Eliminative Materialism

1. Introduction

Eliminative Materialism is a position in the philosophy of mind that holds, in its strongest forms, that many of the mental states posited by everyday folk psychology—such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and possibly qualia—do not exist as we ordinarily conceive them. Rather than treating these states as higher-level descriptions of underlying brain processes, eliminativists predict that a mature neuroscience and cognitive science will dispense with them altogether, replacing them with a very different vocabulary of neurocomputational and neurobiological states.

The view is typically framed as both:

• Ontological: a claim about what exists (only physical entities and processes, with no entities corresponding to folk-psychological mental states as described), and
• Methodological: a claim about how best to investigate and explain cognition (through empirical science rather than common-sense introspection).

Eliminative Materialism emerged in late-20th-century analytic philosophy as a radical alternative to behaviorism, identity theory, and functionalism. It is most closely associated with Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland, though earlier figures such as W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars are often cited as important precursors.

The position is controversial. Proponents argue that folk psychology is a largely false or badly incomplete theory of the mind whose central posits will be eliminated in a scientifically informed worldview. Critics maintain that such mental states are indispensable for explanation, deeply woven into language and practice, or directly known through introspection in ways that resist wholesale elimination.

Subsequent sections examine the historical emergence of Eliminative Materialism, its core doctrines and metaphysical commitments, its critique of folk psychology, its relationship to neuroscience and cognitive science, and the major debates that have shaped its reception.

2. Historical Origins and Founding Figures

2.1 Early Precursors

Although the label “Eliminative Materialism” is relatively recent, historians of philosophy usually trace its roots to broader materialist and empiricist trends:

• Logical positivists and related scientific realists questioned the legitimacy of unobservable entities not anchored in successful scientific practice.
• Behaviorists (e.g., B. F. Skinner) rejected inner mental states as theoretical constructs, though eliminativists later criticized behaviorism’s focus on observable behavior rather than brain science.
• W. V. O. Quine’s naturalized epistemology and his holism about theory revision suggested that even entrenched parts of common sense could be overturned by scientific progress.
• Wilfrid Sellars, in contrasting the manifest image with the scientific image, opened space for prioritizing scientific ontology over everyday conceptual schemes.

These developments contributed to a climate in which treating folk psychology itself as a revisable theory of the mind became thinkable.

2.2 Coining and Early Formulations

The expression “eliminative materialism” is often associated with:

• Richard Rorty, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s suggested that talk of beliefs and desires might go the way of obsolete scientific entities like phlogiston or caloric.
• Paul Feyerabend, who proposed that common-sense mental categories could be eliminated in favor of neurophysiological ones.

However, these early versions were often programmatic and lacked detailed positive models of replacement.

2.3 The Churchlands and Systematic Development

The most systematic development came from Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland, working largely in North American analytic philosophy departments.

Their work from the late 1970s through the 1990s transformed Eliminative Materialism from a speculative suggestion into a sustained research program, often in dialogue with developments in cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

2.4 Subsequent Proponents and Critics

Later philosophers such as Stephen Stich explored eliminativist themes in the context of cognitive science and the theory-theory of mind, while many others—defenders of functionalism, representational theories of mind, and qualia realism—developed detailed objections. The resulting debates helped fix Eliminative Materialism as a central, if minority, position in late-20th-century philosophy of mind.

3. Etymology of the Name

The term “Eliminative Materialism” unites two components: “eliminative” and “materialism”.

• “Eliminative” stems from the Latin eliminare, meaning “to turn out of doors” or “to remove.” In philosophical usage, it signals not mere revision or refinement of a conceptual scheme, but the claim that certain putative entities should be expelled from the ontology altogether. Eliminativists hold that many folk-psychological entities—beliefs, desires, propositional attitudes as ordinarily conceived—are comparable to historical scientific posits like phlogiston or vital spirits, which were abandoned rather than reduced.
• “Materialism” derives from Latin materia (“matter”) and signifies the thesis that everything that exists is ultimately material or physical. In this context, it indicates that explanations of cognition and behavior should ultimately be framed in physical terms—such as neurobiology and physics—without invoking non-physical mental substances or properties.

The resulting expression thus conveys a specific contrast with reductive materialism or identity theory. Whereas reductive materialists seek to identify mental states with physical states (e.g., pain with C-fiber firing), eliminative materialists argue that many of these mental states, as conceived by folk psychology, do not correspond to anything in a correct scientific taxonomy and should therefore be eliminated, not identified.

