HI Brent,

  I don’t think you are wrong in your sense that eliminative materialists would embrace that. The primary thing about them is that they believe that the language of “physical causation” will be the ultimate ontological/scientific language. The ToK argues that if you look at science what you see is a language of behaviors. Mechanistic materialism is only one way of describing behavioral patterns.

 

  I will say it is confusing in that I think people really are arguing different things with a good overall map. Consider Patricia Churchland was one of the well-known eliminative materialists. I was at a conference and we happened to have lunch and I showed her the ToK and she was “on board  with that”.  My thinking right now is I need to help folks see why “behavior” is the foundational frame for science instead of mechanistic materialism and show why that makes a whole lot of difference in how we think about the world from a scientific perspective.

 

Thanks for your contributions.

Best,
Gregg

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 10:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Blog on Behaviorism v Reductive Physicalism

 

 

Interesting Piece.

Being mostly only ever interested in qualia, I’ve always only thought of “eliminative materialism” as only someone like Dennett who states: “We don’t have qualia it just seems like we do”.  But all this stuff continues to open whole new worlds of understanding.

 

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 10:33 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi List,

  I put up a blog today on Tree of Knowledge’s behaviorist ontology versus a reductive physicalism.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201911/scientifically-say-yes-behavior-no-physicalism

 

Best,

Gregg

 

___________________________________________

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)

Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.

Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge

 

Check out my webpage at:

www.gregghenriques.com

 

 

 

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