#holbach

[fragmentalia]

[hicapacity]

[3s3va3l]

Eliminative Materialism, 

Eliminative materialism

(or eliminativism) is the radical claim that

our ordinary common sense-understanding of the mind is deeply wrong

and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind.

Descartes

famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part,

we can be confident about the content of our own minds.

Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes

on this point, since they challenge the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted.

1. A Brief History

In principle, anyone denying the existence of some type of thing is an eliminativist with regard to that type of thing. Thus, there have been a number of eliminativists about different aspects of human nature in the history of philosophy. For example, hard determinists like Holbach* (1770) are eliminativists with regard to free will because they claim there is no dimension of human psychology to that corresponds to our commonsense notion of freedom.

Similarly, by denying that there is an ego or persisting subject of experience, Hume* (1739) was arguably an eliminativist about the self.

Reductive materialists can be viewed as eliminativists with respect to an immaterial soul. Nevertheless, contemporary eliminative materialism – the sort of eliminativism that denies the existence of specific types of mental states – is a relatively new theory with a very short history.

[cont’d: a brief history]

2. Contemporary Eliminative Materialism

[cont’d]

[quod-quid-erat-esse]

Por lo tanto, estamos obligados a concluir que nuestros pensamientos, reflexiones, manera de ver, de sentir, juzgar y combinar ideas no pueden ser ni voluntarias, ni libres. En una palabra, nuestra alma no es dueña de los movimientos que se producen en ella, ni es capaz de representarse, cuando es necesario, imágenes o ideas que podrían compensar los impulsos que recibe desde fuera. Por eso en la pasión se deja de razonar; la razón es tan difícil de escuchar como en el delirio o en la embriaguez. Los malvados no son más que hombres borrachos o delirantes; razonan sólo cuando la tranquilidad se ha restablecido en su máquina y, entonces, las ideas tardías que se presentan en sus espíritus les dejan ver las consecuencias de sus acciones y producen en ellos la alteración que se ha designado con los nombres de vergüenza, arrepentimiento y remordimiento

Barón D'Holbach "Sistema de la Naturaleza"

[libriaco]

L’arrampicata

Certi mortali sono affetti da una rigidità di spirito, un difetto di elasticità nei lombi, una mancanza di flessibilità nella cervicale; quest'infelice funzionamento impedisce loro di perferzionarsi nell'arte di strisciare e li rende incapaci di fare carriera.

P. H. D. von Holbach [Essai sur l'art de ramper, à l'usage des courtisans, 1790], Saggio sull'arte di strisciare ad uso dei Cortigiani, Il Melangolo, 2009 [Trad. E. Schiano di Pepe]

[black-canvas]

Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.

   Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

[mydearestcatastrophe-blog]

Determination of the Will

"Man's life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant." Baron Holbach; The Systems of Nature

[divineirony]

How is it that we have succeeded in persuading reasonable beings that the thing most impossible to understand was the most essential for them? It is because they were greatly frightened; it is because when men are kept in fear they cease to reason; it is because they have been expressly enjoined to distrust their reason. When the brain is troubled, we believe everything and examine nothing.