Where does the self‐refutation objection take us?

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 33 (4):453-65 (1990)
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Abstract

Eliminative materialism is the position that common?sense psychology is false and that beliefs and desires, like witches and demons, do not exist. One of the most popular criticisms of this view is that it is self?refuting or, in some sense, incoherent. Hence, it is often claimed that eliminativism is not only implausible, but necessarily false. Below, I assess the merits of this objection and find it seriously wanting. I argue that the self?refutation objection is (at best) a misleading reformulation of much more mundane objections to eliminativism and that, contrary to its advocates? endorsements, it adds nothing of genuine interest to the debate over the existence of prepositional attitudes

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Citations of this work

Eliminative materialism.William Ramsey - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Yes, Eliminative Materialism Is Self‐Defeating.Jim Slagle - 2019 - Philosophical Investigations 43 (3):199-213.
Ramsey on eliminativism and self‐refutation.Victor Reppert - 1991 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 34 (4):499-508.
Pain is Mechanism.Simon van Rysewyk - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Tasmania

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