The Curse of Eliminative Materialism

[Copernicus]

What is Eliminative Materialism?

Most of us infidels are materialists and physicalists. That is, we believe that mental states are a property of physical brain activity and that there is no separate spiritual plane of existence. IOW, immaterial spirits such as gods and ghosts don't really exist. Or, if they did exist, then they would have to be physical phenomena. In the philosophical literature, this practice of abandoning belief in the immaterial is often called  eliminative materialism (EM). The best known proponent of EM is Paul Churchland. He defines EM in a 1984 article:

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist.

Churchland has labeled this "common-sense understanding" folk psychology. Folk psychology is the "theory" that mental states are significant phenomena and real.

What is the "curse" of Eliminative Materialism?

Some argue that EM is self-refuting, since one must buy into the reality of beliefs in order to believe that it is true and folk psychology false. Churchland dismisses that argument, and I leave it to readers to look at his short (4 pages) 1984 essay cited above.

My position is that reductionism is useful as a method of explaining why and how things work, but EM goes too far when it seeks to eliminate all meaningful reference to useful concepts. Basically, it claims that mental phenomena, including one's sense of self, are illusions and therefore not real. References to beliefs, free will, emotions, and feelings are illusions that will ultimately be eliminated from our language and be replaced by scientific advances.

At the core of eliminative materialism is that idea that illusions are somehow unreal phenomena, but there is a problem with that point of view. Illusions are always perceptual phenomena, but all of our cognition is built up through bodily sensations--sensory information--that define how we interact with the world. For example, Churchland dwells on the fact that scientific advances have eliminated the idea that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, since we now know that it is the earth itself that moves and causes us to have the illusion that the sun is moving. The problem with his argument is that the sun really does move relative the the ground we stand on, if that ground is taken as the background and the sun as the foreground. It is only when we imagine ourselves from a perspective of a solar body, that the Earth seems to move while the sun remains in the background frame as a point of reference. So the shift in perspective is what eliminates the illusion, and that shift is just a different way of looking at things. There is no objective reality that defines movement, because it is always a relationship between a frame of reference and a body that changes position with respect to that fixed reference point.

I don't want to make this little essay too long, so I'll end just by pointing out that pretty much every experience we have of the world is an illusion from some perspective. It depends on how we choose to frame the perception. When we look at a genuine optical illusion like the  Necker cube, we see two overlapping squares whose corners are connected by lines. Depending on which square we choose to "see" as the foreground, we perceive an illusion of the square as leaning in one direction or another. Eliminativism would have us deny the perceptual phenomenon entirely, because we can take yet another perspective in which we are just looking at a bunch of straight lines. Reality is built up in human cognition on the basis of perceptions like that. Just about any physical object one can conceive of consists of a set of associations with how we interact with that object. Illusions are how we make sense of the world. Eliminative Materialism actually denies reality as we know it.

 

[steve_bank]

The Sherlock Holmes Method?

When you have eliminated all that it can't be whatever is left is likely the truth.

By the OP reasoning atheism is then just another illusion of perception, which I take to be a Buddhist principle. Atheism is no more real than theism.

Enlightenments itself is just another illusory fabrication of perceptions.

 

[rousseau]

I agree with you.

There was a thread made here a number of months ago called The Illusion of Self, where the OP pointed to a study that indicated that people thought there was a literal, physical self somewhere in their head, when obviously there is no actual physical manifestation. This was supposed to prove that the 'self' was an illusion.

My argument in that thread was along the lines of what you're alluding to, there was a very real perception of self. Self as physical manifestation doesn't exist, but self as perception did. So if you want to understand belief in self you need to look at the perception. In theory you can reduce it (the perception) to being nothing more than brain activity, but that doesn't make the phenomena any less consistent among subjects.

Which is why I've argued that the atomic / reductionist view doesn't (and can't) really paint the full picture of what it means to be a living thing. Sure we're material and composed of atoms, but we still have objective qualities that emerge via evolution.

 

[Copernicus]

Thanks, rousseau. One of the main criticisms of eliminativism was exactly the point you made--that it denied the reality of things that we all know to be true.

Greek philosophers came up with a number of paradoxes that seemed to defy logic and led them to ponder the reality of common sense phenomena. For example, Heraclitus came up with the observation: "The only constant in life is change." We live in a constantly changing world, and even we ourselves undergo change. This gives rise to troubling contradictions or paradoxes--for example, the question of whether an individual can step in the same river twice. If the river was always undergoing change, then how could we logically call it the same river?

