But maybe arguing yourself into non-existence in this sense, and then forgetting about yourself entirely, taking the stance that you never existed in the first place in this "mental" sense, can have huge practical use for a country that is so materialistic, so focused on the external world, extremely successful at dealing with the external world on the global scale.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 8:17 pmI don't see anything particularly american or pragmatist about eliminative materialism. I can't see giving up the useful terms used around mind and mental phenomena being something most pragmatists would be attracted to. They are pretty damn effective terms in so many contexts and since a pragmatist isn't beholden to substance monism, for example, or other relavant ontological stances, being a pragmatist, it would be odd if there was much of this belief or lack of belief amongst pragmatists.
There are certainly many things to be critical about in U.S. culture, but some resistance to talking about mental states, feelings, what's on their minds, intentiosl, motivations, desires, dreams, fantasies, the imagination...
really doesn't seem like a tendency amongst Americans. And certainly not compared to other cultures who are more reticent - for good and for ill.
Dealing with a literally existing mind could just be a distraction to that. It gets in the way, it complicates and muddies things, it's impractical, it would force people to reconsider some of their actions etc. Waste of time and energy, simplicity is faster more useful when dealing with the external world.
So mind, a literally existing thing, is made purely third-person, asbtract and de-realized, and talked about metaphorically only, when necessary. And all this is done by the mind too, ironically.