Eliminativism: the Problem of Representation and Carnapian Metametaphysics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a new reading of eliminative materialism concerning propositional attitudes, along the lines of broadly understood Carnapian metametaphysics. According to the proposed reading, eliminativism should be seen as a normative metalinguistic claim that we should dispose of terms like Bbeliefs^and associated linguistic rules. It will be argued that such reading allows a significant philosophical problem which besets eliminativism to be solved: the problem of representation. The general idea of the problem of representation, which is taken to be one of the aspects of the celebrated Bcognitive suicide^issue, is that an eliminativist has a problem with maintaining that her position represents reality. It will be argued that on the Carnapian reading an eliminativist might put forward a negative ontological claim without the need to invoke any representationalistic notions.

Der Physikalismus als Lösung des Bewusstseinsproblems

“…und schlichtweg keine Widerspiegelung in einer finalen physikalischen Theorie erleben wird. Sie 17 Siehe jedoch die Spielart des Eliminativismus vonPoslajko (2019), der darunter explizit keine ontologische These versteht, sondern eine linguistische These. Sein linguistischer Eliminativismus läuft zur normativen Forderung hinaus, dass wir das mentale Vokabular nicht mehr verwenden sollen.…”