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mind-body problem.
Materialism is a philosophical derivative of monism that postulates the exclusive
existence of matter as the elemental foundation of reality (Bermdez &
McPherson, 2006). Epistemological materialism is closely related to naturalism
the presupposition that physical laws, and not metaphysical mechanisms,
operate within the universe, empiricismthe belief that knowledge arises
primarily from sensory experience, and positivismthe conviction that
scientific study should be confined to the treatment of sense-data, and as such
proposes the synonymy of mind and brain (Bermdez & McPherson, 2006).
Material responses to the mind-body problem are contemporarily deemed
explanatorily powerful as they rely on a perceptively basic belief, identity theory:
the intuitive notion that for something to happen in the mind, something must
happen in the braina position conspicuously corroborated by the effects of
consciousness-altering physiological phenomena such as drug use, brain
damage, and sleep (Vaitl et al., 2013).
Materialist solutions to philosophical problems gained prominence during the Age
of Enlightenment (Bristow, 2011). Hume's Fork (Hume, 2008) laid the
epistemological foundations for modern philosophers who established a
movement that proposed the parameters of proper epistemology as: "Whereof
one cannot speak, there one must remain silent..." (Wittgenstein, Pears &
McGuinness, 2001). In other words, logical positivism postulates that knowledge
is required to be observable to be meaningful, and as such negates the existence
of mind as something which cannot be tested (Kemerling, 2011). Leading on
from these notions, materialist psychologists, such as Watson and Skinner,
designated the common-sense notion of mind as epiphenomenal, in other words
casually impotent, and transcribed the early-psychological concern with
consciousness into the study of empirical observation (Skinner, 1953; Southwell,
2012).
Behaviour, according to behaviourists, is a result of a simple interaction
stimulus-responseand nothing more (Skinner, 1953). This epistemological shift
from the introspection of early psychological study was embraced by researchers
who wished to advance the validity of empirical psychological study (O'Donohue
& Kitchener, 1996). Behaviourist ontology, however, as exemplified in the
'stimulus-response thesis,' relies heavily upon a classically conceived, i.e.,
Newtonian, understanding of physical causality, which has been undermined by
the contemporary preoccupation with quantum mechanics and the transition into
understanding causality in a relativistic, almost virtual, way: matrices of
possibility, the dematerialisation and ambiguity of interaction, and the effect of
observers (O'Donohue & Kitchener, 1996). The frontiers of contemporary physics
pose radical challenges for materialists solutions to the mind-body problem.
In additional to ontological problems, behaviourism raises an existential
question: What is the nature of the self? Behaviourism, however,via the
concept of blank slate, or tabula rasa, does not supply an answer congruent
with the phenomenological unified self-consciousness that seems qualitatively
different than the sense of self delineated by behaviourists (Parkin, 2014). Hume,
a precursor to philosophical behaviourism, forthright espouses the view of a
fragmented ego, and postulates that the intuitive unitary self is nothing more
than habituation and the conformity of experience (Hume, 2008). Kantian
transcendental philosophy, a direct reaction to Hume, postulates the existence of
References:
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