some of our folk mental notions.

2.3 Kind Dissolution

We have been treating eliminative materialism as a metaphysical claimabout the ontological status of the posits of commonsense psychology;as the claim that there exists nothing that corresponds to the conceptin question — it picks out nothing real. This is analogous towhat happened in the case of demons and crystal spheres. Because thereare no such things, these concepts have no role to play in a properscientific ontology. However, in recent years the term‘eliminativism’ has been applied to a very different typeof ontological stance toward the posits of commonsense psychology.This alternative stance is that although the commonsense concept doesindeed correspond with something real, the kind in question is, for ahost of reasons, ill-suited for serious scientific theorizing. Thus,dropping the commonsense concept from science is, at least in part,due to methodological considerations about proper scientific practice.Irvine and Sprevak refer to this as “discourseeliminativism” (Irvine and Sprevak, 2020), while Machery refersto it as “scientific eliminativism” (Machery, 2008). Withconventional eliminative materialism, any token invoking of the mentalstate concept or term will designate nothing — the concept orterm has no identifiable intentional object. By contrast, with thisalternative picture, particular uses of a mental state concept or termmay indeed refer to some actual neurological state or condition thatshares many of the features associated with the concept in question.However, because no legitimate scientific type maps properly onto thefolk psychological type, the latter should be dropped from thecategories of scientific psychology. So with this alternativeinterpretation of eliminativism, the alleged problem with folkpsychology has more to do with the classification system it providesfor certain types of mental states or processes; its criteria fordemarcation and categorization are grossly ill-suited for cognitivescience. The unscientific nature of the category may be due to avariety of considerations (or combination of considerations) including(but not limited to) demarcation criteria that are overly subjectiveor context dependent, cut across more natural kinds, reduce to wildlydisjunctive arrays of real properties, fail to yield usefulgeneralizations, collapse together useful levels of analysis, and soon. Thus, this alternative conception of eliminativism is the exactconverse of certain forms of instrumentalism. Whereas aninstrumentalist might claim that there are no X’s, but we shouldcontinue invoking or talking about X’s in science for pragmaticreasons (e.g., ease of use), a proponent of this alternative pictureof eliminativism says there really are X’s, but we should stopusing the category in science for pragmatic reasons, such as avoidingtalking at cross purposes or reducing conceptual cluter.

To see this a little better, consider our concept ofweed. Itis used in everyday life to pick out certain actual plants, but thecategory is badly ill-suited for science. The category of weeds ishighly subjective and cross-classifies a number of natural floralkinds. While it would be wrong to say there are no such things asweeds, the notion does not belong in the science of botany. Thealternative conception of eliminativism is based on the idea thatcertain commonsense psychological categories should be regarded assimilar to the category of weeds. Although the folk notion in questionmay correspond with something actual, the folk category should bedropped from the sciences of the mind because it is inappropriate forserious scientific theorizing and explanation.

An illustration of this alternative picture of eliminativism isprovided by Paul Griffiths’ account of our commonsense notion ofemotion (Griffiths, 1997). Griffiths argues that the category ofemotion should be dropped from scientific psychology and replaced withcategories that are better grounded in scientific psychology andneuroscience. He points out that the folk concept cuts across threedifferent kinds of affective states: affect programs, higher cognitiveemotions and social constructions. Affect programs are basic andautomatic states such as fear or anger that have an evolutionary basisand that are triggered by specific conditions. By contrast, highercognitive emotions, like jealousy or shame, and social constructionsare much less automatic and more easily influenced by a broader rangeof factors like higher-order thoughts or cultural conditioning.Griffiths argues that these psychological types are almost certainlysubserved by radically different cognitive mechanisms and consequentlyshould not be lumped together under some superordinate commonsensecategory of emotion. Griffiths develops a similar line of argumentagainst emotion based upon levels of analysis and the differencebetween function-based taxonomies as opposed to lineage-basedtaxonomies.

A comparable type of outlook is endorsed by Edouard Machery withregard to our concept of (ironically)concepts (Machery,2008). Machery argues that because our folk notion of conceptcorresponds to such a heterogeneous group of scientific kinds ofstored information — including prototypes, exemplars, andtheories — then psychologists would be better off just usingthese scientific categories and abandoning talk of conceptsaltogether. Similar sorts of arguments have been leveled against thefolk categories of belief (Stich, 1983), pain (Hardcastle, 1999),consciousness (Irvine, 2012), and mental illness (Murphy and Stich,1999).

One problem with this interpretation of eliminativism is that it oftendepends upon controversial normative claims about appropriatescientific taxonomies. Many deny that, say, the highly disjunctivenature of a commonsense notion is sufficient justification fordropping it. If it was, we would eliminate the categories of memoryand inference from scientific psychology. While authors like Griffithsand Machery present very sophisticated arguments involving specificdetails about the categories in question, most of these argumentseither explicitly or tacitly make claims about the requirements ofproper scientific categorization that are highly contentious in thephilosophy of science (see, for example, the discussion in Machery,2010).

