Radical materialism

Question 1

Talk about semantic physicalism:

Answer 1

• we only need physical language to describe mental states (behavioral dispositions) and we won’t lose any meaning. and if we do reverse this a category mistake.
• dualism is conceptual confusion
• doesn’t deny first-person privilege but says its vague and by using BDs we will have access to it.

Question 2

The 2 basic concepts of physicalism:

Answer 2

1. Causal Closure
   • Explanations for physical events have to refer to
   other physical events, not to events related to
   angels, UFOs, or miracles
2. Physical Determination:
   • Positive Facts determined by physical facts
   • No change of positive facts without change of
   physical facts

Question 3

radical physicalism with it’s two domains (semantic P and eliminativeM) has 2 main features

Answer 3

• Consciousness „nothing but“ physical process
• Only physical processes scientifically relevant
• Consciousness not a subject in its own right

Question 4

Consequences of eliminative materialism

Answer 4

• Elimination of Folk-psychology

* Elimination of mental states

Question 5

objections to eliminative materialism

Answer 5

The immediate experiential access to MS – not a postulate
• Emergence of folk-psychology unclear
• How to learn about our neural processes?
• Proponent of Eliminative Materialism must believe in own theory, but theory denies belief-states.
• Even if neurobiology will turn out to be more successful, this does not mean that Folk-psychology will be eliminated.

Question 6

Achievements and problems of sematic physicalism:

Answer 6

Achievements
• No confusion with respect to mental predicates
• Mind-Body problem “dissolved” – the only problem
with respect to behavioral dispositions
• Mentalistic questions solvable with the behaviorist
methods

Problems
1. Questions regarding intelligent behavior can
refer to mental causes (how can you explain fear without referring to another mental state)?
• Category-mistake (these are changes in meaning due to context change) unclear – the distinction between the permissible and flawed change of contexts unclear (metaphors are change of context but permissible)

2. Dispositional analyses
   • We “mean” mental experiences (pain)
   • Mentalistic expressions cannot be captured in dispositional analyses only
   “I think that it’s raining outside”
3. Semantic physicalism
   • Not a plausible interpretation of empirical results (also EM).