Paul Churchland: Theory

“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness…”

Paul Churchland

is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.
Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

“Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience.”

Paul Churchland

Source: "Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes," 1981, p. 67; As cited in: Paul K. Mose (2002). Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, p. 21

“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness… – is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.”

Paul Churchland

Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

“Seeing our common-sense conceptual framework for mental phenomena as a theory brings a simple and unifying organization to most of the major topics in the philosophy of mind.”

Paul Churchland

Source: "Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes," 1981, p. 68: About "Why folk Psychology is a theory."