Aristotle found this conundrum troubling, but he found a way around it. Consider his  Three Laws of Thought: The  Law of Identity (p=p). the  Law of Noncontradiction (¬(p ∧ ¬p)), and the  Law of the Excluded Middle (p ∨ ¬p). Those three laws basically underlie all of logic and mathematics, so they would seem to dictate that the "same river" is an illusion that must be discarded, i.e. eliminated. The way to restore reality to that "same river" concept is to consider their properties and deny (or eliminate) those that separate them. IOW, ignore the ways in which the two instances of "river" are different. That removes the contradiction and makes them obey the Law of Identity--their sameness. It also allows us to group objects into categories, which was a big deal for Aristotle.

If our sense of self is an illusion, does it go away? Or do we simply follow Aristotle's advice and eliminate the properties that sustain the illusion? We take on a perspective that allows us to maintain that we really are the same person over time, even though we undergo constant change over time. We can still maintain that the sense of self is an illusion, if we choose not to ignore the changes, but that is assuming a different perspective on what "self" means.

 

[steve_bank]

It is only a conundrum if you make it one by sophistry.

The Colorado river s always the Colorado river. If I step in it today or tomorrow it is the same Colorado river. The ste of the river nay be different but it is the same river.

It is metaphor that says things do not stay the same.

The only constant is change is not a conundrum. Invoking a little calculus rate of change of change is acceleration.


Again metaphor saying the only thing you can count on is that things will change.


At the quantum level your computer is not the same every time you power up. The quantum states in the circuits are never exactly the same.

It is like theists literally interpreting scripture. Secular literalism?

In the OP quote the word illusions is loaded, it invokes magic and slight of hand. Pop philosophy.

Our brains build a working model or paradigm of reality that allows us to function. Whether it matches to a physics description is in general irrelevant. In herms of daily practicality a theist belief in god works fine for believers.

 

[Jarhyn]

Steve, you forget that some things do not change. They are "things" most certainly though. There is such a thing, such a property as "image". In fact, we now have time crystals in addition to spatial crystals. You can hold one in your hand. Images are not bound to the same rules of change as the matter that imagines them.

 

[Copernicus]

Steve, you forget that some things do not change. They are "things" most certainly though. There is such a thing, such a property as "image". In fact, we now have time crystals in addition to spatial crystals. You can hold one in your hand. Images are not bound to the same rules of change as the matter that imagines them.

Steve doesn't understand the nature of the paradox that Heraclitus noticed--that sameness could be construed as an illusion in a constantly changing reality. Aristotle solved that problem with his third law of logic--the law of the excluded middle. That is what allowed him to say precisely how it was that the changing river one stepped into was the "same" river. You simply ignore the changes and retain what makes them the same. Then you can reason logically about that river as a real and persistent object. In the process of working through this conundrum, Aristotle managed to give future generations the ability to explain logic and do mathematics, because you need to be able to balance equations.

BTW, it's simply not true that some things do not change. Everything is always in a constant state of flux, but they may appear unchanging relative to our interaction with them. Even a rock has a lifespan, and there is a sense that it is also an illusion. That is, rocks are given meaning in terms of how we interact with them. Whether that rock is perceived as a huge boulder or a tiny pebble depends on the size of our bodies and the effect that the rock can have on them. Eventually, forces of physical erosion will break down that rock and spread its atoms to other objects, just as the heavy elements in our bodies were once parts of exploded stars.

 

[steve_bank]

Again from what I took away from Buddhism back in the 70s is that in a broad sense all thought forms and perceptions are isslusions. Like a movie set façade.

Words are imprecise and always will be.

If I step in the Colorado river twice and I say I stepped in the same river twice is not the same as saying I stepped in the sane river twice and the stae of the river was not the same.

From modern astronomy I can say I can never never be in the same place twice. That is imprecise. With more precision I can say reltive to the Erath's surfca I can go to the same pace twice, however the Erath is moving through the unversed.

Saying you can't step in the same river twice is just a saying, IMO.

I don't think the OP is saying anything new.

Atheism and theism are equally illusory.

That logic can fail is also not new. A logically valid syllogism can be utterly meaningless.

What we do not know is if Aristotle and friends were having a good laugh over the question of a river.

 

[steve_bank]

Steve, you forget that some things do not change. They are "things" most certainly though. There is such a thing, such a property as "image". In fact, we now have time crystals in addition to spatial crystals. You can hold one in your hand. Images are not bound to the same rules of change as the matter that imagines them.

The cliche makes a point , it is not a statement of an absolute fact or condition. As most sayings are.

Human dynamics have not changed much over thousands of years. Greed and corruption and power. However culture has changed. Western liberal democracy is only a few hundred years old. The idea of universal civil rights protected by govt in history is new.

As the Chinese curse goes, may you live in interesting times.

 

[Jarhyn]

Steve, you forget that some things do not change. They are "things" most certainly though. There is such a thing, such a property as "image". In fact, we now have time crystals in addition to spatial crystals. You can hold one in your hand. Images are not bound to the same rules of change as the matter that imagines them.

