Patrizio Proietti
According to Eric Hochstein (see Hochstein, 2016), eliminativism in psychology and neuroscience is based on the assumption that (a) each science has a single right standard to form concepts and (b) all concepts that do not conform to the standard should be eliminated. With the aim of challenging eliminativism and its validity, Hochstein discusses the work of Paul Griffiths (see Griffiths, 2004a, 2004b) as a representative example and considers (a) and (b) its main assumptions. Indeed, the latter author famously argued for the elimination of the concept emotion; however, Griffiths originally thought of his own position as uncommitted to (a) and (b) (Griffiths, 2004b, p.905). Hence, the question I address is the following: does Hochstein rightly attribute (a) and (b) to Griffiths, or is he mistaken?
If Hochstein is right, then not only Griffiths would be incorrectly judging his own argument, but there would be no fundamental distinction between the latter and classic eliminativist arguments, e.g. Paul Churchland’s argument against propositional attitudes (Churchland, 1981, 2009). My contention is that this is not the case: Hochstein is wrong, for (a) and (b) play no role in Griffiths’ argument. Hochstein fails to appreciate that Griffiths’ notion of natural kind is strict enough to warrant the elimination of emotion; but, at the same time, it is broad enough to allow for some degree of pluralism about the categorization of phenomena.
Therefore, I maintain that we should be careful when projecting general assumptions about eliminativism onto particular cases. I agree with Ramsey (Ramsey, 2021, 2024) that glossing over the differences between, e.g., Churchland’s argument and Griffiths’ is a mistake and that pointing it out can prevent confusions and bad generalizations from happening. I believe that my analysis further reinforces that difference and, by doing so, helps avoiding a number of potential negative consequences.
Chair: tba
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SOPhiA 2026 