eliminative materialism
ih-LIM-ih-nay-tiv mah-TEER-ee-al-iz-um
ɪˈlɪmɪneɪtɪv məˈtɪəriəlɪzəmListen
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Dictionary meaning
the radical physicalist position that folk psychological categories — beliefs, desires, pains, intentions — do not refer to real entities or processes in the brain and will ultimately be eliminated and replaced by a mature neuroscience that describes mental life entirely in terms of neural processes; associated with Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland, eliminative materialism holds that our common-sense psychological vocabulary is a seriously false theory that fails to carve nature at its joints, much as folk theories of heat, combustion, and disease were superseded by thermodynamics, chemistry, and germ theory rather than being reduced to them
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