Materialism's eternal return: recurrent patterns of materialistic explanations of mental phenomena

Abstract

Since the new developments of neurotechnologies for studying the brain functioning in the second half of twentieth century, a new wave of enthusiasm for materialistic explanations of mental phenomena has invaded philosophy and psychology departments worldwide. The culmination of all this was the so-called "decade of brain" in the 1990s. However, a closer examination of the arguments presented by some of these new materialists reveals recurrent patterns of analogies and metaphors, besides an old rhetorical strategy of appealing to a distant future, in which all the problems will be solved. This paper intends to show that these new forms of materialism repeat discursive strategies of older versions of materialism, especially the French materialism of the 18th century and the German materialism of the 19th century. Finally, an interpretation for materialism's eternal return will be offered.