Other Materialists and Positivists

• French Sensationalists--more similar than different to British Empiricists. Both wished to mechanize the study of mind (as Newton had mechanized the study of physics). They emphasized the role of sensation, thus their convenient label.
  • Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)
    • Priest
    • Critic of Cartesian dualism
    • "I move, therefore I am."
    • Physical monist
    • Hedonist theorist, revived interest in Epicurean philosophy
  • Julien de la Mettrie (1709-1751)
    • Medical doctor
    • Materialist, only matter and motion existed
    • L'Homme Machine (Man, a Machine)
    • Continuity of animals and humans (brain size and complexity, education)
    • Hedonistic theory
  • Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780)
    • Priest who became a critic
    • Sensation alone can mold humans
      • The "sentient statue" can smell and remember
      • From those two can come: attention, feeling, love, hate, comparison, retrieval, imagination, dreaming, fear, hope, abstract ideas, duration, and surprise
    • Hedonistic theorist
    • Mind comes from sensation
  • Claude Helvetius (1715-1771)
    • Radical environmentalist
    • Emphasized education
    • Hedonistic theorist
    • Precursor of behaviorism
• Positivists--positivism was related to scientism, the belief that science could provide the answers to all human problems. Positivism avoids dealing with metaphysics and thus grounds its users in the physical world. Logical positivism extended positivism by allowing theoretical 'constructs' to observations.
  • Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
    • Founder of positivism
    • Applied focus on the utility of knowledge
    • Society's three stages: theological, metaphysical, scientific
    • "Sociology"
    • Knowledge = shared empirical observations
    • Hierarchy of sciences (from basic to developed)
      • mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, sociology
    • Science as religion
  • Ernst Mach (1838-1916)
    • Physicist (Mach 1...)
    • Allowed that physical world could only be experienced indirectly
    • Accounted (again) for cognition, but without metaphysics