Taking the trivial doctrine seriously: Functionalism, eliminativism, and materialism

Abstract. Gold & Stoljar's characterization of the trivial doctrine and of its relationships with the radical one misses some differences that may be crucial. The radical doctrine can be read as a derivative of the computational version of functionalism that provides the backbone of current cognitive science and is fundamentally uninter-ested in biology: both doctrines are fundamentally wrong. The synthesis between neurobiology and psychology requires instead that minds be viewed as ontologically primitive, that is, as material properties of functioning bodies. G&S's characterization of the trivial doctrine should therefore be correspondingly modified. Gold & Stoljar (1999; henceforth, G&S) contrast two versions of the neuron doctrine, the claim that scientific understanding of the mind will come from neurobiology. In the trivial version, understanding will require the synthesis of neurobiology and psychology; according to G&S, this reading of the neuron doctrine is uncontroversial and widely accepted in cognitive science. The radical version is instead eliminativist: it can be clearly distinguished, at least in general, from the trivial one, and G&S prove it wrong by showing that precisely the psychological con-cepts it rejects are instead necessary in neurobiology. This picture, however, misses some differences that may be crucial. The backbone of cogni-tive science is currently provided by a doctrine, computational functionalism, that has nothing t