The cliche makes a point , it is not a statement of an absolute fact or condition. As most sayings are.

Human dynamics have not changed much over thousands of years. Greed and corruption and power. However culture has changed. Western liberal democracy is only a few hundred years old. The idea of universal civil rights protected by govt in history is new.

As the Chinese curse goes, may you live in interesting times.

But the conversation is precisely about the interplay between the two types of things! There is the image AND the substrate, and free will is a concept of the images.

You cannot discount one when we are discussing the difference between determinism and indeterminism.

At it's very basic levels, it appears that physics does incorporate probabilistic event transitions: an event is possible at any number of points in time and it appears truly random as to which point it actually happens at, if it ever does. When it happens, sometimes it may happen in such a way as the result is "goes in a random direction", and the shape of that probability wave of random gets constrained by what it has not already hit. We even know that for a single event, it still travels as a probability wave until it gets constrained.

So, there's that.

Of course this throws no wrenches at "secret determinism", which would just wave the random away with "if we look at the series of virtual events, it still just means the things that could transition against that virtuality always would".

But then that would reveal in and of itself the reality that the events of the universe are just-so against a specific general framework that supports different configurations on the platform; were you to suddenly alter which particle was gatekept by this randomness, not in extent but in direction, would function indistinguishably as "the same" from a lay observer in any moment, even if the dice rolls were different. At best you may notice different stars winking in the night sky on a given time of night in a given place.

But this also means that some events would resolve differently.

It is in that recognition that events can be generalized, and those general patterns described on higher levels where free will starts to resolve.

 

[Copernicus]

Again from what I took away from Buddhism back in the 70s is that in a broad sense all thought forms and perceptions are isslusions. Like a movie set façade.

Words are imprecise and always will be.

If I step in the Colorado river twice and I say I stepped in the same river twice is not the same as saying I stepped in the sane river twice and the stae of the river was not the same.

From modern astronomy I can say I can never never be in the same place twice. That is imprecise. With more precision I can say reltive to the Erath's surfca I can go to the same pace twice, however the Erath is moving through the unversed.

Saying you can't step in the same river twice is just a saying, IMO.

I don't think the OP is saying anything new.

Atheism and theism are equally illusory.

That logic can fail is also not new. A logically valid syllogism can be utterly meaningless.

What we do not know is if Aristotle and friends were having a good laugh over the question of a river.

Steve, I think that you are getting down into the weeds too much and missing the point. This thread is about eliminativism--that process of declaring a concept unreal because it is an "illusion". The paradox that Heraclitus saw had to do with his initial premise that quite literally every object we encounter is in a state of flux. I don't think that introducing your understanding of Buddhism into the conversation at this point really contributes much to what Heraclitus pointed out. If you don't accept his maxim that the only constant is change, then ok. We can discuss that. The point is that Heraclitus was a giant in Aristotle's time, and Aristotle set out to try to figure out how to solve the paradox. He arrived at a solution that happened to gift the human race with the ability to do formal logic and mathematics. Aristotle simply explained how it was possible to say that a person stepped in the "same river" at different times, despite the reality of constant change, and still think logically about a single river rather than two different ones. That might seem trivial to you, but it turned out to have a huge impact on later generations. Whether or not one considers the "same river" an illusion, it still makes rational sense to talk about it.

 

[lpetrich]

Does a river remain the same as different water flows through it? That philosophical conundrum also goes back to antiquity, in the form of the  Ship of Theseus paradox.

From Plutarch's Life of Theseus, a legendary Athenian hero:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

Does it stay the same ship as its wood gets replaced?

Most of us would say that a river stays the same river in a structural sense, even if not in a constituent sense. I remember Ed from the old IIDB who seemed to think that there is no such thing as structural continuity. I named that metaphysic "stuffism".

 

[Copernicus]

Does a river remain the same as different water flows through it? That philosophical conundrum also goes back to antiquity, in the form of the  Ship of Theseus paradox.

From Plutarch's Life of Theseus, a legendary Athenian hero:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

Does it stay the same ship as its wood gets replaced?

Most of us would say that a river stays the same river in a structural sense, even if not in a constituent sense. I remember Ed from the old IIDB who seemed to think that there is no such thing as structural continuity. I named that metaphysic "stuffism".

My position is that everything we perceive is an interpretation of sense data that ultimately qualifies as an "illusion". Illusions are real. They always involve a perceptual event, i.e. a relationship between a perceiver and an object of perception. We define reality in terms of how our bodies interact with it.

 

[lpetrich]

I remember asking Ed about waves, another case of structural continuity. He said that their energy remains the same. That was from the old IIBB / FRDB thread "... uncaused, eternal and infinite. (both universe and thread)..."

 

[steve_bank]

Again from what I took away from Buddhism back in the 70s is that in a broad sense all thought forms and perceptions are isslusions. Like a movie set façade.

Words are imprecise and always will be.

If I step in the Colorado river twice and I say I stepped in the same river twice is not the same as saying I stepped in the sane river twice and the stae of the river was not the same.

From modern astronomy I can say I can never never be in the same place twice. That is imprecise. With more precision I can say reltive to the Erath's surfca I can go to the same pace twice, however the Erath is moving through the unversed.

Saying you can't step in the same river twice is just a saying, IMO.

I don't think the OP is saying anything new.

Atheism and theism are equally illusory.

That logic can fail is also not new. A logically valid syllogism can be utterly meaningless.

What we do not know is if Aristotle and friends were having a good laugh over the question of a river.

Steve, I think that you are getting down into the weeds too much and missing the point. This thread is about eliminativism--that process of declaring a concept unreal because it is an "illusion". The paradox that Heraclitus saw had to do with his initial premise that quite literally every object we encounter is in a state of flux. I don't think that introducing your understanding of Buddhism into the conversation at this point really contributes much to what Heraclitus pointed out. If you don't accept his maxim that the only constant is change, then ok. We can discuss that. The point is that Heraclitus was a giant in Aristotle's time, and Aristotle set out to try to figure out how to solve the paradox. He arrived at a solution that happened to gift the human race with the ability to do formal logic and mathematics. Aristotle simply explained how it was possible to say that a person stepped in the "same river" at different times, despite the reality of constant change, and still think logically about a single river rather than two different ones. That might seem trivial to you, but it turned out to have a huge impact on later generations. Whether or not one considers the "same river" an illusion, it still makes rational sense to talk about it.

As I think I said, from a certain perspective it is all 'illusion', a Buddhist concept. All thought forms are illusions, the reality or unreality is an arbitrary distinction . The old eaStern thinking is prescientific. Thoughts being the relt of chemical processes are real.

Conundrums are the result of trying to define absolutes form self referential metaphysical arguments. I do agree that in the west we tend to try and fit all things into a scientific Aristotelian logical framework. If it is not logical it has no value. I usually get pushback on the forum when I argie religion and its myths do have some cultural value.

My position is that reductionism is useful as a method of explaining why and how things work, but EM goes too far when it seeks to eliminate all meaningful reference to useful concepts. Basically, it claims that mental phenomena, including one's sense of self, are illusions and therefore not real. References to beliefs, free will, emotions, and feelings are illusions that will ultimately be eliminated from our language and be replaced by scientific advances.

If I want to be objective I would say first define real and unreal, then anything that matches one of the definitions is then real or unreal.

From Popper how something becomes a 'truth' or real as compared to unreal is not a logical process even within science. It is a complex social process.

From a science view real is that which we can observe and quantify. Our metaphysical reality is social consensus on what is real and what is not.

To the majority of 50 years ago gay rights were not real. Now they are.

I read a book in the 70s How Real Is Real written by a Korean War psychological warfare officer. He described the peace talks and how different sides saw an interpreted things as real or not.

 

[Copernicus]

I would make a distinction between things that are real and unreal. A delusion or a hallucination is unreal in that it is an experience generated solely by the mind without any sensory input to corroborate it. An illusion is an experience grounded in bona fide signals received from the peripheral nervous system. So, if you drink a cold beverage, you experience the sensations of coolness, taste, touch, and smell that evoke other images associated with drinking such a liquid. The interpretation of those sensations produces the "illusion" in the same sense that viewing a rainbow or a Necker cube produces an illusion. It is just that it is a different type of illusion--that of a liquid, which we can interact with in the act of swallowing or spitting out or etc. Different cultures may parse reality in slightly different ways, but they are all grounded in the same basic perceptual machinery. Reality is defined by the type of beings that perceive and interact with it.

 

[bilby]

Material objects are real. But they are not the only things that are real - forces are also real, and so are patterns of change.

A river or an ocean wave is a pattern of change that acts on a constantly different set of material objects. The impermanence of the set of material objects doesn't make the pattern any less real.

The ship of Theseus is the same ship throughout its voyages.

I am the same person I was fifty years ago, though the proportion of my atoms today that were also a part of me then, is very low indeed.

Continuity of pattern is a perfectly good kind of identity.

The failure to recognise that fact is just an error; Just as the dualism idea is an error. Humans evolved in a macroscopic world with some very unusual properties - a dense atmosphere, high gravitational acceleration, the absence of quantum tunnelling at visible scales. Our ability to comprehend reality is crippled by our erroneous perception of reality, and our absurdly over-active assignment of agency to everything.

It feels like our minds are somehow separate from our physical selves; But that's an error. It feels like the demonstration that dualism is erroneous, implies that only material objects are real. But that too is an error - patterns are real, beyond the reality of the physical objects which form them.