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Ramsey on eliminativism and self‐refutationVictor Reppert aa Department of Philosophy , Phoenix College , 1202 W. Thomas Road, Phoenix, Arizona,85008, USAPublished online: 12 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Victor Reppert (1991) Ramsey on eliminativism and self‐refutation, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal ofPhilosophy, 34:4, 499-508, DOI: 10.1080/00201749108602272

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Inquiry, 34, 499-508

Discussion

Ramsey on Eliminativism andSelf-refutation

Victor ReppertPhoenix College

This paper concerns the argument that eliminative materialism is self-referentiallyincoherent. William Ramsey has argued that even if the conditional, 'If there areno beliefs, then there are no assertions' is true, this should not embarrass theeliminativist; what this would show is that not being asserted is not much of anepistemic vice. Following J. L. Mackie, I argue that the only way to put forwardthe propositional content of a thesis is through assertion. So Ramsey's responserequires the eliminativist to reject a propositional model of knowledge entirely. Insome recent writings, Paul Churchland offers access to this alternative by rejectingpropositional epistemology in favor of a kind of pragmatism that shifts the focusaway from propositions and their truth-value. But this expedient has unfavorableimplications for the privileged status which serious science has in the eliminativistscheme of thinking. Thus the difficulties posed for eliminative materialism by theself-refutation argument are not adequately met by Ramsey's response.

I. IntroductionWhat if it turns out that the best scientific theory of cognition, operatingwithin physicalist constraints, fails to contain any reference to the familiarpropositional attitudes such as belief and desire? Several philosophers haveenvisioned that the best theory of cognition, from the point of view ofstandard scientific virtues, might be developed from neuroscience andconnectionist AI, and that this neuro/connectionist theory will not provideus with the sort of naturalization of belief and desire that we find, say,in Fodor or in traditional functionalism. Should this transpire, differentphilosophers will draw different morals. Dualists will say that what thisshows is that beliefs and desires are (or require) soul states as well as brainstates. Some philosophers will no doubt attempt to justify propositionalattitude psychology without either scientific vindication or appeal to soul-states. But eliminative materialists such as Stephen Stich and Paul Church-land insist that if the best physicalist theory of cognition doesn't posit beliefsand desires, then the correct moral to draw is that beliefs and desires shouldgo the way of phlogiston and ether.1 On their view, propositional attitude

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psychology, or, as they call it, folk psychology, is an empirical theory, and,as such, has to be judged by the same criteria with which one judges othertheories in science. Propositional attitude psychology has no warrant overand above that which it has qua scientific theory, and if a scientificallybetter theory were to be presented that contains no reference to beliefs,then that theory, along with its ontological implications, must be acceptedin place of propositional attitude psychology.

Does propositional attitude psychology have a source of warrant thatwould enable it to survive cognitive science's failure to 'vindicate' it byembedding propositional attitudes into a physicalistic theory of cognition?It has often been suggested, most notably of late by Lynne Rudder Baker,2

that propositional attitude psychology indeed has such a source of warrantin the self-refuting character of eliminativism. The idea is this. Any claimabout the world is a claim that a certain state of the world obtains, but itis more besides. It conversationally implies, as it were, that the claimerknows that this state of the world obtains, or, at the very least, is rightabout this state of the world obtaining. A self-refuting thesis, or at least itsnon-indexical content, is true in some possible world. But self-refutationarguments try to show that their target theses are theses that are incom-patible with anyone knowing them, or even with anyone being right aboutthem.

Take, for example, Putnam's argument against the claim that we arebrains in vats. The argument doesn't suppose that there couldn't be crea-tures in this unfortunate condition. What it purports to show is thatcreatures who are vat-brains could not be right in saying that they arebrains in vats, because if they were brains in vats, the expression 'we arebrains in vats' would not mean what it does mean to us, who, presumably,are not vat-brains. Hence vat-brains can never rightly represent the factthat they are vat-brains.3

Another self-refuting thesis would be the thesis that the universe consistsof nothing but a turnip and whipped cream. There is not much to be saidfor this claim empirically, of course, but it is logically possible that theworld be this way. What is not logically possible, however, is that the turnipor the whipped cream be right about the world they live in. Turnips andwhipped cream are not the sorts of things that can be right about anything.Of course, it is possible for someone to think wrongly that he is a turnip,but that is another matter.

