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Deconstructing the Mind
During the past two decades, debates over the viability of commonsense psychology have occupied center stage in both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. A group of prominent philosophers known as eliminativists argue that advances in cognitive science and neuroscience will ultimately justify a rejection of our folk theory of mind because it gives a radically mistaken account of mental life. In Deconstructing the Mind , distinguished philosopher Stephen Stich, once a leading advocate of eliminativism, offers a bold and compelling reassessment of this view. The book opens with a groundbreaking multi-part essay in which Stich maintains that even if the sciences develop in the ways that eliminativists foresee, none of the arguments for ontological elimination are tenable. Succeeding essays explore folk psychology in more detail, develop a systematic critique of simulation theory, and counter widespread concern about naturalizing psychological properties.
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
232 pages, Paperback
First published July 18, 1996
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About the author
Stephen P. Stich
21 books8 followersStephen P. Stich is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, as well as an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and moral psychology.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 22, 2024
A COGNITIVE PHILOSOPHER CHANGES HIS MIND ABOUT "ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM"
Stephen Stich (born 1943) is a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University; he has also written books such as 'From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief,' 'Collected Papers, Volume 1: Mind and Language, 1972-2010,' etc.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1996 book, "Developing and defending a philosophical position is a bit like weaving an intricate piece of fabric. When things go well, each strand of the argument adds strength and support to the others, and gradually interesting patterns begin to emerge. But when things go poorly... it sometimes happens that the entire fabric begins to unravel. A little gap becomes a big gap, and soon there is nothing left at all.
"This book is about the unraveling of a philosophical position... The doctrine in question is sometimes called eliminative materialism... In its strongest form, eliminativism claims that beliefs, desires, and many of the other mental states that we allude to in predicting, explaining, and describing each other DO NOT EXIST." (Pg. 3) He adds, "So if the goal of eliminativism is to provide a deconstruction of the mind, one goal of this chapter is to deconstruct that deconstruction." (Pg. 9)
He says, "I don't think that the brief and rather breezy discussion of the previous section comes at all close to establishing my skeptical thesis about normative naturalism. Indeed, the only way to make a persuasive case for (or against) my claim that the naturalist strategy will not produce principles of ontological inference that are powerful enough to assess eliminativist arguments is to do lots of careful historical research and lots of detailed cognitive modeling. And that's a project for scholars with skills very different from mine." (Pg. 71) He adds, "I am not a thoroughgoing skeptic about the normative naturalist strategy---quite to the contrary. I think that over the centuries scientists have developed an increasingly sophisticated and powerful set of strategies for going about the business of reasoning and inquiry in various domains and that conveying these strategies from teachers to students is one of the fundamental functions of education..." (Pg. 73)
He summarizes, "The thesis we have been defending in this paper is that connectionist models of a certain sort are incompatible with the propositional modularity embedded in commonsense psychology. The connectionist models in question are those which are offered as models at the COGNITIVE level and in which the encoding of information is widely distributed and subsymbolic. In such models... there are no discrete, semantically interpretable states that play a causal role in come cognitive episodes but not others. Thus, there is in these models nothing with which the propositional attitudes of commonsense psychology can plausibly be identified." (Pg. 112)
He admits in conclusion, "I don't pretend for a moment that I can deliver the goods. But, of course, I don't have to defend my picture in detail in order to make the point that the naturalists' project might well turn out to be impossible... On the picture I am sketching, the naturalist has gotten things exactly backward. What 'legitimates' certain properties ... and makes others scientifically suspect is that the former, but not the latter, are invoked in successful scientific theories... On my view, the jury is still out on the question of whether successful science can be constructed using intentional categories." (Pg. 199)
This book may interest students of the philosophy of mind.
