P.S. Re Paul Churchland and eliminativism.

Sam Pawlett rsp at uniserve.com
Thu Feb 10 11:16:38 PST 2000


Ken Hanly wrote:
>
> I wish I could see Stich's later book but what I have at hand are a very few
> reference works, the backs of cereal boxes in English and French, and the
> Internet. But I am not surprised he has changed his mind because of the
> logical difficulties of trying to do away with the concepts of folk
> psychology, as pointed out in my earlier post. However, Justin is right that
> he wrote an earlier article that is really a classic statement of the
> elminativist position.

Stich in his later book *The Fragmentation of Reason* becomes a neopragamatist along Rortyian lines i.e. he believes(!) that epistemic standards are social in nature and have little to do with truth-as-correspondance. He thinks people do have beliefs. Susan Haack in her wonderful *Evidence and Inquiry* (the best book in epistemology since Bonjour and Goldmann) reduces Rorty, Stich,Churchlands, neopragmatism and a whole host of others to nothing. She argues for an old fashioned combo of coherence and foundationalism.

I read the article carefully twice, just to make sure
> he really said what he seemed to be saying. Many philosophers do change their
> mind.

Perhaps notoriously so.


> It may very well be that Paul Churchland has changed his position as
> well. I read a short review of his most recent book.

I doubt it. I studied with both Paul and Patty (they're from BC and live here in the summer) and they are eliminativists about folk psychology such that the statement "I believe that X" becomes "stimulation of neural fibre # 4567". I think they're wrong but its not as crazy as it might seem at first. The problem isn't so much logical but practical (if you accept type-type materialism, which I don't). The "theory" of folk psychology works, neuroscience still has problems explaining the behaviour of earthworms. Even if the Churhland's theory is true, it is unlikely that explanations like "John and Jill had lunch at Tio Pepe's because they *believed* it would be good and cheap." will go away any time soon. I'm not a reducitonist so I don't think that ,even in principle, neuroscience can give anything of an explanation about macrophenomena (the economy,history etc.)

Among other things he
> holds that there is most likely a detectable difference between the neural
> networks in criminal brains and in those of non-criminals. That seems to be a
> rather provocative statement.

Yes, not too far from Charles Murray. I think this kind of type-type reductionism was refuted long ago by Hilary Putnam (his *Reductionism and the Nature of Psychology*) and many others.

I once asked Patty Churchland what she thought of Noam Chomsky's harsh criticisms of her research program. She said she wasn't that ideological she just wanted to know the truth. The Churchland's are socialists. Another story, she was giving a colloquiem and had these big pictures of brains on a screen. An elderly prof came and sat beside me, asking where the philosophy colloquiem was, thinking he had the wrong room.

>Is the cure for criminality some updated version of electroshock?

A lobotomy, by Churchland's thinking. Electroshock is alive and well in Canadian hospitals. They use it for uni and bipolar depression.I used to stand and watch the nurses wheel people out of the "shock room", completely comatose. In a seminar I asked the doctor what he thought the side effects of "the shock" might be. He replied "I do know you can forget whether you are a man or a woman." Wonderful.

apologies for the jargon, Sam Pawlett



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