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Article 4016 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: dlyndes@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov (David Lyndes)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: making sense of eliminative materialism
Message-ID: <1992Feb25.181424.14392@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>
Date: 25 Feb 92 18:14:24 GMT
References: <1992Feb21.200219.3773@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1992Feb23.001700.19963@psych.toronto.edu>
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[Russ Poldrack]

|> The one
|> stumbling block I have to understanding and making a case for it has
|> to do with Fodor's 1975 argument against reduction.  He claims that
|> reduction to neuroscience will be impossible because the resulting
|> science of mind would fail to capture interesting generalizations
|> (i.e. functional states like propositional attitudes).  How do the
|> Churchlands answer this criticism?  

[Christopher Green]

|> Suggestion #2. Argue that the Churchlands don't need to reply to this. 
|> After all, they're not really reductionists. They don't want to explain
|> mental predicates in terms of neurology (the sort of reduction Fodor
|> was attaking). They want to toss out mental predicates entirely in favor
|> of neurological -- or "informational" -- ones. The problems is, of
|> course, that even if they don't want an account of mental predicates,
|> most of the rest of us do. Their analogies to phlogiston and alchmey
|> are seriously flawed.

I strikes me that the case for accounting for our "intuitions" derived from
"folk psychology" is even stronger than that.  Folk psychology is quite
successful in its own realm.  We are pretty good at figuring out what
people BELIEVE, HOPE, WISH, etc, and we make fairly reliable predictions
about how those people will behave based on those ascriptions.  Any
adequate psychology - whether eliminative, reductionist, dualistic or
whatnot - should be able to explain why folk psychology is as successful
as it is, and why its success is limited in the ways that it is.  I do
not see how this explanation could be made except by saying something
about what beliefs, hopes, etc REALLY are.

-- 
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| David K. Lyndes                     | "I assure you that all reasonable     |
| Barrios Technology                  |  precautions have been and are being  |
| email: dlyndes@deltahp.jsc.nasa.gov |  taken." - General Margrave           |
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