Henri Bergsons and Maurice Merleau-Pontys critique to the materialistic approaches to the mind-body problem

Abstract

In this paper we present Henri Bergsons and Maurice Merleau-Pontys critique to the materialistic approaches to the mind-body problem. These approaches are intrinsically connected to the scientific aspirations, inaugurated with modernity, by encompassing all phenomena around us and of unifying the worlds diversity in only one explaining pattern. In a kind of phenomenology of the perceptive act, Bergson tried to overcome the materialistic theses of the relationships between mind and brain. By attaining to the psychophysical parallelism, Bergson showed that perception answers to the needs of the living being. Besides, he approached the relationship between memory and brain, fighting the idea that recollections exhibit a nature such that permits they are stored in the brain mass. On the other hand, in The Structure of Behavior, after his critique of the classical conceptions of the nervous system functioning, and after considering the results of research presenting the brain as the coordinating entity of the behavioral structure, Merleau-Ponty presents his perspective based on the primacy of the perceived world, which in turn is based on the notion of form. We also discuss the philosophical heritage left by Bergson to Merleau-Ponty as well as some of latters critiques to the formers work.