A second and much more serious problem is that this alternativeconception of eliminative materialism is not, strictly speaking, atype of eliminative materialism. The claim that some categorypossesses members but the category itself is nevertheless ill-suitedfor science isnot just a weaker version of the claim that acategory is ill-suited for sciencebecause it has no members.Say what you will about weeds, clothing, pets and other kinds that arenot scientifically respectable, it is clearly wrong to suggest thesethings are not real. Moreover, Ramsey (2021) has argued that treatingthis sort of theory change as a type of eliminative materialismthreatens to reintroduce the older confusion discussed in Section 1 inwhich eliminativism was conflated with reductionism. Taxonomicmodifications are arguably ontologically conservative theory changes,and thus should not be characterized as eliminativistic in nature,even if they involve the elimination of labels for more scientificterms (the term ‘consumption’ has been dropped from ourscientific nomenclature, but it successfully referred to the diseasewe now refer to as ‘tuberculosis’). To help avoid thisconfusion, Ramsey has argued that the sort of theory change thatGriffiths, Machery, and others describe should be labeled as somethingdifferent from eliminativism, such as ‘kinddissolutionism’. The overarching kind or category is broken upand new taxonomy is introduced, but this is done without denying thereality of the subordinate mental phenomena or states in question.

3. Arguments For Eliminative Materialism

Because eliminative materialism is grounded in the claim that commonsense psychology is radically false, arguments for eliminativism aregenerally argumentsagainst the tenability of folkpsychology. These arguments typically fall into one of two majorfamilies. One family involves arguments stemming from a broad range ofconsiderations that pertain to the assessment of theories in general.The second family focuses upon deficiencies that are unique to folkpsychology and its central posits.

3.1 General Theoretical Problems With Folk Psychology

Patricia and Paul Churchland have offered a number of arguments basedon general considerations about theory evaluation. For example, theyhave argued that any promising and accurate theory should offer afertile research program with considerable explanatory power. Theynote, however, that common-sense psychology appears to be stagnant,and there is a broad range of mental phenomena that folk psychologydoes not allow us to explain. Questions about why we dream, variousaspects of mental illness, consciousness, memory and learning arecompletely ignored by folk psychology. According to the Churchlands,these considerations indicate that folk psychology may be in muchworse shape than we commonly recognize (P. M. Churchland, 1981; P.S.Churchland, 1986). Another argument that appeals to generaltheoretical considerations offers an inductive inference based on thepast record of folk theories. Folk physics, folk biology, folkepidemiology and the like all proved to be radically mistaken. Sincefolk theories generally turn out to be mistaken, it seems quiteimprobable that folk psychology will turn out true. Indeed, since folkpsychology concerns a subject that is far more complex and difficultthan any past folk theory, it seems wildly implausible that this onetime we actually got things right (Churchland, P.M. 1981).

These general theoretical arguments do not seem to have significantlyundermined the intuitive support that folk psychology enjoys. Inresponse to the charge that folk psychology is stagnant, many haveargued that this assessment is unfair, and that folk psychology hasactually stimulated a number of fruitful research programs inscientific psychology (Greenwood, 1991; Horgan and Woodward, 1985).Moreover, defenders of folk psychology note that it hardly followsfrom the observation that a given theory is incomplete, or fails toexplain everything, that it is therefore radically false (Horgan andWoodward, 1985). Defenders of folk psychology object that thesetheoretical considerations cannot outweigh the evidence provided byeveryday, ordinary experience of our own minds, such as ourintrospective experience, which seems to vividly support the realityof mental states like beliefs.

Regarding this last point, eliminativists like the Churchlands warnthat we should be deeply suspicious about the reliability ofintrospective “evidence” about the inner workings of themind. If inner observation is as theory-laden as many now supposeouter perception to be, what we introspect may be largely determinedby our folk psychological framework. In other words,“introspecting” beliefs may be just like people“seeing” demonic spirits or celestial spheres (Churchland,P.M., 1988). This skepticism about the reliability of introspection isbolstered by empirical work that calls into question the reliabilityof introspection (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977). As we will see in Section3.3, the idea that introspection offers an illusory image of the mindis gaining popularity not just with regard to information bearingstates like beliefs, but also with regard to phenomenal states likequalia.

3.2 Specific Problems With Folk Psychology

The second family of eliminative materialist arguments focuses uponidiosyncratic features of folk-psychological posits and ultimatelydenies that these features will be accommodated by a scientificaccount of the mind. The most widely discussed features are twoassociated with the apparent linguistic nature of beliefs and otherpropositional attitudes. First, as a number of philosophers haverecently noted, propositional attitudes appear to have a form similarto public language sentences, with a compositional structure andsyntax. For example, a person’s belief that, say, the presidentdislikes terrorists appears to be composed of the concepts “THEPRESIDENT”, “DISLIKES”, and“TERRORISTS”, and differs from the belief that terroristsdislike the president by virtue of something analogous to syntacticarrangement. Second, beliefs resemble public sentences in that theyhave semantic properties. Beliefs, like public linguisticrepresentations, are about different states of affairs. Both of thesequasi-linguistic features of propositional attitudes—theiralleged sentential structure and their semantic (or intentional)properties—have been used by philosophers to mount arguments foreliminativism.

3.2.1 Challenging The Syntactic Structure Of Beliefs

Some writers have emphasized the apparent mismatch between thesentential structure of propositional attitudes on the one hand, andthe actual neurological structures of the brain on the other hand.Whereas the former involves discrete symbols and a combinatorialsyntax, the latter involves action potentials, spiking frequencies andspreading activation. Proponents of the “language ofthought” theory, like Jerry Fodor (1975) have argued that mentalrepresentations should be treated as possessing a sentential orcombinatorial structure. But as Patricia Churchland (1986) has argued,it is hard to see where in the brain we are going to find anythingthat even remotely resembles the sentence-like structure that appearsto be essential to beliefs and other propositional attitudes.

In response to this line of reasoning, many have argued that it is amistake to treat folk psychology as committed to a quasi-linguisticstructure to propositional attitudes (Horgan and Graham, 1991;Dennett, 1991). As Dennett puts it, “It is rather curious to tosay, ‘I’m going to show you that folk psychology is falseby showing you that Jerry Fodor is mistaken’” (1991, p.138). In fact, in cognitive science today there are many who arecommitted to the reality of cognitive representations, but who rejectthe quasi-linguistic perspective on their internal structure (see, forexample, Shea, 2018). And even for those who find the langauge ofthought perspective of folk psychology plausible, there is a furtherdifficulty regarding the relevance of neuroscience for determining thestatus of folk psychology. Some, such as Zenon Pylyshyn (1984), haveinsisted that just as the physical circuitry of a computer is thewrong level of analysis to look for computational symbol structures,so too, the detailed neurological wiring of the brain is the wronglevel of organization to look for structures that might qualify asbeliefs. Instead, if we view the mind as the brain’s program, asmany advocates of classical AI do, then folk posits exist at a levelof analysis that is more abstract than the neuro-physical details.Consequently, many realists about the posits of folk psychologydiscount the importance of any apparent mis-match between neurologicalarchitecture and the alleged linguistic form of propositionalattitudes (Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988; McLaughlin & Warfield,1994).

3.2.2 Challenging the Semantic Properties of Beliefs

The second type of argument against beliefs focuses upon theirsemantic properties and concludes that these sorts of properties makepropositional attitudes ill-suited for even a computational theory ofthe mind. Stephen Stich (1983) has emphasized that folk psychologyindividuates beliefs by virtue of their semantic properties, e.g., wetaxonomize states like beliefs by virtue of what they are about.However, according to Stich, there are a host of reasons for rejectinga semantic taxonomy for scientific psychology. Semantic taxonomiesignore causally salient aspects of cognitive states, involve a highdegree of vagueness, and break down in the case of the mentally ill orthe very young. In place of the semantic individuation method adoptedby folk psychology, Stich argues for a syntactic taxonomy that isbased upon the causally relevant syntactic or physical properties of agiven cognitive state.

Yet, as Stich himself notes, even if it should turn out that folkposits do not belong in a scientific psychology, more is needed toestablish that they do not actually exist. After all, we do not doubtthe existence of several sorts of things (e.g., chairs, articles ofclothing) that are defined in ways that make them ill-suited forscience. Thus, Stich’s account is not truly eliminativist forthe reasons we saw in Section 2.3: his prescription is for ascientifically superior taxonomy that still involves belief-likestates. Moreover, if our best scientific account posited states thatshare many features with beliefs, such as similar causal roles, theneven if the two taxonomies pulled apart in certain cases, we may stillregard folk psychology as, in some sense, vindicated. While thescientific taxonomy may not list beliefs as basic cognitive states, itcould conceivably still provide the resources for developing a realistinterpretation of these and other folk psychological states.

A much more direct attack upon the intentional character ofpropositional attitudes has focused upon the nature of contentitself— what a representation “says”.Representational content is in many ways mysterious and seems to defyeasy or straightforward natural explanation. For example, it allowsfor the misrepresentation of reality, the representation of imaginarythings like unicorns, is explanatorily important but apparentlycausally irrelevant, and possesses a number of other oddcharactersitics. This has led some to talk about the “hardproblem of content” (Hutto and Myin, 2012), a designationintended to mimic the “hard problem ofconsciousness”—a reference to the seemingly insurmountablechallange of explaining consciousness in the natural world. Followingthe contributions of earlier content skeptics like Quine, theallegedly irreducible and inexplicable nature of content has led somewriters like Hutto and Myin (2012) and Alexander Rosenberg (1991,2019) to argue that representational content does not exist, at leastin connection with internal cognitive or neurological states. If thereis no such thing as content, there can be no representation, and thusno mental representations like beliefs and desires.

To answer this sort of challenge, a great deal of work has beendevoted to providing a naturalistic theory of content for mentalrepresentations. This project has been a significant research area inthe philosophy of cognitive science for many decades and has yielded anumber of theories designed to show how representational content canarise from natural neurological/computational states and processes(see, for example, Cummins, 1989; Dretske, 1988; Fodor, 1987;Millikan, 1984; Neander, 2017; Shea, 2018). By focusing upon thecorrelational, structural, and/or teleological dimensions of purportedcognitive representations, these accounts attempt to answer theeliminativistic challenge by providing a scientifically respectableaccounting of representational content (see entries oncausal theories of mental content andteleological theories of mental content).

3.2.3 Eliminativism and Cognitive Science

One way to get a stronger eliminativist conclusion would be to arguethat there is nothing posited in a scientific account of cognitionthat shares the central properties we attribute to folk psychologicalstates, atany level of analysis. For example, Ramsey, Stichand Garon (1990) have argued that if certainconnectionist models of memory and inference prove successful, then this would formthe basis for eliminative materialism regarding states likepropositional memories. Since some connectionist models storeinformation in a highly distributed manner, there are no causallydiscrete, semantically evaluable data structures that representspecific propositions. It is not just that these models lack the sortof sentential, compositional representations assumed in moretraditional (e.g., language of thought) models. Rather, it is that inthese networks there are no causally distinct structures that standfor specific states of affairs. Consequently, there do not appear tobe any structures in these networks that might serve as candidates forbeliefs and other propositional attitudes. This is noteworthy sincemany critics of eliminativism claim it is virtually impossible toimagine what a psychological theory would look like that doesn’tinvoke propositional attitudes to explain cognition (Hannan, 1993). IfRamsey, Stich and Garon are right, certain connectionist models may,for the first time, provide us with a plausible account of cognitionthat supports the denial of belief-like states. More recently, Ramsey(2007) has argued that this earlier argument does not go far enough,insisting that connectionist models of this sort not only fail toinvoke inner representations that are sufficiently similar to theposits of folk psychology, but that they don’t actually invokeinner representational states at all.

