Maverick Philosopher

When Is an Identification an Elimination, and When Not? Idealism and Eliminativism not in the Same Logical Boat

A reader, recently deployed to Afghanistan, finds time to raise an objection that I will put in my own words to make it as forceful as possible:

You endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism, but then you criticized him for thinking that Moorean appeals to common sense are also effective against  standard idealist claims such as Berkeley's thesis that the objects of ordinary outer perception are clusters of ideas.  You maintained that there is a crucial difference between the characteristic claims of eliminativists (e.g., that there are no beliefs, desires, intentions, pleasures, pains, etc.) and the characteristic claims of idealists (e.g., Berkeley's thesis just mentioned, McTaggart's thesis of the unreality of time, Bradley's of the unreality of relations.)  The difference is that between denying the existence of some plain datum, and giving an account of a plain datum, an account which presupposes, and so does not deny, the datum in question.  In effect, you insisted on a distinction between identifying Xs as Ys, and denying the existence of Xs.  Thus, you think that there is an important difference between identifying  pains with brain states, and denying that there are pains; and identifying stones and physical objects generally with collections of ideas in the mind of God and denying that there are physical objects.  But in other posts you have claimed that there are identifications which collapse into eliminations.  I seem to recall your saying that to identify God with an unconscious anthropomorphic projection, in the manner of Ludwig Feuerbach, amounts to a denial of the existence of God, as opposed to a specification of what God is.  Similarly, 'Santa Claus is a fictional character' does not tell us  what Santa Claus is; it denies his very existence.

Now why couldn't Lycan argue that this is exactly what is going on in the idealist case?  Why couldn't he say that to identify stones and such with clusters of ideas in the mind of God is to deny the existence of stones?  Just as God by his very nature (whether or not this nature is exemplifed) could not be an anthropomorphic projection, so too, stones by their very nature as physical objects could not be clusters of ideas, not even clusters of divine ideas.

It seems you owe us an account of why the reduction of physical objects to clusters of ideas is not an identification that collapses into an elimination.  If you cannot explain why it does not so collapse, then Lycan and Co. will be justifed in deploying their Moorean strategy against both EM-ists and idealists.  They could argue, first, that idealism is eliminationism about common sense data, and then appeal to common sense to reject the elimination.

Of Berkeley's Stones and the Eliminativist's Beliefs

I lately endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism (EM). But I disagreed with Lycan on one point.  Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the characteristic claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind: both deny what common sense must affirm.  I believe he is  wrong about this, and I will now try to show why.  It seems that there are three main positions on this issue.  To have some handy labels, I will call them R, L, and V.

R.  Just as Berkeley cannot be refuted by kicking a stone, the eliminativist cannot be refuted in any simple Moorean manner.  Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that cannot be sunk by Moorean torpedoes.

L. British and other idealists can be refuted in Moorean ways, and so can eliminativists in the philosophy of mind.  Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that is exposed to Moorean attack.

V. The 'same logical boat' assumption made by R and V must be rejected. There is a crucial difference between what eliminativists are doing  and what idealists are doing.  The idealist does not deny the existence of physical objects, or time, or relations.  Berkeley, for example, does not deny the existence of stones and other meso-particulars.  He offers a theory of their ontological constitution.  His question is not whether they are, but what they are.  His answer, roughly, is that stones and trees and the like are bundles or collections of ideas.  Thus he gives an immaterialist account of ordinary particulars.  They exist all right, but their status is mind-dependent, the ultimate mind in question being God's. 

The eliminativist, however, flatly denies the existence of mental items such as pains, desires, and beliefs.  It should be obvious, then, that there is an important difference between what idealists do and what eliminativists do.  Idealist accounts are not existence-denying, but they do have an ontologically demoting upshot.  If physical object are mind-dependent in the Berkeleyan manner, then they cannot exist in themselves, but only in relation to another, God, who exists in himself.  Idealism thus reduces the being-status of  physical objects from what it would be on a realist approach.  The eliminativist, by contrast,  is not engaged in ontological demotion, but in flat-out denial.  He does not say of beliefs that they are mind-dependent, or mere appearances, or less than ultimately real; what he says is that they don't exist at all.  If the eliminativist said that mental items exist as appearances he would be giving up the game. A pain, e.g., is such that to be = to appear.  If you admit the appearance of a mental event such as a pain, you admit its reality.

