Head to head
Eliminative Materialism vs Emergence
Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism and Emergence (Principle of Consciousness), compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.
At a glance
- Both belong to the Materialism family in Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness.
- On life after death, Eliminative Materialism says “No” and Emergence says “Conditional”.
- On meaning and purpose, Eliminative Materialism says “Humanistic only” and Emergence says “Uncertain”.
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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.
EmergenceEmergence is the philosophical claim that qualitatively new properties, such as consciousness or psychological states, arise from underlying physical properties governed entirely by physical laws. It is distinguished primarily into weak emergence, which is reducible in principle, and strong emergence, which is fundamentally non-reducible and may necessitate new physical laws.
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.
EmergenceConsciousness is identified as a qualitatively novel property or psychological state arising from physical properties. This concept defines the relationship between mind and matter based on reducibility or non-reducibility to fundamental physics.
Big questions
Eliminative MaterialismNo position
EmergenceConditionalIf consciousness is weakly emergent, AI consciousness is certain given sufficient complexity. If strongly emergent, AI consciousness is still possible if non-physical properties emerge from non-biological physical complexity, depending on the meta-psychophysical laws involved.
Eliminative MaterialismNoSince the mind is the brain, nothing mental survives the brain’s death.
EmergenceConditionalWeak emergence, being close to Materialism, precludes survival. Strong emergence, particularly in the form of Emergent Dualism, could theoretically generate a nonphysical substance (mind/soul) dependent on, but not strictly identical to, the physical brain, allowing for potential independent existence after death, although this is speculative.
Eliminative MaterialismNo position
EmergenceConditionalIf consciousness is weakly emergent, duplicating the physical states would duplicate the mental states (likely). If strongly emergent, the non-reducible properties and possible downward causation would need to be perfectly captured and recreated in the new medium, posing significant, perhaps insurmountable, technical and conceptual challenges.
Eliminative MaterialismHumanistic onlyPatricia Churchland urges us to see ourselves as organisms in nature, understood by scientific methods, with no cosmic purpose.
EmergenceUncertainEmergence, especially strong emergence combined with concepts like top-down causation, offers a framework where higher-level properties like consciousness and its associated values could possess genuine causal power, potentially supporting cosmic purpose or meaning, depending on the resulting ontology.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Eliminative MaterialismPhysicalism (eliminative)
EmergenceHighly variable/Contested. Weak Emergence supports reductive Physicalism. Strong Emergence often implies Non-Reductive Physicalism or a need to expand the conception of nature, potentially requiring new fundamental laws (Naturalistic Dualism or Property Dualism).
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.
EmergenceEmergentist. The mind arises from the body (complex physical systems). The nature of the relationship depends on the type of emergence: Weak suggests reduction in principle; Strong suggests non-reducibility even in principle, often involving downward causation.
Fundamental or emergent
Eliminative MaterialismNeither
EmergenceEmergent
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.
EmergenceQualia are the novel, qualitatively new properties (e.g., sensory qualities) that arise from the physical system. Strong emergence views consciousness (and thus qualia) as the clearest case of a strongly emergent phenomenon, fundamentally irreducible to underlying physical facts.
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.
EmergenceThe principle is the claim that novel, qualitatively distinct properties arise at higher levels of complexity, which is often contrasted with the reductive assumptions of mainstream science.
Where it is
Eliminative MaterialismIn the brain.
EmergenceTypically localized in complex biological systems (e.g., brains), although strong emergence proponents may argue that AI consciousness is possible if sufficient physical complexity is achieved, regardless of substrate.
What it does
Eliminative MaterialismBehavior is caused by neural processes; neuroscience is expected to explain it better than folk psychology does.
EmergenceVaries. Weak emergence aligns with standard physical causation. Strong emergence often posits top-down causation, where emergent higher hierarchical levels exert causal force on lower levels, giving the emergent property causal powers.
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Eliminative MaterialismConceptually testable
EmergenceSpeculative and philosophically contentious. Weak emergence is scientifically aligned in principle. Strong emergence is difficult to test empirically because it posits phenomena are non-deducible from fundamental science.
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.
EmergenceNot 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.
EmergenceIt is criticized by reductive physicalists (like Eliminative Materialists) as having little explanatory value, being superfluous, or acting as a 'restatement of a miracle' that fails to explain *how* unconscious complexity yields consciousness. Strong emergence specifically challenges the causal closure of the physical world.
Sources
Key sources
Eliminative Materialism
- Neurophilosophy, Patricia Churchland (1986)
- Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism (Landscape of Consciousness), Patricia Churchland
Emergence
- The Re-emergence of Emergence: the Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion, P. Clayton and P. Davies (2008)
- Strong and weak emergence, D. Chalmers (2008)
- Why reductionism does not work, G.F.R. Ellis (2019)