Some authors also use related labels:

Despite variations, the shared etymological core emphasizes a materialist ontology that refuses ontological status to a range of common-sense mental posits.

4. Intellectual and Scientific Context

Eliminative Materialism arose within a specific intersection of mid-20th-century analytic philosophy, psychology, and emerging brain sciences.

4.1 Reaction to Earlier Theories of Mind

Eliminativism developed partly in response to perceived limitations of earlier physicalist approaches:

These debates formed the philosophical backdrop against which Eliminative Materialism presented itself as a more radical alternative.

4.2 Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

The late 1960s–1980s saw the rise of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, which offered formal models of reasoning, memory, and perception. Early symbolic AI seemed to support a cognitive architecture organized around propositional representations and rule-based inference—apparently congenial to folk psychology. However, the emergence of connectionism in the 1980s, with its distributed representations and sub-symbolic processing, provided eliminativists with a concrete example of cognitive modeling that did not obviously traffic in beliefs and desires as discrete, sentence-like states.

4.3 Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Parallel advances in neuroscience highlighted the brain’s complex, multi-level organization. Techniques such as single-unit recording, brain imaging, and neuropsychological lesion studies revealed increasingly fine-grained neural processes that did not neatly correspond to common-sense mental categories. Proponents of Eliminative Materialism cited these developments as evidence that our everyday psychological taxonomy might prove obsolete once a mature neuroscience is in place.

4.4 Philosophical Naturalism and Quinean Holism

Finally, a general shift toward philosophical naturalism, shaped by Quine and others, encouraged viewing philosophy as continuous with empirical science. This supported a methodological stance according to which even central elements of common sense—including the concept of belief—could be revised or discarded if scientific theorizing demanded it. Eliminative Materialism is often located at the most revisionary end of this naturalistic spectrum.

5. Core Doctrines of Eliminative Materialism

While formulations vary, most accounts identify several central theses that together characterize Eliminative Materialism.

5.1 Folk Psychology as a Theory

Eliminativists typically treat folk psychology—our everyday practice of explaining behavior using beliefs, desires, intentions—as an implicit theory of the mind rather than a mere conceptual or linguistic framework. This theory is said to posit propositional attitudes with specific causal roles in reasoning and action.

5.2 Radical Falsity or Severe Inadequacy of Folk Psychology

A defining doctrine is that this folk-psychological theory is largely false or radically incomplete. Proponents argue that it:

• Explains only a narrow range of cognitive phenomena (e.g., simple deliberation)
• Lacks integration with the rest of the natural sciences
• Has stagnated historically, unlike progressive scientific theories

On this view, folk psychology is not simply rough but broadly misleading about the underlying structure of cognition.

5.3 Elimination Rather than Reduction

Eliminativists maintain that many folk-psychological states will not be reduced to brain states (as in identity theory) but rather eliminated. They expect future neuroscience and cognitive science to employ categories that do not map neatly onto current notions such as belief or desire. The fate of these terms is compared to scientific disposals of entities like phlogiston or witches.

5.4 Physicalist Ontology and Neurocomputational Replacement

Another core doctrine is a strong commitment to physicalism. The only entities to which we should ultimately be ontologically committed, proponents contend, are those recognized in a mature scientific image of the world. Behavioral explanation, on this picture, should be grounded in neurocomputational states and other physically respectable kinds, with mentalistic posits retained—if at all—only as convenient shorthand.

5.5 Revisability of Introspection and Common Sense

Eliminative Materialism insists that introspective access to our own minds is theory-laden and fallible. If introspection depends on a defective conceptual scheme, then its deliverances can be overturned by empirical science. This thesis underwrites the eliminativist’s willingness to question even apparently obvious claims such as “I know I have beliefs.”

These doctrines together distinguish Eliminative Materialism from more moderate revisionary physicalisms and from non-physicalist views of mind.

6. Metaphysical Views: Ontology of Mind and Matter

Eliminative Materialism articulates a particular ontology—a view about what exists—and how mental phenomena fit within it.

6.1 Strong Physicalism

At its core, the view endorses a robust physicalism: everything that exists is ultimately physical, describable in the terms of fundamental and special sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience). There are no non-physical substances, and no irreducibly mental properties added onto the physical world.

6.2 Denial of Folk-Psychological Entities

Distinctively, eliminativists argue that many items posited by folk psychology—beliefs, desires, intentions, qualia (in some versions)—fail to pick out genuine features of the world. The claim is not merely that these states are identical with brain states, but that nothing in the brain corresponds to them as characterized by common sense.

Proponents often distinguish:

6.3 Manifest vs. Scientific Image

Drawing on Wilfrid Sellars, eliminativists contrast the manifest image (the world as experienced and described in everyday terms) with the scientific image (the world as described by mature science). While Sellars envisioned a complex integration of the two, eliminativists typically give ontological priority to the scientific image, allowing that elements of the manifest image—especially folk-mental states—may be discarded if they conflict with scientific theory.

6.4 Ontological Parsimony and Theoretical Virtues

Eliminativists advocate ontological parsimony: one should not multiply entities beyond necessity. If behavior and cognition can be adequately explained using only neurobiological and computational categories, then positing additional inner entities like traditional beliefs is, on this view, metaphysically superfluous.

They also appeal to standard theoretical virtues—explanatory power, predictive accuracy, unification across domains—as reasons to favor an ontology aligned with neuroscience and cognitive science.

6.5 Variations Concerning Qualia and Consciousness

There is disagreement among self-described eliminativists about qualia and conscious experience:

• Some argue that qualitative properties (e.g., “the redness of red”) are themselves confused theoretical constructs and may be eliminated.
• Others are more cautious, suggesting that only propositional attitudes are candidates for elimination, while conscious experience might receive a different treatment.

These variations reflect differing assessments of how deeply the folk-psychological picture penetrates into our conception of mind.

7. Epistemological Commitments and Methodology

Eliminative Materialism is grounded in a distinctive set of epistemological and methodological commitments about how we come to know about the mind.

7.1 Naturalism and Continuity with Science

Eliminativists adopt a strong form of naturalized epistemology, influenced by Quine. Questions about the mind are treated as continuous with empirical inquiry in psychology, neuroscience, and related sciences. Philosophical reflection is expected to be answerable to empirical data, rather than confined to armchair intuitions about mental states.

7.2 Theory-Ladenness of Introspection

A central methodological claim is that introspection is theory-laden. Our ability to report mental states is said to rely on a conceptual framework—folk psychology—that may itself be mistaken. Hence:

• Introspective reports (“I believe that…”, “I experience pain”) are not taken as infallible data points.
• Rather, they are treated as outputs of a self-interpretive mechanism whose reliability can be questioned in light of scientific findings.

This undermines the traditional epistemic privilege often accorded to first-person authority about one’s own mental states.

7.3 Holism about Theory Revision

Following Quinean confirmation holism, eliminativists hold that any part of our theoretical web—even central common-sense notions like belief—can be revised or abandoned if doing so yields a more coherent and empirically adequate overall theory. There are no permanently “analytic” truths about the mental immune to empirical challenge.

7.4 Emphasis on Explanatory and Predictive Success

Eliminativist methodology prioritizes theories that:

• Explain a wide range of cognitive and behavioral phenomena
• Predict novel findings in neuroscience and psychology
• Integrate with other successful scientific theories

Folk psychology is evaluated against these criteria and, by eliminativist lights, found wanting. Competing scientific frameworks—e.g., connectionist models—are assessed by the same standards and treated as potential replacements.

7.5 Interdisciplinary Engagement

Practitioners emphasize close engagement with:

• Cognitive neuroscience (e.g., imaging, lesion studies)
• Experimental psychology (e.g., biases, implicit cognition)
• Computational modeling (e.g., neural networks, reinforcement learning)

The methodology encourages philosophers of mind to participate in, or at least closely track, empirical research, using it as a primary source of evidence about the structure of cognition rather than relying on conceptual analysis alone.

8. Critique of Folk Psychology

The critique of folk psychology is the central argumentative engine of Eliminative Materialism. Proponents treat folk psychology as a tacit theory and argue that it is deeply flawed.

8.1 Folk Psychology as a Stagnant, Narrow Theory

Eliminativists often highlight what they regard as folk psychology’s theoretical limitations:

• It offers little insight into phenomena such as mental illness, creativity, or the detailed mechanisms of learning and memory.
• It has allegedly stagnated historically, lacking the progressive refinement characteristic of successful sciences.

