Cartesian materialism

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.

Originally Cartesian materialism was defined in the context of Cartesian dualism, being the Cartesian concept of the mind without the non-physical soul, Marx and Engels (1845) consider the early history of Cartesian materialism:

"Mechanical French materialism adopted Descartes’ physics in opposition to his metaphysics. His followers were by profession anti-metaphysicians, i.e., physicists.

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]"

Cartesian materialism can apply to the idea that only a limited area of the brain is the conscious mind or to the general idea that the mind is "realized in the physical materials of the brain" (O'Brien and Opie (1999), see also W. Teed Rockwell (2005), Dennett (1993)).

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 Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland are opposed to Cartesian materialism. In Consciousness Explained (1991), Dennett concentrates on the timing of mental events and offers 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. (p.107)

In his multiple drafts model of consciousness, Dennett argues against this version of Cartesian materialism using his metaphor of the "Cartesian theater". Cartesian materialists such as O'Brien and Opie (1999) argue that Dennett's characterisation of the concept is incorrect and that his analysis of the Phi phenomenon can be accommodated in the Cartesian materialist paradigm.

Intriguingly Dennett (1991b) agrees with Rosenthal's Direct Realist idea that our intuitions reflect how things "really are". 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.

See also

• Consciousness

References

• Daniel C Dennett. (1991), Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown & Co. USA (ISBN 0316180653)
• Dennett, D.C. (1991b). Lovely and suspect qualities. Commentary on David Rosenthal, "The Independence of Consciousness and Sensory Quality" in E. Villanueva, ed., Consciousness, (SOFIA Conference, Buenos Aires), Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 1991
• Dennett, D.C. (1993). The Message is: There is no Medium (reply to Jackson, Rosenthal, Shoemaker & Tye), Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 53, (4), 889-931, Dec. 1993.
• O'Brien, G. & Opie, J. (1999), "A Defence of Cartesian Materialism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59:939-63.
• Rockwell, W. Teed. (2005), Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory, MIT Press (ISBN 0262182475)
• Engels, F and Marx, K. (1845). The Holy Family. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm