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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.

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."

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". An insight into Dennett's idea of the mind is to be found on pages 407-408 of Consciousness Explained:

"It seemed to him, according to the text, as if his mind - his visual field - were filled with intricate details of gold-green buds and wiggling branches, but although this is how it seemed this was an illusion. No such "plenum" ever came into his mind; the plenum remained out in the world where it it didn't have to be represented, but could just be. When we marvel, in those moments of heightened self-consciousness, at the glorious richness of our conscious experience, the richness we marvel at is actually the richness of the world outside, in all its ravishing detail. It does not "enter" our conscious minds, but is simply available"

So Dennett defines "mind" as a thing that does not contain the direct objects of perception. He is a Direct Realist. For Dennett "mind" is solely the processes in conscious experience. Dennett's objection is to a particular sort of Cartesian materialism that he himself has defined. Dennett objects to a form of Representationalism, especially indirect realism where the contents of conscious perceptual experience are held to be in the brain as some form of virtual reality that is instantaneously apprehended.

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

• Philosophical terminology