A principled sceptic's response

Abstract

Patricia Churchland's Neurophilosophy argues for Eliminative Materialism, but it is vulnerable to criticism under the following heads: (1) It fails to offer a satisfactory account of the subjective quality of experience, and misinterprets arguments by Nagel and Jackson on subjectivity. (2) Its treatment of intentionality results in a most implausible denial of the immediate ‘aboutness’ of thoughts, and the view of the mental as essentially what it is interpreted to be cannot be sustained. (3) The attempt to counter the argument that logical relations between the content of mental states cannot be reduced to causal relations obtaining at the level of neurobiology is unsuccessful. (4) The view that the prepositional attitudes of common‐sense psychology are seriously flawed is not made out, and the claims that ‘folk’ psychology constitutes a theory, and one which could and ought to be eliminated, are both self‐defeating.

Notes

Patricia Smith Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind‐Brain. Bradford Books. Cambridge, Mass./London: Press, 1986, xiv + 546 pp., $27.50.