Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Some questions on eliminative materialism

**Posted by Gator** 4/17/2018 9:03 am

Greg wrote:
Gator wrote:
Out of curiosity, what’s your take on the EM theory?
I don't believe that folk psychology is a proto-scientific theory or that any scientific theory could replace intentional language.

Got it, thanks for the response Greg.On another note, has anyone interacted with Thomas Metzingers work? I haven't much myself, but was wondering if he reached the ranks of Rosenberg or the Churchlands in terms of quality of work (leaving aside whether its correct or not). Basically, would he be worthy of a post from Dr. Feser?

**Posted by John West** 4/17/2018 5:47 pm

Gator wrote:
I guess maybe I'm looking for a more practical, immediate way to refute EM

Here.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 4/17/2018 7:26 pm

It wouldn't perhaps definitively refute Eliminative Materialism, but pointing out the very real limitations of contemporary neuroscience might also be a good idea. Hacker and Bennett have written several books that go into this. Also Kelly et al. have written The Irreducible Mind, which highlights phenomena that seem physiologically inexplicable today, and perhaps in principle. These phenomena include definitely paranormal phenomena, like NDEs and psychical phenomena, but what is fascinating about this work is the detail the authors devote to well-documented (usually by psychologists themselves) extraordinary, but not explicitly paranormal, phenomena, from psychophysical influence to automatism to aspects of genius and creativity. Alan Gauld's chapter on memory is interesting partly because he devotes a lot of time to explaining contemporary cognitive and neuro- science of memory. He shows that for all the real advances made, there is a lot of exaggeration about just how much we (from a scientific perspective) know about memory (and a lot of other aspects of the brain and mind). He also details the empirical and cognitive problems, perhaps insoluble, with trace theories of memory (which are assumed by all materialist psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers, as well as many non-materialists). The use of such works in reference to refuting Eliminative Materialism would be to show that even in scientific terms, neuroscience is far from giving an exhaustive picture of the mind and that there are empirical and conceptual problems inherent in the very attempt.

**Posted by Gator** 4/17/2018 9:58 pm

John and jermey, thanks for the reply’s!
John: Haven’t seen that article before, I’ll read through that now

Jeremy: interesting, I never thought about attacking the theory on its own grounds but that does make sense. In terms of EM, there really can’t be such a thing as “memory” correct? I mean without propositional content of thought what would you be remembering?

I had the thought today, given EM claims there is no intentionality, therefore no information, and that we cannot, in principle, plan to do anything, how would they account for communication or the “illusion” of communication. For example, if I text my friend to meet me at a restaurant at 7 tonight, he replies yes, and we both meet there at 7, what exactly is happening on the EM account? We can’t even say we sent signals or information to each other’s brains on EM, so would this just be a coincidence that we both showed up there at 7 like we “planned”? Obviously this isn’t a formal argument, but for me, certain practical day to day examples really highlight how absurd the theory is.