La Mettrie

1
La Mettrie

• Lecture 3

2
Spiritualism vs Materialism

• Spiritualism (Vitalism)
• Descartes, Christian tradition
• Mind or Soul is immaterial
• Distinct from Body (res extensa)
• God-given
• Mind Res cogitans
• Innate ideas
• What I can know with certainty is that I think.

• Materialism
• Ancients Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius
• Matter and void constitute all that exists
• Contents of world matter
• Problems
• Soul does it exist?
• Thought how is it possible?
• Motion how does it occur?
• God does He exist?

3
Descartes on mind-body relation

• Having posited a dualist view of the human being,
  Descartes writes in Discourse on Method
• for even the mind depends so greatly upon the
  temperament and on the disposition of the organs
  of the body that, were it possible to find some
  means to make men generally more wise and
  competent than they have been up until now, I
  believe that one should look to medicine to find
  this means (pt. 6).

4
Key Metaphor the machine

• A clock or watch Descartes animal-machine,
  purely mechanical
• For La Mettrie, model for the human being and
  animals
• The body is nothing but a clock (31)
• Man is only an animalmade up of springs which
  all wind each other up (31)
• This model raises as many questions as it
  answers how do these arise?
• Thought
• Emotion, feeling, e.g. of remorse
• Morality.

5
Nature of Man/Mind

• Iatromechanist School of medicine
• Problem of mind problem of physics
• Irritable muscles
• Effects of stimuli on mind drugs, sleep, foods
• Psychic events from organic causes
• Psychology branch of mathematical physics.

6
Problem of life and motion

• Problem of motion how does matter initiate
  movement?
• Vitalism (Spiritualism) vs Mechanism
• Soul as source life force for traditionalists
• What is source for mechanists?
• Diderots answer heat La Mettrie irritability

7
States of soul (mind)

• Always correlated to those of body.

8
Irritability Hypothesis

• Background 18th c. Swiss anatomist, Albrecht von
  Haller, theorized muscular irritability
• Haller had accused La Mettrie of plagiarism
• La Mettrie had omitted Hallers name from trans.
  of Boerhaaves Institutiones rei medicae
• Yet La Mettrie dedicated Man Machine to Haller
• La Mettrie sees it as key to mystery of life
• Haller and his associates were appalled because
  of La Mettries notorious views.

9
Irritability, cont.

• Why key to mystery of life?
• Role of Mechanical stimuli on muscles
• Given the slightest principle of movement,
  animate bodies will have everything they need to
  move, feel, think, repent and, in a word, behave
  in the physical sphere and in the moral sphere
  which depends on it (26).
• Examples palpitating flesh after death, muscle
  retraction, regeneration of polyps, peristalsis
• Irritable nature of brain
• Enables it to coordinate and direct whole machine
• Thought arises as a property of matter, like
  electricity
• Locke thought is but a faculty of sensation,
  which is physical.

10
Human vs Animal

• Animals superior to humans in many specific roles
• Self-sufficient at a younger age
• Reproduce younger
• Therefore nature made us to be beneath the
  animals (18)
• Natural law in animals as well the lion who
  refused to devour his benefactor (19).
• Man is not moulded from a more precious clay
  (20).
• We are veritable moles in the field of nature
  (37)
• there is nothing vile about matter 37)

11
Freedom vs Necessity

• Dualism saw man as composite of two incompatible
  substances
• Materialism tended toward determinismby physical
  conditions
• All phenomena are ruled by physical necessity
• La Mettrie evades this issue
• Man mind and body together

12
La Mettries Atheism

• Key religious doctrine immateriality of soul
• Materialists posited material soul
• the soul is merely a vain term of which we have
  no idea and which a good mind should use only to
  refer to that part of us which thinks (26).
• Notion of God beyond our analytical powers
• Excludes traditional doctrines
• Special Creation man and animals on continuum
• Finalism or final causes in nature

13
Summation

• La Mettrie showed way out of vitalist-mechanist
  dilemma false problem
• Mechanism as science of vital phenomena
• i.e. biology, experimental psychology, cognitive
  science
• Biologist mechanist and vitalist
• Chemistry is missing b/c still poorly understood
• Life, consciousness, thought and will depend on
  organic functions.

14
Diderot, DAlemberts Dream

• Materialist work, remained unpublished for a long
  time due to its controversial content
• Reduces phenomena previously understood as
  mental, spiritual to purely material causes
• Life is due to motion, which generates HEAT
  (chicken egg p. 158).
• Revolt against conventional morality
• Chastity is the real evil against nature (p.
  227), causes insanity (229)
• masturbation and homosexuality harm no one and
  should not be forbidden,

15
DAlemberts Dream, cont.

• How inorganic (non-living) becomes organic
  (living) flesh out of marble
• Marble is ground up
• Mixed with soil
• From which we derive food
• Animal reproduction mechanical key role of
  heat
• Tentative theory of evolution
• Diderots materialism is also vitalist
  sensibilité present in all matter.

16
DAlemberts Dream

• Look at this egg with it you can overthrow al
  the schools of theology and all the churches in
  the world. What is this egg? An insensitive
  mass before the germ is put into itHow does this
  mass evolve into a new organization, into
  sensitivity, into life? Through heat. What will
  generate heat in it? Motion (158).

17
DAlemberts Dream

• And will you maintain, with Descartes, that it
  is an imitating machine, pure and
  simple?...philosophers will answer that if it is
  a machine you are one too! If, however, you
  admit that the only difference between you and an
  animal is one of organization, you will be
  showing sense and reasonfrom an inert
  substance. subjected to heat and motion, you
  will get sensitivity, life, memory,
  consciousness, passons, thought (159).

18
Question Background

• La Mettrie maintained that the diverse states of
  the soul are always correlative with those of the
  body (97).
• Considering a new born infant and a chimpanzee,
  the new born infant has very low cognitive
  capacity and cannot recognizes himself in the
  mirror, whereas the chimpanzee can calculate
  simple mathematics and is more intelligent than
  the infant.
• Referring to La Mettries proposal, the infants
  soul correlates with his body (brain), which is
  not yet mature and fully developed at this stage.
  Whereas after 20 years he grows into a man and
  becomes very brilliant.

19
Question

• 1. Is it fair and appropriate to compare the soul
  of a human and an animal? 2. How can we account
  for the development of the human soul? 3. The
  embryo develops into a fetus and becomes a baby
  after birth. Where can we point specifically to
  claim that the soul exists in the body? 4. How
  would La Mettrie interpret the human unconscious
  mind, which cannot be directly accessible to
  ordinary introspection?