Post by Mariana Castro on May 12, 2015 17:17:01 GMT
Eliminative materialism is the philosophical view that mental states don't exist and that all things are only physical and can only be explained by physical means. That is they can only be explained through physics, chemistry, biology and so on. According to the "Eliminative Materialism: God Did it? Part One" video, eliminative materialism is used as a process by scientist to understand consciousness. If things can not be explained by mathematics, then it attempted to be explained by physics and chemistry down to other disciplines.
Furthermore, eliminative materialism believes that our belief in the existence of mental phenomena just like the old beliefs in obsolete theories such as the world being flat or the sun revolving around the earth. An example of eliminative materialism is the theory that the universe was controlled by rational numbers which was professed by Pythagoras (History Of Western Philosophy Part 1/3, YouTube). In the Greek era, these beliefs were considered true and were laws of the cosmos, but later on they were debunked and other theories were developed by hard sciences. For this reason, eliminative materialist believe that our beliefs are simply always untrue or nonexistent because they always change. Another example is the belief that air, water and fire were the basic substances that made up everything in the universe. Later, we find that matter is made up of elements like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen which are made up of atoms. And now we have quantum physics and string theory that state that everything is made of strings. In the future, it may be discovered that the earth is made of nothing but thoughts. Essentially, none of the advances throughout history have really truly explained the universe because they are constantly proven to be wrong. So we know thing.
Furthermore, eliminative materialism believes that our belief in the existence of mental phenomena just like the old beliefs in obsolete theories such as the world being flat or the sun revolving around the earth. An example of eliminative materialism is the theory that the universe was controlled by rational numbers which was professed by Pythagoras (History Of Western Philosophy Part 1/3, YouTube). In the Greek era, these beliefs were considered true and were laws of the cosmos, but later on they were debunked and other theories were developed by hard sciences. For this reason, eliminative materialist believe that our beliefs are simply always untrue or nonexistent because they always change. Another example is the belief that air, water and fire were the basic substances that made up everything in the universe. Later, we find that matter is made up of elements like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen which are made up of atoms. And now we have quantum physics and string theory that state that everything is made of strings. In the future, it may be discovered that the earth is made of nothing but thoughts. Essentially, none of the advances throughout history have really truly explained the universe because they are constantly proven to be wrong. So we know thing.