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3 "Re-thinking Hobbes's Materialistic and Mechanistic Projects " ROBERTARP I. Introduction In this paper I shall attempt to show that, despite his intention to formulate a thoroughly reductionistic and mechanistic philosophical system, Hobbes actu- ally fails on both accounts. First, I argue that Hobbes fails to be a consistent ontological reductionist, but his attempts at applying methodological reduction- ism fair much better. Then, I argue that Hobbes fails to be a strict mechanist since at times he seems to implicitly endorse the very Aristotelian/Scholastic categories he has explicitly rejected. Again, Hobbes's methodology appears mechanistic given its Galilean scope; however, his metaphysical views betray his views concerning the physics of the universe. In the end I maintain that such inconsistency, oversight and contradiction in his system is to be expected since Hobbes was, at once, philosopher and philosophical theologian existing on the cusp of the Scholastic and Modem worlds. II. Hobbes's materialistic project A. Materialism, Mechanism, Ontology and Methodology At the outset it is important to define and distinguish versions of materialism and mechanism.' A materialist thinks that all aspects of reality can be account- ed for in material terms. In the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy Simon Blackburn defines materialism as the "view that the world is entirely composed of matter."2 Thomas Spragens saddles Hobbes with materialism when he claims ' I would like to thank the following persons for their valued criticisms, insights and support in the formulationof this paper: Richard Dees, Douglas Jesseph, Jack Marler, George Terzis and Catherine Wilson. 2 Simon Blackburn, The OxfordDictionary of Philosophy.(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996), p. 233. Besides Blackburn's dictionary,there is a plethora of philosophicaldictionar- ies and encyclopediasthat define materialismand mechanism. A good place to begin is with a) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi. (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995)and b) The RoutledgeEncyclopedia of Philosophy,ed. Edward Craig. (London:Routledge, 1998). 3 that Hobbes "thought that the basic constituents of the universe, including nature, life and mind" were simply matter in motion.3 A mechanist tries to give an account of the basic workings of the universe in purely antecedent-conse- quent terms to the exclusion of teleological or finalistic explanations. This was the procedure generally adhered to by the early Modems; witness the philo- sophical systems of Descartes and Bacon with their poignant criticisms of tele- ology and finality found in Aristotle and the Scholastics.4 We can also distinguish between an ontological materialist and a method- ological materialist. An ontological materialist holds that reality is fundamen- tally material thereby ruling out the existence of anything supernatural or men- tal. Feuerbach, as well as Patricia and Paul Churchland are professed ontolog- ical materialists.' On the other hand, a methodological materialist is someone whose attitude, world-view or epistemic tendency is toward a favoring of onto- logical materialism. Generally, methodological materialists will always try to explain away the immaterial or reduce the immaterial to the material as their first epistemic instinct, even though the project continually resists the reduction (indeed, for example, no one to date has successfully or satisfactorily reduced mind to brain). In general contemporary empirical science proceeds according to methodological materialism and so do, for example, Functionalists in the Philosophy of Mind 6 I Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., The Politics of Motion (Lexington:University Press of Kentucky, 1973), p. 68. 1 Blackburn, The OxfordDictionary of Philosophy,op. cit., p. 236. Blackburn's definition of mechanism is the "belief that everything can be explained in ways modeled on 17`"-century conceptionsof scientificexplanation." Thinkers in the 1 7'h-centurysaw the universe as either one huge machine made up of a variety of inter-workingparts, or a set of machines interact- ing with one another. For a general discussion of the relationshipbetween materialism and mechanism during the early Modem endeavor, see the readings in Soul and Mind: Life and Thought in the SeventeenthCentury, ed. Daniel Garber. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996). See Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writingsof Descartes, trans. Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 202, 248-9 where he claims that a thinker should focus on efficient causes since "only God knows final causes." Also, see Bacon's Novum Organum, trans. Urbach and Gibson. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1994), Bk. II, Aphorisms2-3, pp. 134- 5 where he claims that final causes are not applicableto anything but the will, and that focus- ing on such causes has been the source of "confusion" in the Ancient and Medieval periods. 5 For example, see Luddwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot. (New York: Harper, 1957); Patricia Churchland,"The Co-EvolutionaryResearch Ideology," in Readings in Philosophyand CognitiveScience, ed. Al Goldman. (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1993), pp. 745-59; Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). 6 See, for example, Daniel C. Dennett, ConsciousnessExplained. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991); Kosslyn and Koenig, WetMind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience.(New York:The Free Press, 1992). 4 .
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