Against Slagle's Reading of Eliminative Materialism on Self-Defeating


TÜMKAYA S.

PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, vol.46, no.1, pp.99-111, 2023 (AHCI) identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Editorial Material
  • Volume: 46 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2023
  • Doi Number: 10.1111/phin.12351
  • Journal Name: PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
  • Journal Indexes: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, ATLA Religion Database, Philosopher's Index, Sociological abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.99-111
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Jim Slagle claims that eliminative materialism (EM) denies some of the mind's self-evident properties, such as intentionality, qualia and the view that beliefs are real or veridical. I, herein, will argue that what EM denies is actually the folk psychological notion of belief, not belief as such. The Churchlands construe propositional belief as merely one kind of representation in the larger representational scheme. The point here is not to deny belief, but to construe it as one of the, and possibly a very recent, sorts of representations that the brain uses, not the general or fundamental form thereof.