Part 3

MATERIALISM

Behaviorism, almost the exact polar opposite of dualism, is a weak theory for a couple of reasons. Behaviorist believe that there is no reason to place any real significant time on figuring out the mental state and capacity of a person because all that really matters is the fact that the behavior of this person will tell that story. The biggest problem with this is the fact that there is no room for the interpretation of feelings and sensation. These things that are experience due to various stimuli cannot be denied as having some sort of existence. I present the idea of a rainy day. Someone may have the desire to stay dry in the rain and therefore uses an umbrella. This proves the behaviorist’s theory. But let’s say that this person carries the umbrella but did not have the desire to stay dry. They could be carrying it for a whole other reason. The umbrella could be the last memory of a loved one and their desire to carry it is simply to remember the person and has nothing to do with getting wet. The behaviorist would say that she had a desire to carry the umbrella and the reason that she carries it does not matter. She is exhibiting a particular behavior because of a desire that she has. My rebuttal to this would be that it absolutely matters why she carries the umbrella because the why will affect the behavior. For example, if she were planning to use the umbrella as a weapon as opposed to a sheltering device, her behavior would change. The mere fact that she has the ability to have different behavior outcomes using the same object allows us to draw the conclusion that something must be commanding her behavior and that something must have an innate higher order. If something has an innate higher order, it cannot be overlooked as the behaviorist does. If a king were to send his soldiers into war, would it matter that the king sent them as opposed to them sending themselves? The behaviorist would say no but I would say absolutely. The king cannot be omitted because the king is the cause for the behavior. Without the king there would be no behavior for the behaviorist to analyze!

Eliminative Materialism is the idea that our ideas of sensation and feeling don’t really exist because our ability to experience them are skewed much like those who believed in witches, etcetera. It becomes evident to me that E.M. is more about disproving the other frames of thought than proving itself which lends itself to insecurity within the development of the theory. E.M. wants to completely discard the idea of folk psychology because folk psychology, according to E.M., is primitive and cannot be used to develop a better understanding for the experiences we have. Though this may be true, actively throwing away a theory is just as counter productive as using it. The followers of E.M. lists multiple times in history when new ideas were discovered and old ones replaced but E.M. fails to realize that the old ideas must give rise to the new ones. You can never have a middle or an end before a beginning and so it seems presumptuous for E.M. to assume that the old stuff is wrong so much so that it will be discarded. Since this is the cornerstone premise for E.M. we can disregard any possible potency that this theory may have.