Whatever the objections that can be lodged against Berkeleyan idealism, it cannot be refuted by kicking a stone.  But eliminative materialism can be refuted by simply noting that one desires a beer.  Moorean arguments are worthless when deployed against the positions of the great idealists, and this for the reason that the prosaic Moore simply did not understand what they were arguing.  But when someone denies a plain datum, then he does run up against common sense in an objectionable way.

Eliminative Materialism and Belief: Another Wrinkle

I've made it clear that I think eliminative materialism (EM) is a "lunatic philosophy of mind" to borrow a phrase from A. W. Collins.  Peter Lupu basically agrees though he may not care to put the point in such an intemperate way.  What follows is an excerpt from a recent e-mail of his.  Since I want to be fair to EM-ists, I want to suggest a way they may be able to counter the following objection Peter raises.

Lycan's Moorean Argument Against Eliminative Materialism

The following is from  William G. Lycan, A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING  REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM:

[. . .] I contend that the Eliminativist is refuted by Moore's technique, in just the same way as was the temporal idealist. The argument will now be quite straightforward:  Numerous common-sense mental ascriptions, such as that Granny wants a beer and believes there is one under the sofa, are individually more plausible, and always will be more plausible, than are the purely philosophical premises of any argument designed to convince us to the contrary.  As Moore saw, purely philosophical assumptions have very weak epistemic credentials and cannot by themselves outweigh simple common-sense facts. 

The Eliminativist may protest that her/his case is not purely philosophical, but rests on scientific considerations of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, connectionist modelling, and the like.  Indeed, that flaunted feature is what often makes Eliminativism sound so hip.  But this is to misunderstand the Moorean argument a third time.  Moore would not deny that arguments for Eliminativism contain premises that are endorsed, perhaps simply established, by science.  The point is that each argument also contains at least one purely philosophical premise.  Make no mistake: In order to reach the staggering conclusion that there has never been a belief, a desire, or any other propositional attitude, any argument for Eliminativism will have to rest on one or more a priori principles connecting scientific truths to negative ontology.  And it is terminally unlikely that any such principle could be more credible for me than that Granny wants beer.  Come to think of it, I want beer.

 8.  Notice that my Moorean argument is immune to the customary Churchland-Churchland counterblow, a comparison to alchemy, witchcraft, and other folk but false theories.  However beloved such theories were to their proponents, they do not qualify as Moorean common sense.  To count as Moorean-commonsensical, a belief must be the sort of belief that every normal human being holds every day of her/his life, such as "Here is one hand and here is another" or "I had breakfast before I had lunch" or "The sun is shining." Thus, to address the Conference topic directly: Whatever science can show about the mind, it cannot show that there is none.

Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind.  I believe he is very wrong about that, but that's a different story.  The above Moorean argument, however,  does in my opinion decisively refute eliminativism in the philosophy of mind.  For those of you who protest that no refutation can be so quick and easy, I will ask, Why not?  The more preposterous the thesis, the quicker and easier the refutation!  Lunacy can and ought to be dispatched laconically.  Indeed, the simplicity of Lycan's argument makes it all the stronger.  It is a case of simplex sigillum veri.  He who maintains what is plainly false ought to be prepared for an unceremoniously facile reply.  And please don't call such a reply  'puerile' or 'sophomoric' since the very fact that any boy or sophomore can make it is precisely what makes the objection so powerful. 

No Beliefs? Then No Truths Either!

Peter Lupu e-mails:

 A comment to mull over regarding your premise (A) in your recent post about Eliminative Materialism.

A. If a proposition is true, then it is possibly such that it is believed by someone.

Premise (A) says that in order for a proposition to be true, it is a necessary condition that it can be the content of someone's belief. But there may be true propositions that cannot be for one reason or another the content of our beliefs. For instance, perhaps there are true mathematical propositions that are so complicated or so long or require such a complicated proof that it would be simply impossible for the human mind to believe. Perhaps some other mind, for instance God's mind, can comprehend them, know them, and hence believe them: but no mortal mind can do so. Thus, it seems that premise (A) requires the existence of a deity in order to make it work.

Good point.  (A) is subject to scope ambiguity  as between:

A*. If a proposition p is true, then there exists a subject S such that, possibly, S believes that p.

A**. If a proposition p is true, then, possibly there exists a subject S and S believes that p.