Various versions of the self-refutation argument can be put forwardagainst eliminative materialism. One might try to argue that belief isnecessary for knowledge, and that therefore eliminative materialism issomething that no one could know. The most popular line of argument isthe argument that if eliminativism is true, it cannot be asserted. Accordingto this argument, in order for something to be asserted, it must be produced

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Eliminativism and Self-refutation 501

by someone who has at least one propositional attitude. The argument thencontends that in order for eliminative materialism to be an epistemicallyvirtuous thesis, it must be asserted by someone. It follows from this thateither eliminative materialism is false, or it lacks the minimal epistemicvirtue of being asserted. Unless something has been asserted, it has notreally been put before us for our consideration, and as such it is somethingthat no one can be right about.

One way of responding to this argument is to contend that having apropositional attitude is not a necessary condition for assertion. Accordingto this objection, having propositional attitudes would be a condition forassertion only if folk psychology were true, but one cannot presuppose thetruth of the thesis at issue without begging the question. Sentences do notrequire the existence of propositional attitudes in order to be meaningful,and one can assert a meaningful sentence without having any propositionalattitudes. One can be right about eliminative materialism without believingthat eliminative materialism is true; all one needs is to assert that eliminativematerialism is true, and for eliminative materialism to be true.4

This is an interesting, but, to my mind, an unpersuasive response. Itseems to me that examination of the way in which we use the term 'assertion'indicates that we distinguish asserters from non-asserters, in part, bydistinguishing those who have propositional attitudes from those who don't.The concept of sincere assertion cannot, on my view, be separated fromthe concept of belief. But that is a subject for another occasion. Here Iwish to consider the significantly different objections put forward byWilliam Ramsey in his provocative and interesting paper 'Where Does theSelf-Refutation Objection Take Us?'5

II. Ramsey's ResponseAlthough Ramsey is sympathetic to the above line of objection,6 he doesnot attempt to defend eliminativism against self-refutation by arguing thateliminativism can be asserted even though no one believes it. Rather, heassumes for the sake of argument, that the claim 'If there are no prop-ositional attitudes, then nothing is asserted', is true, and even necessarilytrue. What he then does is question how this thesis can serve as a premisein an argument that is significantly different from other, empirically based,arguments against eliminative materialism.

Because the formal structure of the self-refutation objection is not usuallyclarified by its advocates, Ramsey offers two construals of the argument,the modus tollens construal and the modus ponens construal. According tothe tollens construal, the argument starts by saying that if there are nobeliefs then there are no assertions, and then proceeds to point out that,

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since the eliminative materialist has asserted her thesis, eliminative materi-alism cannot be true. I think Ramsey is on target in his criticism of theself-refutation argument, conceived of as modus tollens. Unless the self-refutation advocate can provide a warrant for the claim that the eliminativisthas made an assertion that is independent of the warrant we have forsupposing that anyone else has made an assertion, then it seems clear thatwe don't have a self-refutation argument, nor do we have an argumentthat is interestingly different from the standard empirical defenses ofpropositional attitude psychology.7 It is no more obvious that the eli-minative materialist has asserted her thesis than that the anti-eliminativisthas asserted that common-sense psychology is true, and if we could appealto the obvious to refute eliminative materialism, we wouldn't need a self-refutation argument.

What the self-refutationist is arguing, or should be arguing, is that theunasserted status of eliminative materialism (in worlds in which it is true)has disastrous epistemological implications. Ramsey presents two versionsof the self-refutation argument construed as modus ponens, and the secondof these does make this sort of claim.

(PI) If there are no propositional attitudes, then no thesis is asserted.(P2) There are no propositional attitudes.(P3) Therefore, no thesis is asserted.(P4) Therefore, eliminativism - premise (2), isn't asserted.(P5) Therefore, eliminativism cannot be interpreted.8

Ramsey points out that this argument, unlike others he has considered,is a genuine self-refutation argument and does not reduce to other, moremundane, objections to eliminativism. However, he maintains that thisargument is not successful as a criticism of eliminative materialism.

But can this objection be made to work? After all, eliminativists do not claimthat their own position is exempt from counterintuitive consequences. And whyshould they? If the eliminativist isn't bothered by the claim that no thesis is asserted(or interpreted), I see little reason why she should be bothered by the claim thather own thesis isn't asserted either. If eliminativism entails that nothing is asserted(or interpreted), then on this score it is no worse off than any other theory orstatement - including the theories and statements of the defenders of folkpsychology. If it turns out that being asserted is a virtue that no thesis possesses,then it is hard to see how being unasserted could be much of a vice. Thus, this lastconstrual of self-refutationist objection doesn't really buy the advocates of folkpsychology anything that can be used against the eliminativist. Although it appearsthat eliminativism entails its own downfall, under more careful consideration itturns out that what eliminativism really entails is that such a failing wouldn't be afailing, since the alleged shortcoming would be shared by all theories.9

It is at this point that I part company with Ramsey. It just doesn't followfrom the fact that an alleged failing is a failing that all theses would share,given the truth of the thesis in question, that the thesis entails that this

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Eliminativism and Self-refutation 503

failing is not a genuine failing. There are possible worlds in which no oneis right about anything. The turnip world described above is one of them.The fact that, in the turnip world, nothing is asserted means that in such aworld no one is right about being a turnip, and no one is wrong about notbeing a turnip. The turnip would be cognitively better off if it knew that itwas a turnip, but alas, it is not so fortunate. If this world is a world in whichno one asserts anything, then the self-refutationist wants to claim that PaulChurchland is no more right about the way the world is than is Jerry Fodor.Popular opinion would have it that these two have asserted contradictoryclaims, but if eliminativism and the implication that nothing is asserted aretrue, then this is not so. Why should this be more disturbing to Churchlandthan to Fodor? Because if eliminativism is false, then Fodor can be rightabout it, since, in a Fodor world, there are assertions. Nothing in theargument shows that Fodor cannot justifiedly, truly, and fourth-con-ditionedly believe that there are beliefs. But Churchland can't be right ifeliminativism is true, and he can't be right if eliminativism is false either.If it follows from eliminative materialism that all of us are cognitively outof luck, then this does constitute a reason for assuming the falsity ofeliminative materialism.

In a well-known paper, J. L. Mackie distinguishes three kinds of self-refutation. A self-contradictory thesis is logically self-refuting. A thesis ispragmatically self-refuting if it is contrary to the way in which it happensto be presented. Thus if I scream 'I never speak loudly', I am sayingsomething in a way that is contradicted by the way I happen to be sayingit, though if I say it in some other way I would not be refuting myself atall. A thesis is operationally self-refuting just in case the thesis is such thatthe thesis denies what is logically required for it to be asserted.10 If, asRamsey has conceded for the sake of argument, belief is logically requiredfor assertion, then eliminative materialism is operationally self-refutingaccording to Mackie's definition. Why does Mackie suppose that personscommitted to operationally self-refuting theses should be bothered by thisfact? Because

. . . where we find operational self-refutation there is no other way in which theprecise item can be coherently presented. The only way of presenting the item isto 'coherently assert' it, and since this involves something that conflicts with theitem itself, this precise item cannot be presented at all. (My emphasis)11

Thus, if Ramsey's. (PJ) is true, then we can produce a self-refutationargument against eliminative materialism that shows that either eliminativematerialism is false, or else the precise item, eliminative materialism, hasnot been presented. Either it is wrong, or no one can publicly identify itspropositional content. This, I think, shows that something more is involvedhere than a conflict with intuition.

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III. Non-propositional Models of Cognitive 'Rightness'In the foregoing I have presupposed that to be right about something is aprepositional affair; it is a matter of believing true propositions, or ofasserting true propositions, and that the 'precise item', eliminative materi-alism, is to be defined propositionally. Perhaps Ramsey can point out thatthe eliminativist need not think of commitment to her thesis as commitmentto a proposition. There is evidence in Churchland's writings that, for him,the vindication of eliminativism should not be conceived of in this way. Heis willing, for example, to treat truth itself as a dispensable element of folktheorizing.