Stephen Stich (born 1943) is a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University; he has also written books such as 'From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief,' 'Collected Papers, Volume 1: Mind and Language, 1972-2010,' etc.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1996 book, "Developing and defending a philosophical position is a bit like weaving an intricate piece of fabric. When things go well, each strand of the argument adds strength and support to the others, and gradually interesting patterns begin to emerge. But when things go poorly... it sometimes happens that the entire fabric begins to unravel. A little gap becomes a big gap, and soon there is nothing left at all.
"This book is about the unraveling of a philosophical position... The doctrine in question is sometimes called eliminative materialism... In its strongest form, eliminativism claims that beliefs, desires, and many of the other mental states that we allude to in predicting, explaining, and describing each other DO NOT EXIST." (Pg. 3) He adds, "So if the goal of eliminativism is to provide a deconstruction of the mind, one goal of this chapter is to deconstruct that deconstruction." (Pg. 9)
He says, "I don't think that the brief and rather breezy discussion of the previous section comes at all close to establishing my skeptical thesis about normative naturalism. Indeed, the only way to make a persuasive case for (or against) my claim that the naturalist strategy will not produce principles of ontological inference that are powerful enough to assess eliminativist arguments is to do lots of careful historical research and lots of detailed cognitive modeling. And that's a project for scholars with skills very different from mine." (Pg. 71) He adds, "I am not a thoroughgoing skeptic about the normative naturalist strategy---quite to the contrary. I think that over the centuries scientists have developed an increasingly sophisticated and powerful set of strategies for going about the business of reasoning and inquiry in various domains and that conveying these strategies from teachers to students is one of the fundamental functions of education..." (Pg. 73)
He summarizes, "The thesis we have been defending in this paper is that connectionist models of a certain sort are incompatible with the propositional modularity embedded in commonsense psychology. The connectionist models in question are those which are offered as models at the COGNITIVE level and in which the encoding of information is widely distributed and subsymbolic. In such models... there are no discrete, semantically interpretable states that play a causal role in come cognitive episodes but not others. Thus, there is in these models nothing with which the propositional attitudes of commonsense psychology can plausibly be identified." (Pg. 112)
He admits in conclusion, "I don't pretend for a moment that I can deliver the goods. But, of course, I don't have to defend my picture in detail in order to make the point that the naturalists' project might well turn out to be impossible... On the picture I am sketching, the naturalist has gotten things exactly backward. What 'legitimates' certain properties ... and makes others scientifically suspect is that the former, but not the latter, are invoked in successful scientific theories... On my view, the jury is still out on the question of whether successful science can be constructed using intentional categories." (Pg. 199)
This book may interest students of the philosophy of mind.
September 9, 2025
The best challenge to Eliminative Materialism I've seen, if maybe only because I don't think I get it :)
To me, ultimately not a gamechanger. The interesting feature of EM for me was the idea that our basic way of speaking about the mind can be wrong to begin with - I never much cared for how exactly that ends up being the case (reference objection) or why exactly we should believe it (obviously, since normativity). My thesis regarding EM would have always been "it's well possible that folk psychology is not ideally useful or true, and depending on your aims perhaps it might be worth talking about the mind differently" and this is not challenged by the book, as far as I understood it.
Why the 3*s? Because this book is essentially 100 pages of good argumentation followed by random essays the guy attached to make it a book. The rest was very useless, could have just been a paper.
To me, ultimately not a gamechanger. The interesting feature of EM for me was the idea that our basic way of speaking about the mind can be wrong to begin with - I never much cared for how exactly that ends up being the case (reference objection) or why exactly we should believe it (obviously, since normativity). My thesis regarding EM would have always been "it's well possible that folk psychology is not ideally useful or true, and depending on your aims perhaps it might be worth talking about the mind differently" and this is not challenged by the book, as far as I understood it.
Why the 3*s? Because this book is essentially 100 pages of good argumentation followed by random essays the guy attached to make it a book. The rest was very useless, could have just been a paper.
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December 10, 2025Read the titular essay. Beware of reading your ontology off of your theory of reference
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews