Eliminativism
Connectionism and generality - a long shot
Eliminativism - introduction
"Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of pyschological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience." Paul M. Churchland, 'Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes', Lycan, 2nd edition, p.120.
What it's like to be wrong about one's reasons for doing something.
The claim that 'folk psychology' is a theory
Churchland is saying that folk psychology yields law-like statements like this:
For all x and for all p
if x fears that p then x desires that not p
or
For all x and for all p
if x hopes that p and x discovers that p then x is pleased that p
Folk psychology fails in the following areas (at least):
- The nature and dynamics of mental illness
- the faculty of creative imagination
- the ground of intelligence differences between individuals
- the nature and psychological significance of sleep, which ordinarily occupies one third of a person's life
- catching
- hitting targets when we throw
- the construction of 3D visual images from 2D retinal patterns
- perceptual illusions
- memory
- learning
Theories once sponsored by common sense
Two fates for theories like folk psychology:
- Reduction
- Replacement
Envoi
"Folk psychology suffers explanatory failures on an epic scale...it has been stagnant for at least 25 centuries, and ... its categories appear ... incommensurable with ... the categories of the background physical science whose long-term claim to explain human behaviour seems undeniable." Churchland, in Lycan, p.124 (2nd edition, 1st edition p. 212).
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Revised 03:03:03