If we are ever to understand the dynamics of cognitive activity, therefore, we mayhave to reconceive our basic unit of cognition as something other than the sentenceor proposition, and reconceive its virtue as something other than truth. . .. Thenotion of truth, after all, is but the central element in a clutch of descriptive andnormative theories (folk psychology, folk epistemology, folk semantics, classicallogic), and we can expect conceptual progress here as anywhere else.12

In 'On the Nature of Theories' Churchland offers us a non-sententialmodel of theories, and argues that it is not necessary that a theory bestateable. Theories, for Churchland, might be described as strategieswhereby brain networks interact with the world they inhabit. Churchlanddoesn't necessarily say that truth, or assertion, or any other traditionalepistemic concern won't play a role in the ultimate naturalized epistem-ology. But he removes these from the bottom line, and advocates anaturalistic and pluralistic pragmatism.13

Perhaps, then Churchland is not, in the last analysis, conceiving ofhimself as offering us a proposition to be committed to or not committedto, in so far as we have good reason to think it true. What he is offeringus, instead, is a strategy of employing, wherever possible, concepts andmodels of cognition drawn from neuroscience and connectionism ratherthan from common sense, with a view to eventually making a completereplacement, at least where belief and desire are concerned. And therationale for this is not some question of getting the absolute truth, butrather this model will give us a variety of advantages, in the laboratory andout.

IV. Pragmatic Difficulties for EliminativismThe self-referential critic has argued that eliminative materialism cannotbe both true and asserted. Ramsey's response is to suggest that the elimin-ativist can accept this without embarrassment, since in an eliminativistworld no other doctrine would be asserted either, and it would follow from

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Eliminativism and Self-refutation 505

this that being unasserted is no great vice. The critic can reply that ifeliminativism has not been asserted, then its semantic content has not beenidentified by anyone. The eliminativist, following up on some remarks byChurchland, is not bothered by this either, she simply takes it to showthat cognition shouldn't be thought of as a prepositional affair anyway.Eliminative materialism should be thought of, in the last analysis, as apattern or strategy our brains can use to get what we want in the world.

Are these strategems sufficient to remove the worries raised by the self-refutation argument? I think not. First of all, it should be noted that weare inclined to suppose, unless persuaded otherwise, that the epistemicenterprise is a matter of pursuing truth. Suppose we begin, as most of usdo, in pursuit of truth. We then discover.that eliminative materialismpossesses a reasonable share of epistemic virtues. But the self-refutationargument convinces us that propositional knowledge is impossible if elimin-ativism is true. Now, if the reasons for being an eliminative materialistwere overwhelmingly strong, then it might be reasonable to accept some'hard' epistemological consequences and reconsider our commitment to atruth-centered account of epistemic virtue. But since this is not so, is it notjust as reasonable to respond to this situation by suggesting that, since truthis not to be got from the eliminativists, we do best to look elsewhere?

What this means is that if the Ramsey-Churchland response to the self-refutation argument sketched above is the best that eliminativists have tooffer, then the self-refutation argument is a successful argument for anyperson who thinks we have better reason to accept a truth-based epis-temology than to accept eliminative materialism. Of course, the elimin-ativist may attempt, on grounds independent of eliminativism, toundermine such a person's commitment to truth as the paradigm epistemicvalue.14 But unless we presuppose the value of truth to begin with, suchattempts will be a matter of persuading, not proving.

For if there is such a thing as objective epistemic value, then truth ispretty much the only game in town. If we dethrone truth as our highestepistemic goal, it seems that we remove the givenness of our epistemicnorms. It is traditional to think of truth as the goal constitutive of theepistemic point of view. One can pursue effective manipulation of theworld, or comfort and happiness for oneself or one's fellows, or sainthood,or fame and glory, or reproductive fitness, and it may be nobler to pursuesome of these rather than truth. But, or so we are inclined to think, ourpurely epistemic success ought to be graded in terms of the truth-value ofthe propositions to which we commit ourselves, and the adequacy of themethods by which we choose these propositions. Churchland supposes thatdethroning truth will result in our raising, not lowering, our epistemicstandards.15 But there is no objective 'higher' or 'lower' that can beappealed to where purely epistemic norms are concerned, once truth is

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dethroned. Churchland may, of course, suppose that the epistemic stan-dards he defends are more admirable than those of truth. But he cannotexpect all others to agree.

