Towards a Critical Materialism

Abstract

For more than a decade there has taken place an intensive discussion in Anglo-American philosophy on what may be characterized as a materialist approach to the Mind-Body problem. More specifically, the discussion has centered around the question, “Can sensations be reduced to brain-events or brain-processes?” or “Can psychological events be identical with physical events?”¹ This present paper is a critique of much of this discussion, not because it is materialist but because it represents a systematically inadequate materialism. My critique will proceed, first, from a characterization of the Problematik to which this recent materialism addresses itself; then, to a discussion of the historical and social contexts in which philosophical problems arise, and specifically, the contexts of the mind-body problem. This raises the question of how to address oneself to a philosophical problem, and in particular to the problem of a materialist resolution of the mind-body problem. Finally, I will counterpose what I call critical materialism to the contemporary forms of what I call analytical materialism, in a discussion of the question of the identity and the materiality of mental events.