Are Naturalists Materialists?

The Behaviorism of George Herbert Mead

“…This is what Mead was referring to in "Mind Approached Through Behavior" (1936) which held that there were two forms of behaviorism, that of Watson and that of Dewey. Finally, in the 1940s, Dewey, while still wary of introspection, took a more conciliatory attitude towards introspection (Dewey 1942;Dewey et al 1945).…”

Knowing and Learning as Creative Action

“…The first form, which Dewey (1945Dewey ( /1989 calls "brute" or reductive materialism, is the idea that the mental is "nothing but" the physical (p. 112). Here, existence is reducible to purely physical phenomena.…”

“…Here, existence is reducible to purely physical phenomena. Reductive materialism assumes that because red appears when a particular electro-magnetic occurrence takes place, therefore red has the same meaning as "an electro-magnetic vibration having a wave-length of approximately 7100 Angstroms" (Dewey, 1945(Dewey, /1989. The second form of materialism-naturalistic materialism-shares characteristics with, but is different from, reductive materialism.…”

“…To emerge, pain requires a kind of process-relationship that includes a physical circumstance and the interpretive response within transactional experience. Dewey (1945Dewey ( /1989 argues that the crux of the mind/body issue is whether we believe the mental to be "wholly at the beck and call" of (i.e. reducible to) the physical or whether we believe our minds are imported from a supernatural realm (p. 115).…”

“…He asks whether a chemist would argue that water is at the "beck and call" of hydrogen and oxygen. Dewey (1945Dewey ( /1989 says that a chemist would never argue this because the claim is nonsensical. Instead, the chemist: would maintain that the existence of water and its properties is contingent upon the combined presence of certain elements interrelated in definite ways.…”