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Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.〔Lycan, W. G. & Pappas, G. (1972) "What is eliminative materialism?" ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'' 50:149-59.〕 Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.〔Rey, G. (1983). "A Reason for Doubting the Existence of Consciousness", in R. Davidson, G. Schwartz and D. Shapiro (eds), ''Consciousness and Self-Regulation Vol 3''. New York, Plenum: 1-39.〕 Eliminativism stands in opposition to reductive materialism, which argues that a mental state is well defined, and that further research will result in a more detailed, but not different understanding.〔http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/#SpeProFolPsy, by William Ramsey〕 An intermediate position is revisionary materialism, which will often argue that the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena - with some changes to the common sense concept. Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that that class of entities does not exist.〔Ramsey, William, "Eliminative Materialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = Since eliminative materialism claims that future research will fail to find a neuronal basis for various mental phenomena, it must necessarily wait for science to progress further. One might question the position on these grounds, but other philosophers like Churchland argue that eliminativism is often necessary in order to open the minds of thinkers to new evidence and better explanations.〔 ==Overview== Various arguments have been put forth both for and against eliminative materialism over the last forty years. Most of the arguments in favor of the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory. It is to be compared and contrasted with other scientific theories in its explanatory success, accuracy, and ability to allow people to make correct predictions about the future. Eliminativists argue that, based on these and other criteria, commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced with explanations derived from the neurosciences. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence to sustain their thesis. Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Simulation theorists, like Robert Gordon〔Gordon, R. (1986). Folk psychology as Simulation, Mind and Language 1: 158-171.〕 and Alvin Goldman〔Goldman, A. (1992). In Defense of the Simulation Theory, Mind and Language7: 104-119.〕 argue that folk psychology is not a theory, but rather depends on internal simulation of others, and therefore is not subject to falsification in the same way that theories are. Jerry Fodor, among others,〔Fodor, J. (1987). ''Psychosemantics''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.〕 argues that folk psychology is, in fact, a successful (even indispensable) theory. Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting.〔Boghossian, P. (1990). "The Status of Content."''Philosophical Review''. 99: 157-84.〕 Eliminativism maintains that the common-sense understanding of the mind is mistaken, and that the neurosciences will one day reveal that the mental states that are talked about in everyday discourse, using words such as "intend", "believe", "desire", and "love", do not refer to anything real. Because of the inadequacy of natural languages, people mistakenly think that they have such beliefs and desires.〔 Some eliminativists, such as Frank Jackson, claim that consciousness does not exist except as an epiphenomenon of brain function; others, such as Georges Rey, claim that the concept will eventually be eliminated as neuroscience progresses.〔〔Jackson, F. (1982) "Epiphenomenal Qualia", The Philosophical Quarterly 32:127-136.〕 Consciousness and folk psychology are separate issues and it is possible to take an eliminative stance on one but not the other.〔 The roots of eliminativism go back to the writings of Wilfred Sellars, W.V. Quine, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty.〔〔〔Sellars W. (1956). "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", In: Feigl H and Scriven M (eds) ''The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 253-329. (online )〕 The term "eliminative materialism" was first introduced by James Cornman in 1968 while describing a version of physicalism endorsed by Rorty. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein was also an important inspiration for eliminativism, particularly with his attack on "private objects" as "grammatical fictions".〔 Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different notions of the sort of elimination that the term "eliminative materialism" entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account of the workings of the mind will not employ terms that refer to common-sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science.〔〔 But critics immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the identity theory of mind.〔〔Savitt, S. (1974). Rorty's Disappearance Theory, Philosophical Studies 28:433-36.〕 Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all: On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes or they do not.〔〔 Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.〔 While it was a minority view in the 1960s, eliminative materialism gained prominence and acceptance during the 1980s.〔Niiniluoto, Ilkka. ''Critical Scientific Realism''. Pg 156. Oxford University Press (2002). ISBN 0-19-925161-4.〕 Proponents of this view, such as B.F. Skinner, often made parallels to previous pseudoscientific theories (such as that of the four humours, the phlogiston theory of combustion, and the vital force theory of life) that have all been successfully eliminated in attempting to establish their thesis about the nature of the mental. In these cases, science has not produced more detailed versions or reductions of these theories, but rejected them altogether as obsolete. Radical behaviorists, such as Skinner, argued that folk psychology is already obsolete and should be replaced by descriptions of histories of reinforcement and punishment.〔Skinner, B.F. (1971) ''Beyond Freedom and Dignity''. New York: Alfred Knopf.〕 Such views were eventually abandoned. Patricia and Paul Churchland argued that folk psychology will be gradually replaced as neuroscience matures.〔 Eliminativism is not only motivated by philosophical considerations, but is also a prediction about what form future scientific theories will take. Eliminativist philosophers therefore tend to be concerned with the data coming from the relevant brain and cognitive sciences.〔Churchland, P.S. (1986) ''Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.〕 In addition, because eliminativism is essentially predictive in nature, different theorists can, and often do, make different predictions about which aspects of folk psychology will be eliminated from folk psychological vocabulary. None of these philosophers are eliminativists "tout court".〔Churchland, P.M. and Churcland, P. S. (1998). ''Intertheoretic Reduction: A Neuroscientist's Field Guide.'' On the Contrary Critical Essays, 1987-1997. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press: 65-79.〕〔Dennett, D. (1978) ''The Intentional Stance''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.〕〔Dennett, D. (1988) "Quining Qualia" in: Marcel, A and Bisiach, E (eds), ''Consciousness in Contemporary Science'', 42-77. New York, Oxford University Press.〕 Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes (a subclass of intentional states), and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered to be an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness. One way to summarize the difference between the Churchlands's views and Dennett's view is that the Churchlands are eliminativists when it comes to propositional attitudes, but reductionists concerning qualia, while Dennett is an anti-reductionist with respect to propositional attitudes, and an eliminativist concerning qualia.〔〔〔Churchland, P.M. (1985). "Reduction, Qualia and the Direct Inspection of Brain States," in ''Journal of Philosophy'', 82, 8-28.〕〔Churchland, P.M. (1992). ''A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science.'' Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03151-5. Chapt. 3〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eliminative materialism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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