What is more, the shift to pragmatism and the dethronement of truthcarries with it some implications that may be unwelcome to the elimin-ativist's project. To begin with, eliminative materialism involves the privi-leging of serious science as the correct way of describing and explainingthe world. But is it true across the board that, for practical purposes,serious scientific ways of describing and explaining the world are moreuseful than other ways? This, I contend, is highly implausible.

It is quite true that often science provides us, through technology, withways of improving the way in which we get along in everyday life. Butthere are good practical reasons for not requiring scientific accuracy of oureveryday talk. Science looks for strict laws, where common sense is contentwith good, though exceptionable generalizations. For practical purposeswe recognize all sorts of 'kinds' such as tables and chairs, that are notemployed within serious science.

This becomes even more obvious when, in the name of serious science,we are asked to stop thinking in terms of beliefs and desires. Propositionalattitude psychology underlies much of morality, of social science, of thelaw, and of our ordinary social interactions. Giving it up would surely bea great hardship. An example from Baker dramatizes this point:

Suppose I dialed your phone number and said 'Would you join us for dinner at ourhouse on Saturday at 7:00?' You replied 'Yes'. On Saturday, I act in the way Ishould act if I believed that you were coining to dinner. But if neither of us hadany beliefs, intentions, or other states attributed via 'that'-clauses, it would beamazing if I actually prepared dinner for you and if you actually showed up.16

An eliminativist who has rejected the epistemic value of truth cannotconsistently say what we should otherwise expect her to say: that this is a'merely pragmatic' justification of folk psychology and that it does nothingto support folk psychology's claims to truth. For, on her view, all jus-tification is, in the last analysis, pragmatic justification, and truth is not tobe sought or found.

Philosophers who have believed in privileging serious science have gen-erally done so on the ground that the scientific picture of the world is true,while non-scientific pictures are not. This is the claim made by Sellars forthe Scientific Image as opposed to the Manifest Image,17 and this is theclaim made in Quine's famous Double Standard. To quote Quine:

If we are limning the true and ultimate structure of reality, the canonical schemefoT us is the austere scheme that knows no quotation but direct quotation and nopropositional attitudes but only the physical constitution and behavior oforganisms.18

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Eliminativism and Self-refutation 507

But Churchland's view seems to imply that there is no such thing as 'limningthe true and ultimate structure of reality'. If so, the ontological eliminationof prepositional attitudes must find a different basis. The elimination mustbe grounded on practical considerations, and on these grounds it has a toughrow to hoe, for the practical utility of propositional attitude psychology isenormous indeed.

The dethronement of truth opens up the possibility of a much looserform of pragmatism; a non-propositionalist cognitive science may be thebest way to go, propositional attitude attributions are perfectly justified inother contexts, and there just isn't any question of limning the true andultimate structure of reality. This may not be acceptable to eliminativistslike Churchland, but one would like to know why not.

Thus, it seems that in dethroning truth, and in asking us to abandonthe propositional model of knowledge, eliminative materialists may findthemselves taking on some fresh difficulties to replace those they haveescaped. The pragmatist turn does not, therefore, guarantee that the issuesraised by the self-refutation argument will simply go away.

VI. ConclusionSo, to return to the question asked in the title of Ramsey's paper, wheredoes the self-refutation argument take us? At the very least, it forceseliminativists and other philosophers of mind to consider seriously thelogical and epistemic consequences of the elimination of propositionalattitudes. If it does no more than force theorists to reflect more seriouslyon the logic of elimination, this should render it worthy of attention. Atbest, the argument shows a deep absurdity in eliminative materialism, and,what is more, an absurdity in the idea of considering standard scientificvirtues and vices exclusively when theorizing about the mind. Eliminativematerialism is a possible upshot of a certain sort of strong methodologicalnaturalism in the philosophy of mind; one that finds its expression in theclaim that folk psychology is an empirical theory that must be weighed inthe balance by the same criteria one uses for other kinds of scientifictheories. The self-refutation argument raises a range of conceptual, non-empirical issues that must be dealt with if naturalism is followed to thisextreme conclusion. I submit that these issues need to be dealt with moreeffectively than they have so far.19

NOTES

1 P. M. Churchland, 'Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes', Journal ofPhilosophy 78 (1981), pp. 67-90; S. P. Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science:

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508 Victor Reppert

The Case Against Belief (Cambridge: MIT/Bradford, 1983), passim; P. S. Churchland,Neurophilosophy (Cambridge: MIT/Bradford, 1986), passim; W. Ramsey, S. P. Stich, andJ. Garon, 'Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future of Folk Psychology', in J.Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives IV, pp. 499-533.

2 Baker's presentations of the self-refutation argument are found in L. R. Baker, 'TheThreat of Cognitive Suicide', ch. 7 of Saving Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1987), pp. 134-48; and 'Cognitive Suicide', in D. H. Grimm and D. Merill (eds), Contentsof Thought (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1988), pp. 1-18. Other versions ofthe argument appear in R. G. Swinburne, 'Review of Scientific Realism and the Plasticityof Mind', Philosophy 55 (1980), pp. 273-5; G. Madell, 'Neurophilosophy: A PrincipledSceptic's Response', Inquiry 29 (1986), pp. 153-68; and 'Physicalism and the Content ofThought', Inquiry 32 (1989), pp. 107-21; A. Stroll, 'Wittgenstein and Folk Psychology',in Philosophy of Law, Politics and Society, Proceedings of the 12th International WittgensteinSymposium (Vienna: Holder-Pichler-Tempsley, 1988), pp. 264-70; H. E. Allison, 'Kant'sRefutation of Materialism', The Monist 79 (1989), pp. 203-6.

3 Hilary Putnam, 'Brains in a Vat', ch. 1 of Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1-21.

4 This response appears in nascent form in the well-known analogy between folk psychologyand vitalist biology found in P. M. Churchland, 'Eliminative Materialism and the Prop-ositional Attitudes', op. cit., pp. 89-90, and Matter and Consciousness, op. cit., p. 48.It is best developed by A. D . Cling in 'Eliminative Materialism and Self-referentialInconsistency', Philosophical Studies 56 (July 1989), pp. 53-75.

5 W. Ramsey, 'Where Does the Self-Refutation Objection Take Us?' Inquiry 33 (1991), pp.453-65.

6 Ibid., pp. 465, n. 20.7 Ibid., pp. 457-9.8 Ibid., p. 460.9 Ibid., pp. 461-2.

10 3. L. Mackie, 'Self-Refutation: A Formal Analysis', Philosophical Quarterly 14 (July 1964),pp. 189-203.

11 Ibid., p. 197.12 P. M. Churchland, 'On the Ontological Status of Observables', ch. 8 of A Neuro-

computational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science (Cambridge:MIT/Bradford, 1989), pp. 150-1.

13 P. M. Churchland, 'On the Nature of Theories', ch. 9 in A Neurocomputational Perspective,op. cit., pp. 153-96.

14 One such attempt is found in S. P. Stich, 'Do We Really Care Whether Our Beliefs areTrue', ch. 5 in The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge: MIT/Bradford, 1990), pp. 101-27.

15 P. M. Churchland, 'Ontological Status', op. cit., p. 150.16 L. R. Baker, Saving Belief, op. cit., p. 130.17 Wilfrid Sellars, 'Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man', in Science Perception and

Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 1-41.18 W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), p. 221.19 I am grateful to William Ramsey, William Hasker, and Bernard Kobes for helpful comments

and discussion.

Received 15 March 1991

Victor Reppert, Department of Philosophy, Phoenix College, 1202 W. Thomas Road,Phoenix, Arizona 85008, USA

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