Editing Paul Feyerabend (section)

====Eliminative materialism====
Along with a number of mid-20th century philosophers (most notably, [[Wilfrid Sellars]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], and [[Richard Rorty]]), Feyerabend was influential in the development of [[eliminative materialism]], a radical position in the [[philosophy of mind]]. On some definitions, eliminative materialism holds that all that exists are material processes and, therefore, our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind ("[[folk psychology]]") is false. It is described by a modern proponent, Paul Churchland, as follows:
 
<blockquote> "Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed [[neuroscience]]."<ref>{{cite book | last=Churchland | first=Paul M. | date=January 1990 | title=A neurocomputational perspective: the nature of mind and the structure of science | location=Cambridge, MA | publisher=The MIT Press | isbn=978-0-262-03151-6 | url=https://archive.org/details/neurocomputation0000chur }}</ref> </blockquote>

Feyerabend wrote on eliminative materialism in three short papers published in the early sixties.<ref name="Feyerabend 1962 28–97"/><ref>{{cite journal | jstor=20123984 | last=Feyerabend | first=Paul | date=1963a | title=Materialism and the mind-body problem | journal=Review of Metaphysics | volume=17 | issue=1 | pages=49–66}}</ref> The most common interpretation of these papers is that he was an early forerunner of eliminative materialism. This was a major influence on Patricia and Paul Churchland. As Keeley observes,<ref>{{cite book | first=Brian L. | last=Keeley | editor-first=Brian L. | editor-last=Keeley | date=2006 | title=Paul Churchland | chapter=Introduction: Becoming Paul Churchland | publisher=Cambridge University Press | pages=13 | isbn=978-0-521-83011-9}}</ref> "[Paul Churchland] has spent much of his career carrying the Feyerabend mantle forward." More recent scholarship claims that Feyerabend was never an eliminative materialist and merely aimed to show that common criticisms against eliminative materialism were methodologically faulty. Specifically, on this interpretation, while Feyerabend defended eliminative materialism from arguments from acquaintance and our intuitive understanding of the mind but did not explicitly claim that eliminative materialism was true. In doing so, Feyerabend leaves open the possibility that [[Mind–body dualism|dualism]] is true but this would have to be shown through scientific arguments rather than philosophical stipulation.<ref name=Shaw20213>{{cite journal|last=Shaw |first=Jamie|title= Feyerabend Never was an Eliminative Materialist: Feyerabend's Meta-Philosophy and the Mind-Body Problem |journal= J. Shaw & K. Bschir (Eds). Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Papers|date=2021| pages= 114–131|doi=10.1017/9781108575102.007 |s2cid=233705860 }}</ref> In any case, Feyerabend explicitly disavows materialism in his later philosophical writings.