Section 2.4There Ain’t No Such

Things as Ghosts

Mind as Myth

Eliminative Materialism

• According to eliminative materialism, there are no mental states.

• So reference to mental states should be eliminated from our theories of behavior.

• Eliminativists believe that mental states are to brains as demons are to disease; they are an illusion.

Thought Experiment: Rorty’s Demons

• Certain tribes believe that diseases are caused by demons.

• We don’t share that belief because we can explain diseases without appeal to demons.

• Similarly, Rorty claims, once we can explain behavior without appeal to mental states there will be no reason to believe they exist.

Folk Psychology

• Folk psychology is our common-sense theory of the mind that explains people’s behavior in terms of mental states like belief and desire.

• Eliminative materialists believe that psychologists will be able to explain people’s behavior without referring to mental states.

Thought Experiment:Searle’s Chevrolet Station Wagon

• Physicists can explain much of reality without using folk concepts such as “golf club,” “tennis racket,” or “Chevrolet station wagon.”

• But that doesn’t mean that golf clubs, tennis rackets, and Chevrolet station wagons don’t exist.

Subjective Knowledge

• If either reductive or eliminative materialism were true, it would be possible to provide a complete description of the world in purely physical terms, for there would be no nonphysical things or properties.

• But would a complete knowledge of all the physical facts about the world really give us a complete knowledge of the world?

Thought Experiment: Jackson’s Color-Challenged Scientist

• Suppose Mary knows all the physical information about the visual process, but has never seen a colored object.

• Now suppose that she sees a colored object for the first time.

• Will she learn anything new? If so, it seems that physical properties are not the only properties in the world.