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.

 

I find it strange that while behaviorism in the philosophy of mind is pretty much dead, eliminative materialism is not. For while the former borders on the merely preposterous, the latter is positively loony. What the (analytical) behaviorist does it to identify mental states with behavior (linguistic or non-linguistic) and/or with dispositions to behave. Thus my belief that it is about to rain is nothing other than my rummaging for an umbrella in the closet, and the like. This theory is so implausible that an old joke suffices to refute it: After having sex, one behaviorist says to the other, "It was good for you, how was it for me?" (I confess to being quick and Searle-y, but this is a weblog!)

The (analytical) behaviorist, however, does not deny that they are beliefs and desires, thereby retaining a grip on his sanity. His project is not eliminativist but identitarian. There are beliefs and desires, he thinks; it is just that what they are are bits of behavior and/or behavioral dispositions. But there is a wrinkle here that Collins ignores, namely, the position of eliminative behaviorism. This is the view that there are no beliefs, desires, and the like. What there is is behavior, the description of which, in the fullness of time, will not be couched in mentalistic terminology, but perhaps in the austere jargon of kinematics, or perhaps in something more robust, but shy of the irreducibly mental.

Both the eliminative materialist and the eliminative behaviorist deny the existence of beliefs and desires, sweeping them into the dustbin wherein reside phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether; the difference, however, is that the 'successor theory,' the theory that is to replace folk psychology is different in the two cases. For the eliminative behaviorist, it doesn't matter what is going on inside the skull. For the eliminative materialist, however, that is where the action is.