Ramsey, Stich and Garon’s argument assumes that in highlydistributed networks, it is impossible to specify the semantic contentof elements of the network that are causally responsible for variouscognitive episodes. Some have responded to their argument bysuggesting that, with highly sophisticated forms of analysis, itactually is possible to pick out causally relevant pieces of storedinformation (Forster and Saidel, 1994). Others have argued that, likethe Churchlands, Ramsey, Stich and Garon have offered a mistakeninterpretation of folk psychology, suggesting it requires far less inthe way of explicit, discrete structures than they suggest (Dennett,1991; Heil, 1991). This is a common criticism of eliminativematerialism, and we will look at it more closely in Section 4.3.

Another development in cognitive science that has pushed some peoplein the direction of eliminativism is the attempt to understandcognitive systems as neither classical nor connectionist computationaldevices, but rather as dynamic systems, described using themathematical framework of dynamic systems theory (Beer, 2000; vanGelder, 1992; Port and van Gelder, 1995). This approach is oftenconjoined with some version of embodied cognition, as both place astrong emphasis on the way cognitive agents move about and interactwith their environment. While neither the dynamic nor the embodiedapproaches are inherently anti-representational in nature, at leastsome authors have employed them to develop accounts of cognitiveprocesses that abandon inner representational states altogether. Forexample, Anthony Chemero has promoted what he calls “radicalembodied cognitive science” (Chemero, 2009). This theoreticalframework treats the cognitive agent and environment as a complexcoupled system best explained by a mix of dynamics and JamesGibson’s ecological theory of perception (Gibson, 1950). Chemeroexplicitly endorses eliminativism by rejecting the traditionalassumption that agents solve problems and navigate through the worldby consulting mental representations. He thus joins others in thecognitive science community, like artificial intelligence researcherRodney Brooks (Brooks, 1991), who have tried to account for cognitionwithout invoking representational entities. Of course, it is too earlyto know how successful these non-representational approaches willultimately be, and many defenders of representationalism argue thatthese efforts are not likely to account for more sophisticated“representation-hungry” tasks like planning (Clark andToribio, 1994).

A related theoretical development in the philosophy of cognitivescience that also pushes a strong anti-representational perspective,at least for basic cognitive states, and that has its roots in theembodied, embedded tradition isradical enactivism. Asmentioned in section 3.2.2, authors like Daniel Hutto and Erik Myinreject the traditional information-processing outlook and insist thatproviding a naturalistic account of the semantic properties ofrepresentational content (as opposed to mere co-variation) — isprobably unsolvable for most inner states commonly thought as mentalrepresentations (Hutto and Myin, 2012, 2017). Thus, Hutto and Myinjoin other authors who have endorsed eliminativism about mentalrepresentations by developing an enactivist cognitive theory thatrejects the explanatory value of inner representations (see entry oncognition: embodied).

3.3 Eliminative Materialism and the Phenomenal

Although most discussions regarding eliminativism focus on the statusof our notion of belief and other propositional attitudes, somephilosophers have endorsed eliminativist claims about the phenomenalor qualitative states of the mind (see the entry onqualia). For example, Daniel Dennett (1978) has argued that our concept ofpain is fundamentally flawed because it includes essential properties,like infallibility and intrinsic awfulness, that cannot co-exist inlight of a well-documented phenomenon know as “reactivedisassociation”. In certain conditions, drugs like morphinecause subjects to report that they are experiencing excruciating pain,but that it is not unpleasant. It seems we are either wrong to thinkthat people cannot be mistaken about being in pain (wrong aboutinfallibility), or pain needn’t be inherently awful (wrong aboutintrinsic awfulness). Dennett suggests that part of the reason we mayhave difficulty replicating pain in computational systems is becauseour concept is so defective that it picks out nothing real. A similarview about pain has been offered by Valerie Hardcastle (1999).Hardcastle argues that the neurological basis for pain sensations isso complex that no one thing answers to our folk conception. However,despite her own characterization of pain as a “myth”,Hardcastle’s arguments appear to be aimed not at showing thatpain is unreal, but rather that it is actually a more complicatedphenomenon than suggested by our folk conception.

In another well-known article, “Quining Qualia” (1988),Dennett challenges not just our conception of pain, but all of ourdifferent notions of qualitative states. His argument focuses on theapparently essential features of qualia, including their inherentsubjectivity and their private nature. Dennett discusses severalcases—both actual and imaginary—to expose ways in whichthese ordinary intuitions about qualia pull apart. In so doing,Dennett suggests our qualia concepts are fundamentally confused andfail to correspond with the actual inner workings of our cognitivesystem.

Some writers have suggested an eliminativist outlook not just withregard to particular states of consciousness, but with regard tophenomenal consciousness itself. For example, Georges Rey (1983, 1988)has argued that if we look at the various neurological or cognitivetheories of what consciousness might amount to, such as internalmonitoring or the possession of second-order representational states,it seems easy to imagine all of these features incorporated in acomputational device that lacks anything we intuitively think of as“real” or robust consciousness. Rey suggests that thefailure of these accounts to capture our ordinary notion ofconsciousness may be because the latter corresponds with no actualprocess or phenomenon; the “inner light” we associate withconsciousness may be nothing more than a remnant of misguidedCartesian intuitions (see also Wilkes, 1988; 1995 and Irvine andSprevak, 2020).

A somewhat similar outlook has been proposed by Keith Frankish andothers, and is commonly referred to as “Illusionism” aboutconsciousness, a label designed to help indicate why itseemsto us that phenomenal consciousness is real (Frankish, 2016, 2017).Illusionism is motivated in part by broader theoreticalconsiderations, such as the problematic nature of consciousness fromthe standpoint of physicalism and the observation that even reductiveaccounts of phenomenal experience typically suggest some sort ofmisapprehension of what is really going on. Illusionism claims thatintrospection involves something analogous to ordinary sensoryillusions; just as our perceptual systems can yield states thatradically misrepresent the nature of the outer world, so too,introspection yields representations that substantially misrepresentthe actual nature of our inner experience. In particular,introspection represents experiential states as having phenomenalproperties—the infamous and deeply problematicwhat-it-is-likeness of our qualitative mental states. Illusionistsclaim that these phenomenal properties do not exist, making themeliminativists about phenomenal consciousness. What is real arequasi-phenomenal properties—the non-phenomenal properties ofinner states that are detected by introspection andmisrepresentedas phenomenal.

An obvious challenge for such a view is explaining how we canexperience something as having featureX without such asexperience actually involving the real experience ofX. Itcould be argued that even if the what-it-is-likeness is a feature ofhow we introspectively represent certain mental states, it wouldnevertheless be a real aspect of introspection—a feature that isperhaps relocated, but not removed. Famously, the illusion/reality gapseems to collapse when it comes to our inner experiences; as Searleputs it, “where consciousness is concerned the existence ofthe appearance is the reality” (Searle, 1997, p.122,italics in original). Frankish insists that we can introspectivelyrepresent ourselves as having a certain type of experience withoutactually having that type of experience: “...when we think weare having a greenish experience we are in fact merely misrepresentingourselves as having one” (Frankish, 2016, p. 33). Illusionismthereby forces us to reconsider the sort of access we have to our ownexperiential states.

4. Arguments Against Eliminative Materialism

Like any theory that challenges our fundamental understanding ofthings, eliminative materialism has been subjected to a variety ofcriticisms. Here, I’ll discuss four that have receivedconsiderable attention in recent years.

4.1 The Self-Refutation Objection

Many writers have argued that eliminative materialism is in some senseself-refuting (Baker, 1987; Boghossian, 1990, 1991; Reppert, 1992). Acommon way this charge is made is to insist that a capacity oractivity that is somehow invoked by the eliminativist is itselfsomething that requires the existence of beliefs. One popularcandidate for this activity is the making of an assertion. The criticinsists that to assert something one must believe it. Hence, foreliminative materialism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativistherself must believe that it is true. But if the eliminativist hassuch a belief, then there are beliefs and eliminativism is therebyproven false.

Eliminativists often respond to this objection by first noting thatthe bare thesis that there are no beliefs is not itself contradictoryor conceptually incoherent. So properly understood, the complaint isnot that eliminative materialism (qua-proposition) is self-refuting.Rather, it is that the eliminativist herself is doing something thatdisconfirms her own thesis. In the above example, the disconfirmingact is the making of an assertion, as it is alleged by the critic thatwe must believe anything we assert with public language. However, thislast claim is precisely the sort of folk-psychological assumption thatthe eliminative materialist is suggesting we should abandon. Accordingto eliminative materialism, all of the various capacities that we nowexplain by appealing to beliefs do not actually involve beliefs atall. So the eliminativist will hold that the self-refutation criticsbeg the question against eliminative materialism. To run this sort ofobjection, the critic endorses some principle about the necessity ofbeliefs which itself presupposes that eliminative materialism must befalse (P. S. Churchland, 1986; Cling, 1989; Devitt, 1990; Ramsey,1991).

A more sophisticated version of the self-refutation objection has beenoffered by Paul Boghossian with regard to eliminativist argumentsbased on the content of psychological states. Boghossian maintainsthat arguments for irrealism about the content of propositionalattitudes work just as well in support of irrealism about all forms ofcontent, including the content of ordinary linguistic expressions.Moreover, he argues that different forms of irrealism about linguisticcontent presuppose robust semantic notions, such as realistconceptions of truth and reference. This leads to the incoherentposition that, for example, there are no truth conditions and yetcertain sentences (or beliefs) about content are false (Boghossian,1990, 1991). In response, Michael Devitt and Georges Rey argue thatBoghossian’s argument, despite its sophistication, neverthelessbegs the question by ascribing to the eliminativist some version oftruth-conditional semantics, whereas many eliminativists would rejectsuch a view of linguistic expressions. While eliminativists would needto construct some sort of non-truth-conditional semantics, Devitt andRey argue that the challenge of such a project reveals only thateliminativism is implausible, not that it is, as Boghossian claims,incoherent (Devitt, 1990; Devitt and Rey, 1991).