On this view, folk psychology’s apparent everyday success is compatible with being a crude, domain-limited heuristic rather than an accurate account of the mind’s structure.

8.2 Explanatory and Predictive Deficits

Proponents argue that folk psychology:

• Provides coarse-grained explanations (e.g., “he did it because he believed X and desired Y”) that ignore finer-grained cognitive and neural processes.
• Fails to predict many empirically observed regularities (such as systematic reasoning biases, implicit attitudes, or sub-personal processing).

They contend that alternative scientific frameworks offer or promise better predictive and explanatory power.

8.3 Integration with the Rest of Science

Another line of critique targets folk psychology’s alleged isolation from other sciences. Unlike, say, chemistry’s integration with physics and biology, folk psychology, according to eliminativists, shows weak connections to neurobiology, computational neuroscience, and genetics. This lack of integration is taken as evidence that its posits do not align with the underlying causal structure of the brain.

8.4 The Argument from Future Science

A speculative but influential argument suggests that mature neuroscience will likely employ taxonomies that diverge sharply from folk-psychological categories. If so, the latter may be regarded as miscarved joints—categories that do not correspond to real patterns in nature. In that case, the fate of belief and desire talk could resemble the fate of outdated scientific vocabularies.

8.5 Responses and Ongoing Debate

Defenders of folk psychology contest these critiques, arguing that it is more robust, predictive, and integrated than eliminativists allow, or that its success in everyday contexts warrants realism or at least instrumentalism about its entities. These responses form a central part of the broader debates discussed in later sections.

9. Neuroscience, Connectionism, and Alternative Frameworks

Eliminative Materialism relies heavily on neuroscience and cognitive modeling as sources of alternative frameworks to folk psychology.

9.1 Neuroscientific Explanations of Cognition

Eliminativists point to the increasing sophistication of cognitive neuroscience—including brain imaging, electrophysiology, and lesion studies—as evidence that cognition can be explained in terms of:

• Neural circuits and networks
• Neurotransmitter systems and neuromodulation
• Large-scale patterns of connectivity and dynamics

They suggest that as these explanations become more fine-grained, they will supersede belief–desire explanations in scientific contexts.

9.2 Connectionism and Sub-Symbolic Representations

Connectionism—modeling cognitive processes via artificial neural networks—has been particularly important. In such models:

• Information is represented distributedly across many units.
• Processing occurs through changes in connection weights, not through manipulation of explicit, sentence-like representations.

Proponents argue that these architectures:

• Do not naturally encode discrete propositional attitudes like beliefs.
• Offer alternative ways of capturing learning, pattern recognition, and inference.

Paul Churchland, for example, has used connectionist models to illustrate how a non-propositional state space could underwrite cognition, thereby motivating the elimination of propositional attitudes.

9.3 Neurocomputational State Spaces

Eliminativists often propose replacing folk-psychological kinds with neurocomputational states described in terms of:

• Activation vectors in high-dimensional neural state spaces
• Attractor basins corresponding to stable patterns of activation
• Dynamical systems formulations of brain activity

These descriptions aim to capture the structure of cognitive processing without committing to traditional mentalistic categories.

9.4 Alternative Non-Folk Frameworks

Beyond connectionism, eliminativists draw on:

• Dynamical systems theory: viewing cognitive processes as trajectories in continuous state spaces.
• Predictive processing and Bayesian brain models: describing cognition as probabilistic inference rather than belief manipulation in a folk-psychological sense.
• Embodied and enactive approaches: emphasizing sensorimotor dynamics over inner propositional representations.

While not all proponents of these frameworks are eliminativists, eliminativists regard them as promising non-folk-psychological ways of modeling cognition.

9.5 Limits and Critiques

Critics argue that many neuroscientific and computational models implicitly rely on belief- and desire-like constructs, or that they merely implement rather than replace folk-psychological structures. Debates continue over whether these alternative frameworks genuinely support eliminativism or instead presuppose a revised but still recognizably mentalistic ontology.

10. Ethical Implications and Moral Responsibility

Eliminative Materialism does not advance a distinctive ethical theory, but it has been taken to bear on questions of moral agency and responsibility.

