The Éliminativisme (or eliminativism materialist ) is, in Philosophie of the spirit, the thesis - bearing on the mental entities and the vocabulary, according to which the comprehension of mental by thecommon one (or in a theory psychological of direction-common the) is an entirely erroneous design on which cannot rest any scientific research. In other words, there does not exist any base Neurologique with the various psychological concepts which we use daily, such as Croyance, Désir.

Origins

One finds the first developments of the eliminativism in the writings of Wilfrid Sellars, W.V. Quine, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty. The term itself ( eliminative materialism ) was employed for the first time by James Cornman in 1968 when which it described a form of Physicalisme supported by Rorty. The Ludwig Wittgenstein of the second period influenced considerably the development of this theory, in particular by its attacks against the private entities which it treats like grammatical fictions.

But the first eliminativists, such as Rorty and Feyerabend, often confused two designs different from the eliminativism materialist, covered consequently expression: on the one hand, they supported that cognitive sciences, which in the final analysis would give us an exact representation of the human mental activity, would not refer of anything with the mental states popular psychology, like the belief and the desire; these states would not be contained in an ontology worked out by a cognitive science become ripe. However, of many critics realized quickly that this thesis is quasi-indistinguable theories of the identity between the physique and the mental one. Thus Quine itself wondered it:

“Is physicalism has off repudiation mental objects after all, but has theory off them? Mental Does it repudiate the state off bread concomitant gold anger in favor off its physical, mental gold does it identify the state with has state off the physical organism (and so has off state the physical organism with the mental state) " ” (p. 265)

In addition, the same philosophers supported as the mental states of popular psychology do not exist. But of criticisms noticed immediately that the eliminativists could not play on the two tables: or the mental states exist and in the final analysis will be explained in neurophysiological term of process moreover low level, or not: one cannot simply claim to explain mental states which seem not to exist, or to be false: the popular explanations must disappear in one way or another (like refuted fictions or errors). The most recent eliminativists explained more clearly than the mental phenomena do not exist and than they will be eliminated from our manner of thinking the Cerveau in the same way that the demon S were eliminated from our ideas on the mental Maladie S by the Psychopathologie.

Currently, the eliminativism is represented mainly by Paul and Patricia Churchland, which denies the existence of good number of mental phenomena, such as the beliefs, the intentional desires, states, the conscience and the Qualia.

Principal theses of the eliminativism

The eliminativism considers that our daily comprehension of mental is a radical error and that the neurosciences will show one day that the mental states about which we speak each day by using words such as Intention, Croyance, Désir, Amour do not refer to nothing reality. It is only about one impropriety of our language which misleads us while making us believe that we have such things. For certain eliminativists, the conscience is only a epiphenomene of a function of the Cerveau; others think that this concept will be eliminated by progress of the neurosciences. The conscience and popular psychology are thus held for two distinct things, and it is possible to eliminate one from them by preserving the other.

It is possible to be a eliminativist only with regard to certain mental realities, and not of all. Daniel Dennett is thus regarded as a eliminativist as for the qualia and with the phenomenal aspects of the conscience, but he does not think of having to remove scientific vocabulary or natural languages the propositional attitudes like the beliefs.

Difficulties of the popular theories

Popular psychology is, for Paul and Patricia Churchland, a theory fully developed of the human behavior, but it is not formalized.

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