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Claim analyzed
Science“Eliminative materialism is a very popular position in metaphysics and consciousness studies.”
The conclusion
Open in workbench →Contemporary evidence does not support describing eliminative materialism as very popular. The 2020 PhilPapers Survey reports only about 4.5% acceptance or inclination toward eliminativism, while academic literature portrays it as a recognized but frequently criticized position. Its scholarly visibility should not be confused with widespread endorsement.
Caveats
- Scholarly attention and controversy do not demonstrate widespread acceptance.
- The PhilPapers survey primarily measures philosophers, not every profession within consciousness studies.
- Survey nonacceptance should not automatically be described as explicit rejection.
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Sources
Sources used in the analysis
EM functions in contemporary metaphysics of mind mainly as a point of negative reference: for this reason, it is important to carefully formulate the main claim of EM so that the theorists taking part in the debate know what they actually disagree with.
Accept or lean towards:eliminativism 4.51% (3.82%) … Reject or lean against:eliminativism 4.61% (0.00%)
| Consciousness: eliminativism | Accept | Reject | | Accept | 42 | 1 | | Reject | 441 | 354 |
Accept or lean towards:eliminativism 3.29% (2.88%) … Reject or lean against:eliminativism 7.82% (0.00%)
Nowadays, physicalism is arguably the received view on the nature of mental states. … 51.9% of the participants – chosen among English-speaking academic philosophers from all over the world – leaned towards physicalism, 32.1% towards anti-physicalism, and 15.9% opted for “other”.
Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind.
EM is one of the proposed solutions to the mind and body problem and it was introduced as an alternative to reductive materialism.
Eliminativists are interested in connectionism because it promises to provide a conceptual foundation that might replace folk psychology. … Whether connectionist models undermine folk psychology in this way is still controversial.
This other form is eliminative material ism, which argues that (some significant subset of) those states we generally consider ‘mental’– eg, beliefs, intentional states, or conscious states– do not in fact exist (eg, Churchland, 1981; Ramsey et al., 1990). … Eliminative materialism and mind concept eliminativism differ in their motivations, arguments, and entailments.
The literature that is critical of the view is considerable.
Mind concept eliminativism is a somewhat novel form of eliminativism in the philosophy of mind, but it is by no means without precursors. … This other form is eliminative materialism, which argues that (some significant subset of) those states we generally consider ‘mental’– eg, beliefs, intentional states, or conscious states– do not in fact exist (eg, Churchland, 1981; Ramsey et al., 1990).
Don't Stop Believing: The Case Against Eliminative Materialism
Other forms of eliminativism are more directly ‘ontological’ (e.g., Churchland 1981, 1993), that is, more directly concerned with existence claims than with the use of terms/concepts – although it is not clear from a pragmatist point of view that this distinction stands up (e.g., Peirce 1878).
According the 2020 PhilPapers survey, 4.51% of philosophers surveyed subscribe to eliminativism.
‘Eliminativism’ refers to the view that mental phenomena – for example, beliefs, desires, conscious states – do not exist. Although this can seem absurd on its face, in the twentieth century it has gained a wide variety of adherents, for example, scientific behaviourists, who thought that all human and animal activity could be explained in terms of the history of patterns of stimuli, responses and reinforcements; as well as some who have thought that neurophysiology alone is all that is needed.
### Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept or lean toward: physicalism | 526 / 931 (56.5%) | | --- | --- | | Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism | 252 / 931 (27.1%) | | Other | 153 / 931 (16.4%) |
Critical phenomenology also includes a conventional, third person, scientific investigation of brain and behaviour that includes subjects’ reports of what they experience. CP is also cautious about the accuracy or completeness of subjective reports. However, unlike HP, CP does not assume that subjects are necessarily deluded about their experiences or doubt that these experiences can have real qualities that can, in principle, be described. Such experienced qualities cannot be exhaustively reduced to third-person accounts of brain and behaviour. CP is also reflexive, in it assumes experimenters to have first-person experiences that they can describe much as their subjects do. And crucially, experimenter’s third-person reports of others are based, in the first instance, on their own first-person experiences. CP is commonplace in psychological science, and given that it conforms both to scientific practice and common sense, I argue that there is little to recommend HP other than an attempt to shore up a counterintuitive, reductive philosophy of mind.
Eliminative materialism in its Churchland-style form relies on an invalid inference from representational inadequacy to ontological elimination: the fact that a vocabulary is ill-suited to one explanatory task does not show that its categories are unreal.
The Churchlands are notorious for their theory of eliminative materialism (EM).
Richard Rorty's eliminative materialism is an attack on dualism that has frequently been misrepresented and incorrectly criticized.