10.1 Challenging Traditional Notions of Agency

Traditional moral frameworks commonly explain and evaluate actions by citing:

• Agents’ beliefs about the world
• Their desires or intentions
• Their capacity to choose otherwise

If these mental states, as ordinarily conceived, are eliminated, some philosophers suggest that familiar notions of free will, intentional wrongdoing, and culpability may require re-interpretation or replacement.

10.2 Responsibility in Neurobiological Terms

Eliminativist-leaning thinkers sometimes propose that assessments of responsibility could shift toward:

• An individual’s neurobiological capacities (e.g., impulse control, foresight)
• Patterns of neural development and environmental influence
• Probabilistic predictions about future behavior

On this view, moral and legal practices might become more closely aligned with neuroscientific diagnostics than with folk-psychological attributions of belief and intention.

10.3 Potential for More Humane Practices

Some proponents argue that viewing behavior through a naturalistic, brain-based lens could encourage:

• Emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment rather than retributive punishment
• Policies informed by empirical research on addiction, mental illness, and social determinants of behavior
• A reduction in moralistic blame grounded in speculative inner mental states

This is presented as a possible ethical benefit of moving away from folk psychology.

10.4 Concerns about Dehumanization and Normativity

Critics express concern that eliminativist interpretations:

• Might undermine autonomy by portraying agents as mere collections of neural mechanisms
• Could weaken the normative vocabulary (responsibility, guilt, obligation) that structures moral life
• Risk being used to justify intrusive social control or to excuse harmful behavior

Some philosophers contend that even if folk-psychological posits are scientifically problematic, retaining aspects of the vocabulary may be pragmatically or normatively indispensable.

10.5 Mixed and Revisionary Positions

Several theorists adopt revisionary rather than fully eliminativist stances, suggesting that:

• Concepts like responsibility and intention may be reinterpreted in neurobiological and cognitive terms
• Ethical frameworks may adapt without discarding all mentalistic language

Eliminative Materialism thus serves as a reference point in broader debates over how scientific accounts of the mind should reshape moral and legal practices.

11. Political and Social Implications

Although not a political doctrine, Eliminative Materialism has been associated with certain political and social implications through its impact on conceptions of agency, responsibility, and human nature.

11.1 Evidence-Based Policy and Social Science

The eliminativist emphasis on scientific explanation of behavior can be connected to support for evidence-based policy. In this context, explanations of social phenomena may focus on:

• Neural development and cognitive biases
• Environmental and socio-economic determinants of behavior
• Statistical models rather than individual-level belief/desire narratives

Advocates of this orientation suggest that such an approach can yield more effective interventions in areas like education, public health, and criminal justice.

11.2 Criminal Justice and Punishment

In debates about criminal justice, eliminativist themes point toward:

• Viewing offenders through a lens of neurobiological and psychological constraints
• Emphasizing rehabilitation, risk management, and prevention over purely retributive responses
• Reconsidering legal categories that rely heavily on inner mental states (mens rea, intent) in favor of more observable or scientifically grounded criteria

Supporters see this as aligning punishment practices with a more realistic understanding of human behavior; critics worry about eroding notions of moral blameworthiness.

11.3 Autonomy, Rights, and Personhood

If folk-psychological constructs underpin standard notions of autonomy and personhood, eliminativist perspectives raise questions about:

• How to ground individual rights if robust inner mental states are denied or reconceived
• Whether social and legal systems should shift attention from inner “freedom of the will” to functional capacities and wellbeing indicators

Some theorists argue that rights can be justified in terms of sentience, vulnerability, or social contracts, independently of folk-psychological metaphysics; others see a tighter connection between mentalistic concepts and liberal political theory.

11.4 Risks of Technocracy and Dehumanization

Critics contend that a strong eliminativist orientation could:

• Encourage technocratic governance, where expert-driven science overrides lay perspectives rooted in common sense
• Foster views of persons as mere biological systems, potentially undermining respect or empathy
• Legitimize invasive forms of behavioral control if mentalistic constraints on intervention (e.g., privacy of thought) are weakened

These worries highlight tensions between scientifically grounded policymaking and pluralistic democratic values.

11.5 Pragmatic Retention of Folk Discourse

Some philosophers advocate a dual-level approach: employing eliminativist, neurobiological frameworks in scientific and policy design, while retaining folk-psychological language in everyday social and political interaction for its communicative and normative functions. Whether such compartmentalization is stable or coherent remains a subject of discussion.

