Head to head
Eliminative Materialism vs Descartes’s Substance Dualism
Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism and Descartes’s Substance Dualism, compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.
At a glance
- Eliminative Materialism belongs to the Materialism family in Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness, Descartes’s Substance Dualism to Dualism.
- On life after death, Eliminative Materialism says “No” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “Yes”.
- On meaning and purpose, Eliminative Materialism says “Humanistic only” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “Cosmic/Ultimate”.
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The claim
In brief
Eliminative MaterialismPaul and Patricia Churchland hold that common-sense psychology, our everyday talk of beliefs, desires, and experiences, is a radically false theory that a completed neuroscience will displace rather than smoothly reduce. Consciousness as we ordinarily conceive it is a brain-generated picture shaped by evolution, and our self-understanding, introspection included, will be rebuilt in neuroscientific terms.
Descartes’s Substance DualismRené Descartes holds that consciousness, which he calls thought (cogitatio), is the essence of an immaterial thinking substance (res cogitans) wholly distinct from extended, mechanical body (res extensa). Every conscious state, from reasoning and willing to pain, color, and emotion, is a mode of the thinking thing and is immediately present to it. Sensations and passions, though, arise only in the union of mind and body, where brain processes stand in regular relations to experiences they do not resemble.
What consciousness is
Eliminative MaterialismWhat we call consciousness, as folk psychology describes it, does not exist in that form. The real phenomena are neural processes, which only a mature neuroscience will describe correctly.
Descartes’s Substance DualismConsciousness is thought, defined as everything that happens within us insofar as we are immediately conscious of it, and it is the principal attribute of the mind.
Big questions
Eliminative MaterialismNo position
Descartes’s Substance DualismNoSince thought belongs only to immaterial substance and matter is pure extension, a machine, however complex, would be mechanism without a mind.
Eliminative MaterialismNoSince the mind is the brain, nothing mental survives the brain’s death.
Descartes’s Substance DualismYesDescartes presented the real distinction of soul and body as what makes the soul’s survival intelligible, and the Meditations announce that aim in their subtitle.
Eliminative MaterialismNo position
Descartes’s Substance DualismNoCopying the body’s mechanism would not copy the immaterial thinking substance.
Eliminative MaterialismHumanistic onlyPatricia Churchland urges us to see ourselves as organisms in nature, understood by scientific methods, with no cosmic purpose.
Descartes’s Substance DualismCosmic/UltimateDescartes’s system rests on a non-deceiving God who guarantees knowledge and created even the eternal truths.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Eliminative MaterialismPhysicalism (eliminative)
Descartes’s Substance DualismSubstance dualism (Cartesian)
Mind and body
Eliminative MaterialismThe mind is the brain. Patricia Churchland calls her program a ‘unified theory of the mind-brain’ and treats claims that mind goes beyond brain as the residue of folk myths.
Descartes’s Substance DualismMind and body are really distinct finite substances with exclusive essences, thought and extension, and could by divine power exist apart. They are joined in the human being, where bodily motions give rise to sensations and the mind moves the body, though Descartes never explained that interaction satisfactorily.
Fundamental or emergent
Eliminative MaterialismNeither
Descartes’s Substance DualismPrimitive
Qualia
Eliminative MaterialismQualia as folk psychology and philosophers conceive them are expected to give way to neuroscientific description; the view treats consciousness as a kind of illusion generated by the brain.
Descartes’s Substance DualismSensory qualities are not properties of matter, which has only size, shape, motion, and arrangement. Experienced redness or pain is a mental mode arising in the embodied union and cannot be captured by extension.
How it works
Mechanism
Eliminative MaterialismTheory displacement. Folk psychology will be replaced the way outdated scientific theories were, its principles and ontology discarded rather than mapped onto brain states.
Descartes’s Substance DualismMechanism on the bodily side and non-reduction on the mental side. Light mechanically affects eyes, nerves, and brain, and the mind then experiences color, distance, and shape in regular correspondence with those motions.
Where it is
Eliminative MaterialismIn the brain.
Descartes’s Substance DualismThe mind is unextended. Sensations and passions are felt as belonging to one’s own body, and Descartes located mind-brain communication in the pineal gland.
What it does
Eliminative MaterialismBehavior is caused by neural processes; neuroscience is expected to explain it better than folk psychology does.
Descartes’s Substance DualismPassions are caused and strengthened by movements of the animal spirits and dispose the soul toward volition and action. The will can in turn move the body.
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Eliminative MaterialismConceptually testable
Descartes’s Substance DualismConceptually testable
Tests so far
Eliminative MaterialismThe view stakes its claim on the future course of neuroscience; whether folk categories survive in mature brain science is the long-run test.
Descartes’s Substance DualismNot stated
Criticisms
Eliminative MaterialismCritics say denying subjective experience defies both intuition and direct evidence; Galen Strawson calls the denial of experience ‘the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought’. There is also tension between Patricia Churchland’s talk of reduction to neurobiology and the eliminativist claim that folk psychology will be displaced rather than reduced.
Descartes’s Substance DualismPrincess Elisabeth of Bohemia asked how an immaterial soul could move a material body, and the interaction problem remains unresolved. Arnauld and later critics charged circularity, since the proofs of God that guarantee clear and distinct perception themselves rely on clear and distinct perception. The standard reading denies consciousness to animals, which most now find implausible.
Sources
Key sources
Eliminative Materialism
- Neurophilosophy, Patricia Churchland (1986)
- Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism (Landscape of Consciousness), Patricia Churchland
Descartes’s Substance Dualism
- Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1984)
- Principles of Philosophy, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1985)
- The Passions of the Soul, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1985)
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