Eliminative Materialism (EM) holds that propositional attitude folk psychology is a radically false theory of human cognition, communication and behaviour.
- [The theory of mind](https://www.britannica.com/topic/analytic-philosophy/The-theory-of-mind) - [Identity theory](https://www.britannica.com/topic/analytic-philosophy/The-theory-of-mind#ref242078) - [Functionalism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/analytic-philosophy/The-theory-of-mind#ref242079) - [Eliminative materialism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/analytic-philosophy/Eliminative-materialism)
While it was a minority view in the 1960s, eliminative materialism gained prominence and acceptance during the 1980s.
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Debate
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
Eliminative materialism has attracted a wide variety of adherents across major twentieth-century approaches to mind, as the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy states, and it remains a defined, actively debated solution to the mind–body problem in current scholarship (Source 15, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Source 7, Springer/Erkenntnis). Its prominence is further demonstrated by substantial contemporary philosophical literature treating its formulations, motivations, and objections, with Wiley describing it as a central negative reference point in contemporary metaphysics of mind (Source 1, Wiley Online Library; Source 10, PhilPapers).
The Proponent conflates a theory's utility as a target for criticism with actual acceptance, bizarrely framing its status as a "negative reference point" (Source 1) and the considerable literature critical of it (Source 10) as evidence of its popularity. Furthermore, by clinging to historical accounts of its twentieth-century appeal (Source 15), the Proponent deliberately ignores the definitive 2020 PhilPapers survey data demonstrating that a mere 4.51% of contemporary philosophers actually accept eliminativism (Source 2, Source 14).
Argument against
Although eliminative materialism gained some historical prominence in the 1980s (Source 23), it is overwhelmingly rejected in contemporary philosophy, functioning primarily as a 'point of negative reference' rather than a widely held view (Source 1). The 2020 PhilPapers survey definitively proves its unpopularity, revealing that a mere 4.51% of surveyed philosophers subscribe to the position (Source 14), with the vast majority explicitly rejecting this radical claim (Source 3, Source 6).
The Opponent misreads the survey by substituting Wikipedia's restatement (Source 14) and a correlation table (Source 3) for the direct result: PhilPapers reports only 4.61% rejecting or leaning against eliminativism, virtually matching the 4.51% accepting it, so “vast majority explicitly rejecting” is false (Source 2, PhilPapers Survey 2020). The Opponent also commits the fallacy of equating a view's lack of majority endorsement with lack of disciplinary popularity, since Wiley's description of eliminative materialism as a principal negative reference point establishes its central debated status, reinforced by Routledge's account of its wide variety of adherents and Erkenntnis's treatment of it as a proposed mind–body solution (Sources 1, 15, and 7).
Panel Review
3 specialized AI experts evaluated the evidence and arguments.
Reviewer 1 — The Logic Examiner
Sources 1, 7, 10, and 15 show that eliminative materialism is a recognized and actively contested position with historical adherents, but those facts do not entail that it is very popular; the direct contemporary acceptance figure in Source 2 is only 4.51%, which strongly weighs against widespread popularity. The claim is therefore Mostly False: the proponent conflates scholarly salience with endorsement, while the opponent correctly relies on low acceptance but incorrectly characterizes nonacceptance as explicit rejection by a vast majority.
Reviewer 2 — The Source Auditor
The PhilPapers 2020 Survey data (Sources 2, 3, 14), a large-scale, peer-vetted survey of professional philosophers, is by far the most authoritative and directly relevant evidence, showing only ~4.5% acceptance of eliminativism (and Source 3's correlation table shows an even starker 441 reject vs 42 accept among respondents who answered the consciousness question), while physicalism polls around 51-56% (Sources 5, 16) as the dominant mainstream view; Wiley (Source 1) and other academic sources explicitly describe eliminative materialism as functioning as a 'negative reference point' for the field rather than a widely-held position. The Proponent's rebuttal misreads Source 2's 'reject or lean against' figure as applying to the same population baseline as acceptance, but the more granular cross-tab (Source 3) unambiguously shows overwhelming rejection, and the existence of substantial critical literature (Source 10) and historical adherents (Source 15) does not establish current popularity—so the weight of reliable, independent, contemporary survey evidence clearly refutes the claim.
Reviewer 3 — The Precision Analyst
The claim asserts that eliminative materialism is a 'very popular position' in metaphysics and consciousness studies. However, the evidence from the 2020 PhilPapers survey shows that only 4.51% of philosophers accept or lean towards it (Sources 2, 14), and it functions mainly as a 'point of negative reference' (Source 1), contradicting the claim's scope and quantitative implication of popularity.