Eliminative Materialism with respect to mind is the idea that all psychology is explainable by neurology, and hence that psychology will be eliminated as a science and replaced by mere neurology. Thus, rather than speak of participation in the Eucharist as somehow following from some Christian belief, we speak entirely in terms of neuroscience. Some people, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, are quite convinced that psychological descriptions will be replaced by neurological ones soon enough. To that I respond, keep dreaming...wait...never mind...or...drat...never have certain neural configurations...
Let's try again. I really respond, keep on having that neural activity that will help develop neuroscientific explanations to eliminate psychological ones. Only then will we abandon belief in such meaningless psychobabble...I mean...only then will our neural activity cease to produce psychological explanations for what is really just neural activity. That's what you desire, right? No...wait...that's what your neural activity induces you to explain, right?
Why should I believe this is true? Ah, but there I go again...why should my neural activity bring me to assert the truth of Eliminative Materialism?
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The neural activity of the brain governing the mass of molecules that, as a by-product of other neural activity, has formed the illusion of identity, this identity being that of Maria, has induced said mass of molecules to experience chemical reactions resulting in the meaningless experience dubbed happiness as a result of having read this, the by-product of the neural activity of the brain governing another mass of molecules that has formed the illusion of identity (also through neural activity), this identity being that of Josh.
Once you stop talking about the "Maria," the "Josh," and the "happiness," you will have become a true eliminativist, and truly you will have engaged in ruthless reduction, as opposed to mere reduction. You do desire to be ruthless, don't you?
Even though I defined identity as illusory and happiness as a meaningless experience, both derived from neural activity, I'm still not a ruthless enough reductionist?
You really shouldn't talk about them at all, unless you are just jabbering on in everyday folk-psychobabble. We eliminated them from academic discourse, remember.
Watch that talk of "experience." The next you know you'll be asking what it's like to be a bat!
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