Given Peter's point above, (A*) would seem to require for its truth that there be a divine mind.  But all I need for my argument against eliminative materialism is (A**), which does not require for its truth that there exist any mind, let alone a divine mind.  What (A**) says is that a necessary condition of a proposition's being true as that it be possible that there exist a believer of it.

My point was that the concept of truth is the concept of something that cannot be coherently conceived except in relation to the epistemic concepts of belief and knowledge.  Now there needn't be any beliefs for there to be true (or false) propositions.  But if beliefs are not possible, then neither are true propositions.  Now eliminative materialism implies not only that there are no beliefs, but that there cannot be any.  But then there cannot be any true propositions either.

Recall the argument against beliefs.  It went like this:  (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs.  Since each of the premises is a necessary truth if it is a truth, the conclusion, which validly follows, is a necessary truth if it is a truth.

Thus the EM-er does not merely claim that, as a matter of fact, there are no beliefs; his claim is that there cannot be any.  Of course, that renders his position even more absurd.  But that's not my problem!

CORRECTION (12/18):  Peter rightly points out that (A**) needs tweaking.  Consider its contrapositive which is logically equivalent:  If it is not possible that there exist  a subject S such that S believes that p, then it is not the case that p is true.  Unfortunately, the consequent of the contrapositive conditional could be taken to mean that p is not true, and thus (assuming Bivalence) false, when the idea is rather that p lacks a truth-value.  So (A**) ought to be replaced by

A***.  If a proposition p has a truth-value, then, possibly there exists a subject S such that S believes (disbelieves, entertains, etc.) that p.

Is Folk Psychology a Theory? The Case of Desire

When one is in the grip of a desire one typically knows it. He who wants a cold beer on a hot day knows what he wants and is likely to deem unhinged anyone with the temerity to deny that there are desires. Anywhere on the scale from velleity to craving, but especially at the craving end, there is a qualitative character to desire that makes it phenomenologically undeniable. If the beer example doesn't move you, think of lust. Lust is an intentional state: one cannot lust unless one lusts after someone or something. But although lust flees itself, voids itself in a rush towards its object — as Sartre might have said — there is nonetheless something 'it is like' (T. Nagel) to be in the state of lust. In this respect, desire is more like the non-intentional state of pain than it is like the intentional state of belief. There is most decidedly something it is like for me to desire X; but what is is like for me to believe that you desire X? Is it like anything? Not so clear.

Eliminative Materialism: Can You Believe It?

In an earlier post, I provided a rough characterization of eliminative materialism (EM). Here is a more technical exposition for the stout of heart. If EM is true, then there are no beliefs. But what about the belief that EM is true, a belief that one would expect eliminative materialists to hold? If we exfoliate this question will we find an objection to EM? Let's see.

1. 'Every generalization is false' is self-referential: because it itself is a generalization, it refers to itself or comes under its own scope. Hence it refutes itself. If true, then false; if false, then false; so, necessarily false. But 'There are no beliefs' is not self-referential. Neither this sentence, nor the proposition it expresses is a belief.  So we must abandon hope of a quick knock-out along self-referential lines.

Lupu on Rosenberg on Scientism: The Mother of All Self-Defeating Notions

Another guest post by Peter Lupu who apparently is as exercised as I am about the pseudo-philosophy that Rosenberg's been peddling.  Minor editing and comments in blue by BV.

Prompted by your recent post on Rosenberg, I checked again what he says about scientism. Here is the actual statement (emphasis added): 

Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality. You don’t have to be a scientist to be scientistic. In fact, most scientists aren’t.

A Conundrum for Eliminativist Naturalists

A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Minor edits by BV.  His comments in blue at the end. 

Suppose I am a naturalist. Then I take science seriously just as Alex Rosenberg counsels.I also provisionally trust Rosenberg's argument, thereby, I find myself inclined  to believe the conclusions of Rosenberg’s argument. One of these conclusions is

1) There are no beliefs.

Eliminativism: A 'Mental' (Lunatic) Philosophy of Mind?

Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 19:

This [eliminative materialism] looms as a lunatic philosophy of mind, as behaviorism does not, because it does not merely attack the thought that beliefs and desires are inner realities . . . but it also attacks the idea that people have beliefs and desires, which seems to be an ineliminable truth and a truth which is not attacked by analytical behaviorism. The only excuse for this outrageous thesis is that it stems from a recognition that mental phenomena are not going to be identified successfully by any theory. Having accepted the mistaken preliminary notion that beliefs and the like would have to be inner realities of some kind, the eliminativist materialist heroically, if ill-advisedly, concludes that there are no beliefs at all, that no one actually believes anything.

From Naturalism to Nihilism by Way of Scientism: A Note on Rosenberg's Disenchantment

The rank absurdities of Alex Rosenberg's The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality are being subjected to withering criticism at Ed Feser's weblog here, here and here. But a correspondent wants me to throw in my two cents, so here's a brief comment.

In the ComBox to the article linked to above, Rosenberg, responding to critics, says this among other things:

If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant [sic] pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs.

This is a valid argument.  To spell it out a bit more clearly: (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs. 

But anyone with his head screwed on properly should be able to see that this argument does not establish (4) but is instead a reductio ad absurdum of premise (1) according to which beliefs are nothing if not brain states.  For if anything is obvious, it is that there are beliefs.  This is a pre-theoretical datum, a given.  What they are is up for grabs, but that they are is a starting-point that cannot be denied except by lunatics and those in the grip of  an ideology.  Since the argument is valid in point of logical form, and the conclusion is manifestly, breath-takingly,  false, what the argument shows is that beliefs cannot be brain states.

Now why can't a smart guy like Rosenberg see this?  Because he is in the grip of an ideology. It is called scientism, which is not to be confused with science. (Rosenberg talks nonsense at the beginning of his piece where he implies that one does not take science seriously unless one embraces scientism.)  Rosenberg thinks that natural-scientific knowledge is the only knowledge worthy of the name and, to cop a line from Wilfrid Sellars, that "science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." (Science, Perception and Reality, p. 173).  That is equivalent to the view that reality is exhausted by what natural science (physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology) says exists.  This is why Rosenberg thinks that, if beliefs are anything, then they are brain states.  Given scientism, plus the assumption (questioned by A. W. Collins in The Nature of Mental Things, U of ND Press, 1987) that beliefs need to be identified with something either literally or figuratively 'inner,' what else could they be?  Certainly not states of a Cartesian res cogitans.

The trouble with scientism, of course, is that it cannot be scientifically supported. 'All genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge' is not a proposition of any natural science.  It is a bit of philosophy, with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto.  One of the debilities is that it is self-vitiating.  For if all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge, then that very proposition, since it is not an item of scientific knowledge,  cannot count as a piece of genuine knowledge.  Nor can it ever come to be known.

That won't stop people like Rosenberg from believing it as they are entitled to do.  But then scientism it is just one more philosophical belief alongside others, including others that imply its negation. 

I think it is clear what a reasonable person must say.  The (1)-(4) argument above does not establish (4), it reduces to absurdity (1).  The only support for (1) is scientism which we have no good reason to accept.  It is nothing more than a bit of ideology.

Eliminative Materialist T-Shirt

On the front:  There are no beliefs!

On the back:  You'd better believe it!

Paul Churchland on Eliminative Materialism

The most obvious objection to eliminative materialism (EM) is that it denies obvious data, the very data without which there would be no philosophy of mind in the first place. Introspection directly reveals the existence of pains, beliefs, desires, anxieties, pleasures, and the like. Suppose I have a headache. The pain, qua felt, cannot be doubted or denied. Its esse is its percipi. To identify the pain with a brain state makes a modicum of sense; but it makes no sense at all to deny the existence of the very datum that got us discussing this topic in the first place. But Paul M. Churchland (Matter and Consciousness, rev. ed. MIT Press, 1988, pp. 47-48) has a response to this sort of objection:

Eliminative Materialism Defined

A reader inquired about eliminative materialism. In this post I will explain what eliminative materialism is. In later posts, I will indicate why I consider it to be not only false, but irremediably incoherent.

1. An eliminativist about X is simply one who denies the existence of X. Atheists are eliminativists about God; hard determinists are eliminativists about free will; Hume (on one interpretation) and occasionalists (al-Ghazzali, Malebranche) are eliminativists about (productive event) causation; nominalists are eliminativists about universals, and so on. Eliminative materialism(physicalism) is a doctrine in the philosophy of mind according to which the items we phenomenologically classify as mental simply do not exist. It is the most radical or extreme position in the philosophy of mind.