Vs. "cognitive suicide" arguments
"Cognitive suicide" arguments are the most striking and/but (chez me) by far the weakest arguments against Eliminative Materialism. I begin with a double caveat: First, there cannot be anything conceptually wrong with EM itself, for until very, very recently in the history of the cosmos and of our planet, EM was simply and plainly true; there had never been any propositional attitudes anywhere at all. Second, unless Analytical Behaviorism is true, there cannot be anything conceptually wrong with even the far stronger suggestion that EM is true despite all observable human behavior's being as it is. All that can be claimed is that if assertion, communication and the like conceptually require propositional attitudes, then EM cannot, consistently with itself, be asserted or communicated. But the latter conditional is cheerfully embraced by the EMist, who can either reject its antecedent or accept its consequent--or both.
The EMist has two further replies: (i) S/he
is entitled to a reductio. S/he assumes meaningfulness and all that
may be entailed by it as a provisional supposition, in the refutation of
folk psychology: Assume folk psychology's truth and we can derive a contradiction.
There is nothing the least bit unusual or suspect about that. (ii)
There are sources of truths other than propositional attitudes. Perhaps
a new sort of proto- and/or biosemantics, say based on what Churchland
and Churchland (1983) called "calibrational content" or on Churchland (1989)'s
notion of "prototype activation," affords the truth of EM without anyone's
ever having had a propositional attitude--though probably "truth" in the
new sense will have to apply to items other than propositions or sentences.