These include John Searle’s argument about rule-following and algorithms, and an argument against causal theories of intentionality independently developed by Karl Popper and Hilary Putnam. In the book, I discuss several arguments against computationalism and other attempted materialist explanations of thought. MacDonald then says that “It is worthwhile adding that so-called ‘eliminative materialism’ is not as widely supported as Feser’s use of it suggests.” But in my book I wrote:įew materialists are eliminative materialists it is very definitely a minority view, and most materialists are happy to acknowledge the obvious, viz. Hence MacDonald’s quotation leaves the false impression that I have fundamentally mischaracterized eliminative materialism. This is no small mistake, since eliminative materialism, at least in some of its versions, does not try to explain thought but rather denies the existence of thought. The “whole point of the theory,” as Feser says, “… is supposed to show how thought can be a purely material process.” (243)īut the sentence MacDonald quotes from my book refers, not to eliminative materialism, but to computationalist theories of the mind.
Now, probably most of you have never heard of eliminative materialism, but it is all the rage in some philosophical/cognitive science circles. MacDonald’s latest effort succeeds only in providing yet further evidence for this charge. I have said that MacDonald can be acquitted of the charge of grave intellectual dishonesty only on pain of conviction for gross incompetence, and I provided ample evidence in my previous post. It is not, for reasons I will get to presently.) (To be sure, he thinks this nastiness is justified by the polemical tone of my book and by my aggressive response to his nastiness. A slightly chastened MacDonald has now himself admitted (in what he says will be his final word on my book) that he “was not comfortable with conclusions” he had drawn after his first attempt to deal with the substance of my arguments, that he has “misunderstood” at least some of those arguments, and that his contemptible Himmler comparison “was perhaps over the top.” Yet he commends to us his final feeble effort to respond to my arguments, still appears to cling to for the most part to his earlier criticisms, and retracts none of the nastiness he has relentlessly directed towards me personally. If there is any lingering doubt, the present post will dispel it. That Eric MacDonald’s criticisms of my book The Last Superstition are devoid of any merit whatsoever is clear from the evidence adduced in the two posts I have devoted to him already ( here and here ).
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