THE “SELF-DEFEATING” OBJECTION

2 THE “SELF-DEFEATING” OBJECTION

I am unsure who originated this one. Rudder-Baker (1987) has certainly pressed it home at greatest length, but many others have urged it in many forms, beginning with the audience at the very first public presentation of my 1981 paper, in draft, in 1980, at the University of Ottawa. A purely a priori objection, it dismisses EM as incoherent on grounds that, in arguing, stating, or embracing its case, it must presuppose the integrity of the very conceptual framework it proposes to eliminate. Consider, for example, the evident conflict between the elimmativist’s apparent belief that FP is false, and his concurrent claim that there are no beliefs.

These and many other “pragmatic paradoxes” do indeed attend the eliminativist’s current position. But they signal only the depth and farreaching

178 POSTSCRIPT Assume Q (the framework of FP assumptions); argue legitimately from Q and

other empirical premises to the conclusion that not-Q and then conclude not-Q by the principle of reductio ad absurdum. (We get (Q →not-Q) by conditional proof, which reduces to (not-Q v not-Q), which reduces to (not-Q).)

If the “self-defeating” objection were correct in this instance, it would signal a blanket refutation of all formal reductios, because they all “presuppose what they are trying to deny.” Such a demonstration would be a major contribution to logic, and not just to the philosophy of mind. A more balanced opinion, I suggest, is that this venerable principle of argument is threatened neither in general, nor in the case at issue.

Let us concede then, or even insist, that current FP permits no coherent or tension-free denial of itself within its own theoretical vocabulary. As we have just seen, this buys it no proof against empirical criticism. Moreover, a new psychological framework—appropriately grounded in computational neuroscience, perhaps—need have no such limitation where the coherent denial of FP is concerned. We need only construct it, and move in. We can then express criticisms of FP that are entirely free of internal conflicts. This was the aim of EM in the first place. (For a particularly penetrating analysis of this objection by

a non-eliminativist, see Devitt 1990). The overdrawn character of this objection shows itself in one further respect:

if it were legitimate, it could be elsewhere employed to prove far too much. To see this, suppose that humankind had used—for understanding what we now call “cognition”—a conceptual framework quite different from and much less successful than our current FP. (At some point in our distant evolutionary past, we must have done so.) It uses “gruntal attitudes,” let us suppose, rather than prepositional attitudes.

Suppose now that some forward-looking group sets about to develop a new and better conception, one that shapes up in content and structure rather like our current FP. Contemplating the shortcomings of their older conception, and the explanatory promise of the very different new framework, these people (let us call them “eliminative intentionalists”) suggest that the older framework be dismissed entirely and the new one be adopted, even in the marketplace.

But alas! A “self-defeating” objection precisely parallel to that observed above can here be constructed that will (a) block, as strictly incoherent, any attempt to reject the older framework, and (b) demand of any new cognitive theory that it

be consistent with the older theory already in place. Ironically, that relocated Rudder-Baker objection would then be blocking the adoption of our current propositional-attitude FP!

In fact, such an objection could be mounted to block the displacement of any conceptual framework for cognition whatever, since the same awkwardness— formulating a rejection of a framework within the framework itself—will arise whatever conception of cognition one happens to be using. The objection here at

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protect, against radical overthrow, any framework that enjoys the irrelevant distinction of being the framework in use at that time.