12. Major Debates and Objections

Eliminative Materialism has generated extensive debate. Critics challenge both its coherence and its empirical plausibility, while defenders refine the view in response.

12.1 Self-Refutation and Conceptual Coherence

One prominent objection alleges self-refutation: if there are no beliefs, then proponents cannot literally “believe” eliminativism, seemingly undermining their own claim. Eliminativists typically respond that:

• This argument presupposes the reality of belief as understood by folk psychology.
• Their position is that our current conception of belief is defective; they may still be in some physical or neurocomputational state that plays a roughly belief-like functional role.

Debate continues over whether this move avoids or merely shifts the problem.

12.2 Intuition and Introspective Certainty

Another major cluster of objections appeals to introspective certainty: many philosophers hold that one’s own experiences and attitudes are directly known in ways that cannot be overturned by empirical science. Critics contend that denying the existence of pain, belief, or conscious experience conflicts with this apparent certainty.

Eliminativists counter that introspection is fallible and theory-laden, and that history shows apparently obvious truths being overturned (e.g., commonsense physics).

12.3 Success and Indispensability of Folk Psychology

Defenders of folk psychology argue that it is:

• Highly successful in everyday prediction and explanation
• Indispensable for social interaction, communication, and normative practices

Some maintain that even if neuroscience progresses, it will at most co-exist with, or realize, folk-psychological states, rather than eliminating them. This leads to debates over whether practical indispensability warrants realism about mental states or only an instrumentalist attitude.

12.4 Integration with Cognitive Science

Many cognitive scientists and philosophers of cognitive science observe that contemporary theories often use mentalistic vocabulary (belief, representation, goal) in formalized, empirically constrained ways. They argue that this constitutes a scientifically respectable vindication or refinement of folk psychology.

Eliminativists reply that such usage may represent a transitional stage, and that future theory may adopt different categories, or that current mentalistic terms already function as technical constructs distinct from folk notions.

12.5 Scope of Elimination

Debate also concerns the scope of what is to be eliminated:

• Some critics assume a radical view denying all mental phenomena, including consciousness.
• Many eliminativists limit their claim to propositional attitudes or to specific folk concepts, leaving open alternative treatments of consciousness or qualitative experience.

Clarifying this scope is central to assessing the view’s plausibility.

12.6 Empirical Trajectory of Neuroscience

Finally, there is disagreement about what future neuroscience will reveal. Optimistic eliminativists see current trends as supporting their predictions; skeptics note that the field’s ongoing use of intentional vocabulary may suggest that some form of mentalistic ontology will remain. The outcome of this empirical trajectory is, by eliminativists’ own lights, an open question.

13. Relations to Rival Theories of Mind

Eliminative Materialism is best understood in contrast with other prominent theories of mind.

13.1 Folk Psychology / Common-Sense Psychology

The most direct rival is folk psychology itself, conceived as a theory positing beliefs, desires, and intentions. While folk realists regard these states as genuine components of the mind, eliminativists treat them as misleading posits. Some intermediate positions (instrumentalism, pragmatic realism) accept the usefulness of folk psychology without strong ontological commitment.

13.2 Reductive Materialism (Type-Identity Theory)

Type-identity theorists hold that each mental state type is identical to a physical state type (e.g., pain = C-fiber firing). Eliminativists criticize this approach for presupposing that folk-psychological kinds are well-formed and can be neatly mapped onto neural kinds. They argue instead that many such kinds will not appear in a mature scientific taxonomy, making reduction inappropriate.

13.3 Functionalism

Functionalism characterizes mental states by their causal roles—how they mediate between inputs, other mental states, and outputs—without specifying their physical realization. Functionalists generally retain belief and desire as legitimate higher-level kinds. Eliminativists challenge whether functional roles defined by folk psychology track any real patterns in brain organization and cognitive processing.

13.4 Representational Theories and Intentional Realism

Various representationalist and intentional realist views treat mental representations and intentional content as central explanatory posits. Eliminativists sometimes argue that such posits inherit the weaknesses of folk psychology, unless reconceived in radically different, often sub-symbolic terms. Intentional realists respond that representational content is indispensable for explaining perception, reasoning, and language.

