How did P.K. Feyerabend argue for a disappearance form of materialism?
P.K. Feyerabend argued for a "disappearance" form of materialism by rejecting the necessity of reconciling ordinary mentalistic language with physicalist theories. He acknowledged that commonsense introspective reports are inherently immaterialist, but he contended that this does not invalidate materialism.1
Feyerabend compared ordinary mentalistic discourse to the medieval belief that epileptics were "possessed by the devil." He argued that just as identifying demon possession with a specific brain condition effectively asserts that demonic possession does not existâthereby rejecting the medieval conceptual frameworkâwe should similarly "identify" the mind with the brain by rejecting the ordinary mentalistic conceptual scheme entirely. Because he viewed the common mentalistic framework as something to be discarded rather than translated, he felt no obligation to prove its compatibility with a materialist worldview.1