What Is Paul M. Churchland's Eliminative Materialism

In Eliminative Materialism by Paul M. Churchland, Churchland explains his belief that folk psychology is a false theory and should be replaced by neuroscience. Churchland instead supports eliminative materialism, which states that folk psychology is a false theory and should be interchanged with neuroscience. Tollefsen alternatively explains that we use folk psychology when we use beliefs and other mental states to groups. Tollefsen explains that we can use folk psychology to predict and explain the behaviors of groups without very much understanding of the brain and how it functions. Paul M. Churchland would respond to Tollefsen by explaining that folk psychology is a skewed representation of our inner state, and that we should instead favor using neuroscience instead of folk psychology to explain and predict the action of groups.

Folk psychology is made up of cognitive abilities and use the concepts such as belief and desire to explain other’s behavior. Folk psychology, “Explain[s] and predict[s] the behavior of agents extremely well without any knowledge of their brain states or what functional state their brain may be realizing.” (Tollefsen 94) Folk psychology can be used to explain how we make sense of others without having any knowledge about what happens in the brain. Folk psychology has been used for thousands of years and has not had any advances in over two-thousand years, and functions without any neuroscience knowledge. We are sometimes often not aware of the inner dynamics of a group and the state of mind of the members. Furthermore, the way we create the mental states of groups and understand groups by their reasons for acting. Folk psychology explains the reasons for acting of