13.5 Property Dualism and Non-Physicalist Views

Property dualists maintain that mental properties are non-physical yet emerge from or depend on physical substrates. Eliminativists reject this dualism, holding that it introduces entities (non-physical properties) that conflict with a unified scientific ontology. Non-physicalist accounts (e.g., some forms of panpsychism or idealism) are likewise at odds with the eliminativist’s strong physicalism.

13.6 Phenomenology and Qualia Realism

Phenomenologists and qualia realists prioritize first-person experience and often regard qualitative aspects of consciousness as irreducible. Some eliminativists argue that certain notions of qualia are confused theoretical constructs; others are more cautious. Phenomenologists typically see eliminativism as neglecting the lived dimension of experience, while eliminativists question whether such first-person descriptions map onto scientifically robust categories.

13.7 Revisionary Physicalisms and Partial Eliminativisms

Between full-blown eliminativism and its rivals lie a range of revisionary physicalist positions that propose substantial reform of folk concepts without wholesale elimination. These are discussed further in the section on contemporary variants, but they already serve as important competitors to thoroughgoing Eliminative Materialism by promising a less radical reconfiguration of mental ontology.

14. Influence on Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

Eliminative Materialism has interacted with cognitive science and AI both as a source of philosophical interpretation and as a provocative hypothesis about the mind’s architecture.

14.1 Motivating Non-Folk Architectures

Eliminativist arguments have encouraged exploration of non-symbolic and sub-symbolic architectures in AI and cognitive modeling. For example:

• Connectionist networks model cognition without explicit, language-like representations of beliefs and desires.
• Dynamical systems approaches describe cognitive agents in terms of continuous state evolution rather than discrete symbolic states.

While many researchers pursue these models for independent reasons, eliminativists highlight them as proofs of concept that intelligent behavior need not rely on folk-psychological states.

14.2 Interpretation of AI Systems

In interpreting artificial agents, eliminativist themes raise questions about whether:

• Attributions of beliefs and goals to AI systems are merely heuristic,
• Or whether such states correspond to anything in the system’s internal organization.

Some philosophers argue that an eliminativist stance regarding AI mental states (treating them as convenient fictions) parallels the view’s stance toward human folk psychology.

14.3 Critique of Classical Symbolic AI

Classical symbolic AI often modeled cognition as the manipulation of explicit symbol structures corresponding to propositions. Critics influenced by eliminativism argue that:

• Such models may reify folk-psychological constructs (belief as stored sentence) that lack neural counterparts.
• Connectionist and hybrid models show how cognitive tasks can be accomplished without such structures.

Supporters of symbolic AI respond that even sub-symbolic systems can implement higher-level representational and rule-like organization.

14.4 Empirical Research in Cognitive Science

In cognitive psychology, eliminativist thought has intersected with research on:

• Implicit cognition and unconscious processing
• Heuristics and biases that challenge rational belief models
• Modular or distributed cognitive architectures

These empirical findings are sometimes cited by eliminativists as evidence that folk-psychological concepts provide an incomplete or distorted map of the mind’s workings.

14.5 Methodological Influence

Eliminativism’s naturalistic orientation has encouraged closer integration between philosophy and empirical research. Philosophers sympathetic to eliminativism frequently engage in:

• Interpreting neuroscientific findings in ontological terms
• Proposing experimentally testable implications of different theories of mind
• Questioning whether cognitive models genuinely vindicate or undermine folk-psychological categories

The overall influence is debated: some see eliminativism as a driving force behind interdisciplinary collaboration; others regard it as a provocative minority view that shapes discussion more through critical pressure than through direct adoption.

15. Contemporary Variants and Partial Eliminativisms

In recent decades, a range of modified or partial eliminativist positions has emerged, reflecting both concessions to critics and new empirical developments.

15.1 Targeted Eliminativism about Propositional Attitudes

Some theorists focus eliminativist claims specifically on propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, judgments), while leaving other mental phenomena—such as sensory experience or affect—untouched. The idea is that:

• These attitudes are especially tied to folk-psychological theory.
• Their structure may be particularly ill-suited to mapping onto neural organization.

This narrower scope aims to preserve room for non-eliminative treatments of consciousness or perception.

15.2 Pragmatic or Instrumentalist Eliminativism

Another variant adopts an instrumentalist stance: mentalistic terms may be retained for practical purposes (communication, rough prediction) while denying that they correspond to real entities. On this view:

• Folk-psychological talk is akin to using “center of gravity” in physics—useful but not literally an object.
• Ontological commitment is reserved for the states and processes recognized by neuroscience and computational theory.