4.2 Rejecting the Theory-Theory

In section 2, we saw that eliminative materialism typically rests upona particular understanding of the nature of folk psychology. The nexttype of criticism of eliminative materialism challenges the variouscharacterizations of folk psychology provided by itsadvocates—in particular the view set forth by advocates of thetheory-theory. This criticism is motivated by a variety of differentoutlooks and traditions. One tradition is at least partly due to thewritings of Wittgenstein (1953) and Ryle (1949), and insists that(contra many eliminativists) common sense psychology is not aquasi-scientific theory used to explain or predict behavior, nor doesit treat mental states like beliefs as discrete inner causes ofbehavior (Bogdan, 1991; Haldane, 1988; Hannan, 1993; Wilkes, 1993).What folk psychology actually does treat beliefs and desires as ismuch less clear in this tradition. One perspective (Dennett, 1987) isthat propositional attitudes are actually dispositional states that weuse to adopt a certain heuristic stance toward rational agents.According to this view, our talk about mental states should beinterpreted as talk about abstracta that, although real, are notcandidates for straightforward reduction or elimination as the resultof cognitive science research. Moreover, since beliefs and othermental states are used for so many things besides the explanation ofhuman behavior, it is far from clear that our explanatory theoriesabout inner workings of the mind/brain have much relevance for theiractual status.

Defenders of eliminative materialism often point out that folktheories typically have many functions beyond explaining andpredicting, but that doesn’t alter their theoretical status norinoculate their posits from elimination (P.M. Churchland, 1993).Moreover, as we saw at the end of Section 2.1, while eliminativistshave typically framed the vulnerability of commonsense mental notionsin terms of a false folk psychological theory, it is important to notethat, at least in principle, eliminativism does not require such anassumption. Indeed, eliminativism only requires two basic claims: 1)that we share concepts of mental states that includesomesort of requirements that any state or structure must meet to qualifyas a mental state of that sort, and 2) the world is such that nothingcomes close to meeting those requirements. The first of these claimsis not terribly controversial and while the requirements for beliefsmight come as part of an explanatory theory, they don’t need to.Hence, one common criticism of eliminativism—that our invokingof beliefs and desires is not a theoretical or quasi-scientificendeavor—has very limited force. Cherubs, presumably, are notpart of any sort of quasi-scientific theory, yet this alone is noreason to think they might exist. Even if it should turn out that wedo not (or do not simply) posit beliefs and other propositionalattitudes as part of some sort of explanatory-predictive framework, itmay still turn out that there are no such things.

However, a more recent version of this type of opposition to thetheory-theory does provide a direct challenge to eliminativematerialism. This is a cluster of views known as “mentalfictionalism” (Demeter, Parent and Toon, 2022; Toon, 2023). Aprominent version of this view treats the attribution of propositionalattitudes as a type of pretense or make-believe (Toon, 2023). Whilethis outlook is inspired by the work of people like Ryle and Dennett,it is also motivated by the more general account of pretense developedby Kendall Walton (1990). According to mental fictionalists like Toon,when someone ascribes a belief to another person such an ascriptionshould not be taken literally – it is not assignment of any sort ofactual cognitive state, as claimed by the theory-theory. Instead, theattribution should be treated as involving metaphorical language.Propositional attitude ascriptions are a kind of pragmatic fiction,used to pick out patterns of behavior. Just as children engaged inpretensive play actas if the doll is crying, so too, whenpeople ascribe propositional attitudes they are actingas ifthe person possessed real mental representations in the mind/brain.But in both cases, the activity is purely make-believe; terms like‘belief’ and ‘desire’ should not interpretedas designating actual cognitive states or anything real.

This type of mental fictionalism poses a challenge to eliminativematerialism because, although it too denies the reality of certainmental states, it further denies that we even conceptualize mentalstates as real internal states. For an eliminativist, a model forunderstanding the ascription of mental states would be the ascriptionof demonic possession in the 14th-century, a clearly falseattribution. But for a mental fictionalist, a model for understandingthe ascription of a belief or desire might be more like the ascriptionof a broken heart, or describing an athlete as “on fire” – notsomething to be taken literally or that could be proven wrong by anyscientific developments.

Despite the intriguing and reorienting nature of this outlook, a majorproblem is that, as an account of belief and desire ascription, itstrikes many as (ironically) purely fiction. There seems to be littlejustification for claiming that when people assign propositionalattitudes, they are engaging in any sort of pretense or that theyregard mental states as make-believe fictions. Imagine a defenseattorney defending her client by claiming it’s impossible forthe client to have acted on the beliefs and desires alleged by theprosecution because, of course, such states aren’t real andnever cause behavior. Such a claim would strike most of us as absurd,and yet it shouldn’t if the pretense accounts of mental stateattribution were correct. Fictionalists might counter that makebelieve can somehow happen implicitly, or that one can intend toascribe fictional entities without knowing it. But it is very hard tosee how people can participate in make-believe without realizing it,or that deep down, we all actually regard mental states as fictionalin nature despite what we regularly say about them.

Moreover, mental fictionalism has an additional problem that othertypes of fictionalism do not have. Insofar as fictionalism involves anappeal to pretense, it relies upon the assumption that people arecapable of pretending something is real when they know it actuallyisn’t. Yet it seems this would be impossible if thoughts andother mental representational states don’t exist. How can peopleconceptualize mental states as make-believe fictions if conceptsthemselves are also mere fictions? The intelligibility of pretenseseems to presuppose the reality of certain representational mentalstates. One strategy for answering this challenge is to try to accountfor pretense without assuming the reality of mental states. Forexample, Toon tries to give a preliminary account of pretense as aform of norm-governed social practice; that is, as a form of behavior(Toon, 2023). However, it difficult to see how an account of socialbehavior can capture all dimensions of pretense and make-believe, orhow a strictly behavioral account of language can distinguishfictional, metaphorical attributions of states from realistic ones.

A very different perspective criticizing the theory-theory is based onresearch in contemporary cognitive science, and stems from a differentmodel of the nature of our explanatory and predictive practices(Gordon, 1986, 1992; Goldman, 1992). Known as the“simulation theory”, this alternative model holds that we predict and explain behavior notby using a theory, but by instead running an off-line simulation ofhow we would act in a comparable situation. That is, according to thispicture, we disconnect our own decision-making sub-system and thenfeed it pretend beliefs and desires (and perhaps other relevant data)that we assume the agent whose behavior we are trying to predict islikely to possess. This allows us to generate both predictions andexplanations of others by simply employing cognitive machinery that wealready possess. In effect, the simulation theory claims that ourreasoning about the minds and behavior of others is not significantlydifferent from putting ourselves in their shoes. Thus, no full-blowntheory of the mind is ever needed. Simulations theorists claim that,contrary to the assumptions of eliminative materialism, no theory ofthe mind exists that could one day prove false.

Both sides of this debate between the theory-theory and the simulationtheory have used empirical work from developmental psychology tosupport their case (Stich and Nichols, 1992; Gordon, 1992). Forexample, theory-theorists have noted that developmental psychologistslike Henry Wellman and Alison Gopnik have used various findings tosuggest that children go through phases that are analogous to thephases one would go through when acquiring a theory (Gopnik andWellman, 1992). Moreover, children appear to ascribe beliefs tothemselves in the same way they ascribe beliefs to others.Theory-theorists have used considerations such as these to supporttheir claim that our notion of belief is employed as the posit of afolk theory rather than input to a simulation model. At the same time,simulation theorists have employed the finding that 3-year-oldsstruggle with false belief ascriptions to suggest that children areactually ascribing their own knowledge to others, something that mightbe expected on the simulation account (Gordon, 1986).

However the debate between simulation theorists and theory theoriststurns out, or whether some sort of hybrid combination of the twoproves correct, we should once again bear in mind the point made atthe end of Section 2.1. Since even the most ardent simulation theoristwill allow that we have mental concepts, it is doubtful that thesimulation perspective actually poses a significant threat toeliminativism, and it seems possible for there to be a version ofeliminative materialism that could be reconstructed within thesimulation framework, even for beliefs and desires. For example, it isat least conceivable that the decision-making machinery that is takenoff-line to simulate the reasoning of another person could take asinput cognitive states other than beliefs and desires, but that wesomehow mistakenly conceptualizeas beliefs and desires. Onthis admittedly speculative scenario, our ability to predict andexplain the behavior of others would be simulation-based, and yet ourconception of how minds work would be so far off that an eliminativistverdict would be appropriate.

4.3 Defending the Virtues of Folk Psychology

Even among theory-theorists there is considerable disagreement aboutthe plausibility of eliminative materialism. A third criticism ofeliminative materialism is that it ignores the remarkable success offolk psychology, success that suggests it offers a more accurateaccount of mental processes than eliminativists appreciate. Apart fromthe strong intuitive evidence that seems to reveal beliefs anddesires, we also enjoy a great deal of success when we use commonsense psychology to predict the actions of other people. Many havenoted that this high degree of success provides us with something likean inference-to-the-best-explanation argument in favor of common sensepsychology and against eliminativism. The best explanation for thesuccess we enjoy in explaining and predicting human and animalbehavior is that folk psychology is roughly true, and that therereally are beliefs (Kitcher, 1984; Fodor, 1987; Lahav, 1992).

A common eliminativist response to this argument is to re-emphasize alesson from the philosophy of science; namely, that anytheory—especially one that is as near and dear to us as folkpsychology—can often appear successful even when it completelymisrepresents reality. History demonstrates that we often discountanomalies, ignore failures as insignificant, and generally attributemore success to a popular theory than it deserves. Like the proponentsof vitalism or phlogiston theory, we may be blind to the failings offolk psychology until an alternative account is in hand (P. M.Churchland, 1981; P. S. Churchland, 1986).

While many defenders of folk psychology insist that folk psychology isexplanatorily strong, some defenders have gone in the oppositedirection, arguing that it is committed to far less thaneliminativists have typically assumed (Horgan, 1993; Horgan andGraham, 1991; Jackson and Pettit, 1990). According to these writers,folk psychology, while indeed a theory, is a relatively“austere” (i.e., ontologically non-committal) theory, andrequires very little for vindication. Consequently, these authorsconclude that when properly described, folk psychology can be seen ascompatible with a very wide range of neuroscientific or cognitivedevelopments, making eliminative materialism possible butunlikely.

Of course, folk theories are like any theories in that they can bepartly right and partly wrong. Even writers who are sympathetic toeliminativism, such as John Bickle and Patricia Churchland (Bickle,1992; P.M. Churchland, 1994) point out that the history of science isfilled with with cases where the conceptual machinery of a flawedtheory is neither smoothly carried over to a new theory, nor fullyeliminated. Instead, it is substantially modified and reworked, withperhaps only some of its posits being dropped altogether. Thus,full-blown eliminative materialism and complete reductionism areend-points on a continuum with many possibilities falling somewhere inbetween. The term “revisionary materialism” is ofteninvoked to denote the view that the theoretical framework of folkpsychology will only be eliminated to a degree, and that variousdimensions of our commonsense conception of the mind will be at leastpartly vindicated.

4.4 Eliminativism Eliminated?

One final argument against eliminative materialism comes from therecent writings of a former supporter, Stephen Stich (1991, 1996).Stich’s argument is somewhat complex, but it can be presented inoutline form here. Earlier we saw that eliminative materialism iscommitted to the claim that the posits of folk psychology fail torefer to anything. But as Stich points out, just what this claimamounts to is far from clear. For example, we might think thatreference failure occurs as the result of some degree of mismatchbetween reality and the theory in which the posit is embedded. Butthere is no clear consensus on how much of a mismatch is necessarybefore we can say a given posit doesn’t exist. Stich offers avariety of reasons for thinking that there are fundamentaldifficulties that will plague any attempt to provide principledcriteria for distinguishing cases of reference success from cases ofreference failure. Among these are conflicting intuitions aboutimaginary cases involving reference. Consequently, the question ofwhether a theory change should be ontologically conservative orradical has no clear answer. Because eliminative materialism rests onthe assumption that folk psychology should be replaced in a way thatis ontologically radical, Stich’s account pulls the rug out fromunder the eliminativist.

Of course, Stich’s skeptical argument is a problem for the folkpsychology realist as well as the eliminativist, since it challengesour grounds for distinguishing between the two. Stich’s argumentimplies that if there are conflicting intuitions about something likethe distinction between referring and empty terms, and thusconflicting theories about the nature of reference, then we should notinvoke such a distinction in our theorizing. But if we embraced suchan outlook across the board, then we would need to give up using a lotof distinctions in our philosophy (e.g., cause vs. non-cause,explanatory vs. non-explanatory, person vs. non-person, ethical vs.unethical, etc.). Moreover, eliminative materialism does not requirethat we have a fully successful and agreed-upon theory of reference.It only requires the assumption that people have used terms that theyonce thought referred, but it turns out do not. Most of us are notprepared to deny that terms like ‘demon’, ‘elanvital’, ‘black bile’ and many others fail to referto anything real. This suggests that reference failure is real, evenif our intuition-based theorizing about reference is problematic.

5. Concluding Comments

Eliminative materialism entails unsettling consequences not just aboutour conception of the mind, but also about the nature of morality,action, social and legal conventions, and practically every otheraspect of human activity. As Jerry Fodor puts it, “ifcommonsense psychology were to collapse, that would be, beyondcomparison, the greatest intellectual catastrophe in the history ofour species …” (1987, p. xii). Thus, eliminativematerialism has stimulated various projects partly designed tovindicate ordinary mental states and establish their respectability ina sophisticated account of the mind. For example, as noted above,several projects pursued by philosophers in recent years haveattempted to provide a reductive account of the semantic content ofpropositional attitudes that is entirely naturalistic (i.e., anaccount that only appeals to straightforward causal-physical relationsand properties). Much of the impetus for these projects stems in partfrom the recognition that eliminative materialism cannot be as easilydismissed as earlier writers, like C. D. Broad, had originallyassumed.

Of course, some claim that these concerns are quite premature, giventhe promissory nature of eliminative materialism. After all, a pivotalcomponent of the eliminativist perspective is the idea that thecorrect theory of the mind, once discovered by cognitive scientists,will not reveal a system or structure that includes anything likecommon-sense mental states. Thus, for eliminative materialism to getoff the ground, we need to assume that scientific psychology is goingto turn out a certain way. But why suppose that before scientificpsychology gets there? What is the point of drawing such a drasticconclusion about the nature of mentality, when a central premiseneeded for that conclusion is a long ways from being known?

One response an eliminativist might offer here would be to considerthe broader theoretical roles eliminative materialism can play in ourquest for a successful theory of the mind. Various writers havestipulated necessary conditions that any theory of the mind must meet,and on some accounts these conditions include the explication ofvarious mental states as understood by common sense. According to thisview, if a theory doesn’t include states that correspond withbeliefs, or provide us with some sort of account of the nature ofconsciousness, then it needn’t be taken seriously as a completeaccount of “real” mental phenomena. One virtue ofeliminative materialism is that it liberates our theorizing from thisrestrictive perspective. Thus, the relationship between eliminativematerialism and science may be more reciprocal than many have assumed.While it is true that eliminative materialism depends upon thedevelopment of a radical scientific theory of the mind, radicaltheorizing about the mind may itself rest upon our taking seriouslythe possibility that our common sense perspective may be profoundlymistaken.

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Further Readings

• Bogdan, R., 1991,Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essayson Common Sense Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• Carruthers, P. and Smith, P.K., 1996,Theories of Theories ofMind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Christensen, S.M. and Turner, D.R., 1993,Folk Psychology andthe Philosophy of Mind, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Churchland, P. M., 1989,A NeurocomputationalPerspective, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Feyerabend, P., 1963, Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem,Review of Metaphysics 17: 49–66.
• Quine, W. V., 1966, On Mental Entities, inThe Ways ofParadox, Random House.
• Rorty, R. (1970). In Defense of Eliminative Materialism,Review of Metaphysics 24: 112–121.
• Smolensky, P., 1988, On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism,Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11: 1–74.
• Wellman, H., 1990,The Child’s Theory of Mind,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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• Lycan, W., 2005, “A Particularly Compelling Refutation of Eliminative Materialism” online preprint of a paper published in D. M. Johnson & C. E.Erneling (eds.),The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brainand Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 197–205.
• Eliminative Materialism, edited bibliography at PhilPapers

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to David Chalmers for many helpful comments andsuggestions.