O Holbach's materialism and contemporary neurobiology: some reflections

Abstract

This article seeks to show the links between the thoughts of the eighteenth-century materialist philosopher, Baron d’Holbach (particularly his ideas concerning the brain, present in his magnum opus, The System of Nature), and the scientific observations involving reflections on human behaviour by contemporary neuroscientist António Damásio. From these connections between the ideas of the d’Holbach and Damásio, our goal is to instigate curiosity about the materialist eighteenth-century conception of thought and to emphasize the role played by the brain in the processing of ideas and mental contents, mainly concerning reflections about morals and human behavior. By doing so, we also intend to highlight d’Holbach’s legacy, given that, although he expressed ideas on the subject that were ahead of his time, he still remains at the margins of academic philosophical research about the Enlightenment and is hardly ever mentioned by contemporary neuroscientists.