Cartesian Roots of Epiphenomenalist Naturalism: The Thomas H. Huxley Case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48160/18532330me4.127Keywords:
Huxley, Descartes, naturalism, epiphenomenalismAbstract
The author shows the Cartesian reception made by Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), one of the most influential evolutionary scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which has had an enormousimpact on the philosophy of science and mind. The result of this article is giving an account of the Huxley’s philosophical defense of an epiphenomenalist naturalism, which comes to the present day and which owes too much to the work of René Descartes in relation to the mechanical and autonomous constitution of Nature. Huxley, on the contrary, moves away from him in conceiving the brain as the organ of mind and in understanding consciousness as its collateral product.
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