Abstract
From the Enlightenment to philosophy of mind in the mid-twentieth century, two distinct trajectories can be distinguished, both of which are relevant to our story in different ways: the development of experimental neuroscience, and the gradual recognition that materialist philosophy should concern itself with the status of the brain. If classically, materialism as a thesis about the world was distinct from materialism as a brain-mind theory, some historical cases complicate that distinction, such as the debate on Locke on thinking matter. But nevertheless, it is a very operative distinction (also made by eighteenth-century critics). How do we get from that, to the ‘vulgar materialism’ of the nineteenth century (Vogt, Moleschott, but already Cabanis in 1800), with the idea of the brain secreting thought? And how, from that, to brain-mind reflections in the twentieth century? I can only suggest some pathways …
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Notes
- 1.
Toland (1704), IV, § 7, 139; Collins, Reflections on Mr Clarke’s Second Defence, in Clarke (1738), III, 818. Seventy years later, Priestley reiterates these claims, again as a conceptual point without empirical detail: “I rather think that the whole man is of some uniform composition, and that the property of perception, as well as the other powers that are termed mental, is the result (whether necessary or not) of such an organical structure as that of the brain” (Priestley 1775, xx).
- 2.
(Rather loosely rendering “Qui a guéri le corps, ne doit pas s’inquiéter de l’âme” in the article “Physiologie”: Anon., 1765, 538a).
- 3.
Ménuret de Chambaud (1765), 718b.
- 4.
D’Holbach (1774), I, XCIV, 92.
- 5.
Lamy, Explication (1681), ch. VII (conclusion), in Lamy (1996), 176. He adds, in a technical flourish which seems rather dated now, that he is using ‘mind’ primarily for “the portion of the Soul contained in the nerves,” and ‘soul’ for the “spirits contained in the brain” (ibid.).
- 6.
Hemsterhuis/Diderot (1772/1964), 277.
- 7.
- 8.
Du Bois-Reymond (1874), 31–32 (emphasis mine).
- 9.
Métraux (2000), 164.
- 10.
But most of the time – in Diderot, Lamarck, and Cabanis, amongst others – the brain was not presented as an ontologically problematic organ, but rather as one organ amongst others. As Métraux notes, Lamarck describes mental phenomena as “exclusively organic, and hence entirely physical” (Lamarck 1988, 166). For Diderot, who is not always consistent on the issue, “Le cerveau est un organe comme un autre” (Éléments de physiologie and “Fragments dont on n’a pu retrouver la véritable place,” in Diderot 1975-, XVII, 240, 467).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Hegel (1905), II, 252.
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Wolfe, C.T. (2016). Naturalization, Localization: A Remark on Brains and the Posterity of the Enlightenment. In: Materialism: A Historico-Philosophical Introduction. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24820-2_6
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