Pierre Bayle on the possibility of a coherent materialism

What is it about?

Pierre Bayle shows that, in order to avoid devastating objections, materialism should postulate that the property of thinking does not emerge from certain material combinations but is by nature present everywhere in matter – a hypothesis recently revived and labelled “panpsychism.” There are reasons for entertaining the idea that Bayle actually considers this enhanced materialism to be sound, as it might use the same line of defence that Bayle outlined for Stratonism. However, this would lead to a view similar to Locke’s superaddition theory, and I contend that such cannot be Bayle’s position because he embraces the Cartesian principle that each substance has only one principal attribute. As a consequence, for Bayle any system that conjoins thought with matter in the same simple substance is untenable. By contrast, this makes clear which kinds of metaphysics and epistemology modern panpsychists need to adopt in order to defend their view.

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