“Man the Machine” (hard determinism) - Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789)
Determinism
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Determinism: is the view that every event has a cause, and thus everything
Baron d’Holbach
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For the
Encyclopedie,
Holbach authored and translated a large number of articles on
topics such as politics religion, chemistry and mineralogy.
Atheism
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If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that
fancy enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that
French Materialism
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Denied the existence of a deity.
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Denied evidence of all a priori arguments.
Man = Machine
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All the motion of his machine springs as a necessary consequence from his primitive
impulse
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
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Argues that man is simply a machine, subject to the laws of motion like any mechanism
of eighteenth-century science.
Mind = Brain (Holbach)
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“The will…is a modification of the brain” (132).
Laws of Nature
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This note was uploaded on 02/06/2011 for the course PHIL 102 taught by Professor Peter during the Spring '07 term at San Diego State.
- Spring '07
- peter
- Philosophy
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