PHIL 2270H Lecture 6: Lecture 6 - Eliminativism
7 Feb 2019
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The view that conscious or mental states don"t exist. Physicalists / behaviorists (mental ascriptions are translatable into behavioral ascriptions) Some philosophers deny the existence of conscious and mental states. Theoretical reduction or theory change: a new and explanatorily richer theory succeeds an old one, the different ways that newer scientific theories have succeeded older ones. The reduction of our theory of the mind to our theory of the brain: reduction of psychology to neuroscience. Minor corrections / lots of continuity: ex. Much of the old theory is retained. Identity statements between old terms and new terms: ex. Temperature of a gas = mean kinetic energy of its constituent molecules. Reduction is rarely like this hard cases of reduction. Hard (wholesale replacement: terms on one theory don"t mean the same thing in another theory, you no longer get identity statements (no longer to just update the words in textbooks, ex.
