Restrictive Materialism and the Propositional Atti

Authors: Bennett Holman

Publish Date: 2010/09/21

Volume: 39, Issue: 1, Pages: 61-70

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Abstract

It has been argued that naturalizing the mind will result in the elimination of the ontology of folk psychology eg beliefs and desires This paper draws from a wide range of empirical literature including from developmental and crosscultural psychology in building an argument for a position dubbed “restrictive materialism” The position holds that while the ontology of folk psychology is overextended there is a restricted domain in which the application of the folk ontology remains secure From the evidence of developmental uniformity and crosscultural ubiquity of beliefs and desires it is argued that the ontology but not the principles of folk psychology may be incorrigible Thus even if radically false as a description of firstorder brain processes beliefs and desires might be an unavoidable secondorder brain process Given that the domain of psychology is how humans think if the above argument is correct then beliefs and desires will continue to earn their rightful place in the ontology of any future psychology in just the same way as any other scientific entityEliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced rather than smoothly reduced by completed neuroscience Churchland 1981 p67It has been argued that naturalizing the mind entails eliminating our commonsense ontology While the claim that our current ontology of mental states is radically false is counterintuitive if our understanding of mental states is radically false what good are our intuitions The prospect of being massively in error is unsettling Yet it may be the case that any position invoking belief desires or propositional attitudes more generally is as Churchland claims nothing but modern day alchemy If so ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ will one day take their place alongside ‘caloric fluid’ and ‘phlogiston’ as arcane posits of an outdated theory While Churchland argues that the intentional paradigm is completely bankrupt I will argue that it is merely overextended Indeed when the intentional paradigm is tasked with the explanation of all human psychology failures abound However failure in some domains does not entail the nonexistence of a restricted domain within which it will succeed I will attempt to specify where the intentional paradigm succeeds and why I think it will escape elimination viz I will defend a position one might call restrictive materialismPrimarily I will assess the prospects for propositional attitudes in a naturalized ontology of the mind If our folk ontology were radically false large parts of clinical social and developmental psychology would be futile I will argue that the the intentional paradigm which undergirds these disciplines remains secure I will review evidence that contradicts Churchland’s speculative developmental psychology and that casts doubt on the corrigible if not theoretical nature of folk psychology Finally I elaborate the implications of restrictive materialism for psychology and philosophy of mindSuch an examination will make little sense however unless it is first appreciated that the relevant network of commonsense concepts does indeed constitute an empirical theory with all the functions virtues and perils entailed by that status Churchland 1981 p69The case for eliminative materialism EM rests on the theoretical nature of folk psychology FP I will contend that while there are theorylike aspects of FP the way in which FP is acquired in childhood is disanalogous Given that Churchland is wrong about how children acquire FP it is not ipso facto the case that his argument for EM is fatally flawed However crosscultural research on the development of a theory of mind ToM suggests the basic ontology of FP is fixed in ways that make EM unlikely

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