This position blurs boundaries between eliminativism and sophisticated forms of realism or pluralism.

15.3 Revisionary, Not Fully Eliminative, Physicalisms

Some philosophers advocate revisionary physicalism, proposing deep conceptual overhaul rather than total elimination. They may:

• Redefine belief and desire in terms of probabilistic states, policy-like dispositions, or predictive models.
• Argue that while folk concepts are flawed, they are transformable into scientifically respectable descendants.

In this spectrum, Eliminative Materialism is often depicted as the most radical endpoint.

15.4 Dennett’s Interpretive Strategy

Daniel Dennett is sometimes interpreted as a partial eliminativist through his notion of the intentional stance: attributing beliefs and desires to a system is a strategy of interpretation that works when it yields good predictions. On one reading:

• Mental states are not inner objects but patterns that appear under certain descriptions.
• Systems lacking such patterns, or describable more effectively in other terms, might be treated eliminatively.

Whether Dennett counts as a genuine eliminativist is contested, but his work provides a prominent alternative to straightforward folk-psychological realism.

15.5 Neuroscientific Eliminativisms

Some contemporary neuroscientists and neurophilosophers adopt positions that, while not always labeled “eliminativist,” are compatible with its spirit. For example:

• Emphasizing computational and dynamical descriptions that make no essential use of belief/desire vocabulary
• Proposing novel taxonomies of mental disorders and cognitive types that cut across traditional categories

These approaches may support piecemeal elimination of specific folk concepts as empirical research progresses.

15.6 Debates over the Extent of Revision

A central ongoing issue is how far such revision or elimination should go. Some argue that moderate revisions can capture scientific advances without discarding core mentalistic notions; others maintain that partial measures are unstable, inevitably leading either back to robust mental realism or forward to more thoroughgoing eliminativism.

16. Legacy and Historical Significance

Eliminative Materialism has had an outsized influence relative to the number of philosophers who fully endorse it.

16.1 Catalyzing Debates in Philosophy of Mind

The view has served as a foil that sharpened discussions about:

• The status of folk psychology—is it a theory, a conceptual scheme, or something else?
• The relationship between philosophical reflection and empirical science
• The possibility and implications of radical conceptual change about the mind

Many detailed defenses of functionalism, representationalism, and qualia realism were developed partly in response to eliminativist challenges.

16.2 Advancing Naturalistic Methodology

Eliminativism contributed to the broader shift toward naturalistic philosophy of mind. By insisting that:

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Ontology should be determined by our best empirical science rather than by common sense or introspective intuition,

eliminativists helped normalize close engagement with neuroscience, psychology, and AI within analytic philosophy.

16.3 Impact on Interdisciplinary Research

The Churchlands and other eliminativist-leaning philosophers actively participated in interdisciplinary communities, influencing:

• The rhetoric and conceptual framing of cognitive neuroscience
• Philosophical interpretations of connectionist and dynamical models
• Debates over reduction, emergence, and levels of explanation

Even researchers who reject eliminativism have often acknowledged its role in prompting closer scrutiny of how scientific models relate to everyday mental concepts.

16.4 Shaping the Discourse on Scientific Images of the Mind

By drawing on Sellars’s distinction between the manifest and scientific images, Eliminative Materialism foregrounded questions about how, or whether, these images can be integrated. It has been a key reference point in discussions of scientific realism, structural realism, and theory change in the special sciences.

16.5 Declining Centrality and Enduring Themes

From the mid-2000s onward, explicit endorsement of full-blooded Eliminative Materialism appears less common, with many philosophers favoring revisionary or pluralist approaches. Nonetheless, core eliminativist themes persist:

• Skepticism about introspective authority
• Willingness to revise or abandon entrenched concepts
• Emphasis on neurocomputational explanations

These themes continue to inform debates about consciousness, cognitive architecture, and the interpretation of artificial systems.

16.6 Historical Position

Within the history of analytic philosophy, Eliminative Materialism is often seen as:

• A late-20th-century culmination of materialist and naturalist trends
• A radical test case for how far scientific findings might revise common sense
• An influential, if controversial, chapter in the ongoing effort to reconcile everyday understandings of mind with the expanding scientific image of human beings