Patricia Churchland on Eliminative Materialism

Patricia Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego. She is associated with a school of thought in the philosophy of mind called eliminativism (or eliminative materialism), which argues that folk-psychological concepts such as belief, free will, and consciousness will likely need to be revised as science understands more about the nature of brain function.

This interview is an excerpt from a documentary film entitled "Mastermind" by Sophie Besandoun and Pierre Faye.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminat...

The complete 21-minute interview can be found here:
http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/fac...

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[celal777]

'impetus' is not some fictitious notion of folk physics. it actually has it' analogy in real physics as 'inertia'.

[Skibum Willy]

Watch “Occupying Chairlifts” on youtube, a simple rule tweak on inheritance ends up changing the direction and purpose of modern human life! Here’s a fair way to transition forward, something specific we can demand, protest for, and adopt ourselves! Spread it around! If this isnt the best answer, at least we’re thinking about what might be. What if we were really just this close to having it work right?

Oh yeah, it's a Ski movie thing. Watch “Occupying Chairlifts” on Youtube!

[pretor92]

"turned out to be"

[envision91]

I had the director of this documentary as a professor. Does anyone know where I can watch the rest of "Mastermind" by Pierre Faye?

[123toodlepip]

She says 'out' funny...

Hehehe

[Mohammed Mughal]

embarking on a mission to understand that what is not understood with the very thing that one is seeking to understand, also being the thing that is not understood, is beyond explaination or comprehension. i am of the opinion that that what is "folk" is not be an absolute source of understanding; i am also of the opinion that man is not so stupid as to hold on to something as a means of understanding if that thing is not of value. so not to be cut from the same cloth as an extremist, i reject.

[antonio lucero]

I applaud Ms. Churchland. What she says is extremely important.

The only thing I would add to this presentation is the phenomenon of emergence.

It is a phenomenon that occurs around us much of the time. It explains how there can be a discontinuous leap in performance over the performance of the aggregate of elements in a complex system. For example it can explain how we humans can perform tasks that are far beyond what one might expect from a three-pound mass of brain cells.

[Khuno2]

In defense of Pat Churchland, the motivation for eliminative materialism is in the premise that dualism cannot be right as it explains nothing about what the mind is or how it works. This is true regardless of whether or not you're a substance dualist or property dualist. Stating that the mind is immaterial is the same as saying that it is beyond coherent description. And, that all other theories of mind cannot eliminate dualism because of the prescientific language that they use.