The Qualia Trap: Why Eliminativism undermines itself

The Qualia Trap: Why Eliminativism undermines itself

Arthur Haswell, BA 

Eliminativism is a school of thought in philosophy of mind claiming there is nothing worth saying about consciousness besides what can be discovered via neuroscience or other physical sciences. While it remains fringe in academia, it has found significant popularity online as a way of circumventing the hard problem of consciousness.

The core tenet of this approach is that experiential concepts used in philosophy of mind, such as “qualia” or “phenomenal consciousness,” are crucially flawed. The eliminativist argues that we should discard these terms entirely. By doing so, we avoid the challenge of untangling the “hard problem” of consciousness, which is the problem of accounting for experience and subjectivity in a purely physical reality. Unfortunately, this position necessarily undermines itself.

The eliminativist is not merely like someone shouting “Don’t speak English in this room”; that would be a simple pragmatic contradiction. It is worse. The position is analogous to someone shouting, “Don’t use the English language in this room, because it is not sufficiently sensical here.”

If I shout “Don’t speak English” in English, I have disobeyed my own command, but my command might still be understood. But if I shout “Don’t speak English because it is nonsensical,” my very ability to convey that instruction using English falsifies the premise of the instruction. To articulate the ban, the eliminativist must use the very resource they declare too confused or nonsensical. This essay will demonstrate why this contradiction is inescapable.