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Cartesian materialism

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In philosophy, Cartesian materialism is the idea that, somewhere in the brain, there is a preferred set of data that corresponds to our view of the world. It was first defined in contrast to Cartesian dualism, from which it inititially differed by rejecting the notion of a non-physical soul as the place where consciousness occurs.

Cartesian materialism can refer to the general idea that consciousness is "realized in the physical materials of the brain". (O'Brien and Opie (1999), see also W. Teed Rockwell (2005)) It can also refer to the more specific idea that conscious exists in a limited area of the brain, much as in Descartes' original conception. By this definition, Cartesian materialism is "the view that there is a crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of arrival equals the order of "presentation" in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious of". (Dennett 1991, p.107)

Controversies and criticisms

In addition to disagreement over how the term should be defined, the extent to which philosophers and scientists are committed to the "limited area" version is contested, with some saying this view is "held by no one currently working in cognitive science or the philosophy of mind" (O'Brien & Opie), while others say it "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly and implicitly" (Antonio Damasio).

Cartesian materialism is associated with indirect realism and is generally attacked by direct realists, although it should be noted that Vygotskian behaviourism and other proposals that consciousness arises from reflexes in the brain might be encompassed by Cartesian materialism.

Many eliminativists, such as Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett, are opposed to Cartesian materialism. In Consciousness Explained (1991), Dennett proposes a multiple drafts model of consciousness as an alternative to the "limited-area" version, focusing on what he sees as its critical weakness through his metaphor of the "Cartesian theater".

Rockwell also rejects Cartesian materialism, proposing that the mind should be identified not only with the brain but the rest of the body as it acts in its environment. Radical behaviourists also tend to adopt this viewpoint as do proponents of the Gibsonian strand of ecological psychology.

Cartesian materialists such as O'Brien and Opie (1999) argue that Dennett's characterization of the concept is incorrect and that his analysis of the Phi phenomenon can be accommodated in the Cartesian materialist paradigm.

History

According to Marx and Engels (1845), "Mechanical French materialism adopted Descartes' physics in opposition to his metaphysics. His followers were by profession anti-metaphysicians, i.e., physicists."

They further trace the history thus:

This school begins with the physician Le Roy, reaches its zenith with the physician Cabanis, and the physician La Mettrie is its centre. Descartes was still living when Le Roy, like La Mettrie in the eighteenth century, transposed the Cartesian structure of the animal to the human soul and declared that the soul is a modus of the body and ideas are mechanical motions. Le Roy even thought Descartes had kept his real opinion secret. Descartes protested. At the end of the eighteenth century Cabanis perfected Cartesian materialism in his treatise: Rapport du physique et du moral de 1'homme.[48]

See also

References

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