Ideas in the Brain: The Localization of Memory Traces in the Eighteenth Century

Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Neuroscience

“…Firstly, even if it could be questioned whether Descartes' theory of mind was representational in the sense of postulating representational entities in the mind, he certainly postulated some kind of representations in the body. Thus Descartes refers to "ideas" in their material aspect, as patterns of movement or as traces preserved in the brain (see Kaitaro, 1999). Whether Descartes thought that animals too could be said to have representations need not concern us here (see Gaukroger, 2000), but it is evident that in so far as human beings are 23 Technological Metaphors and the Anatomy of Representations in Eighteenth-Century French Materialism and Dualist Mechanism Timo Kaitaro concerned, some kind of representations in the nervous system seem to be required by the dualistic nature of Descartes' theorization concerning mental functions.…”

“…These figures traced by animal spirits on the pineal gland are obviously local. On the other hand, Descartes theory of corporeal memory treated memory traces as distributed (Kaitaro, 1999;. In either case, the traces are material, not in the sense that they would be corporeal bodies, but in the sense in which material figures or patterns of movement are material phenomena (see Beyssade, 1991).…”

“…I am not just imagining a possible theoretical position: such mechanism was defended in the eighteenth century. It is perhaps Charles Bonnet, who developed this model most consistently, although he was not the only one, or the first to support it (see Kaitaro, 1999). Bonnet and the others who presented similar theories were, however, not "mechanist materialists", for the simple reason that they were dualists.…”

Biological and Epistemological Models of Localization in the Nineteenth Century: From Gall to Charcot

“…What the Cartesian dualists were usually localizing was the seat of the soul, the place where the interaction of the body and soul takes place (Kaitaro, 1996(Kaitaro, , 1999a(Kaitaro, and 1999b. Eighteenthcentury sensationalists like Bonnet could in addition postulate localizable correlates for what they considered to be the elements of the mind: sensations or ideas (Kaitaro, 1999a). A theoretician who considers the mind in biological terms, is more likely to start from the biological or physiological concept of function.…”

“…The epistemological tradition in psychology exempli®ed by the latter was primarily interested in the problem of representation. In the eighteenth century, this tradition resulted in attempts at postulating anatomical correlates in the brain for ideas, that is, representations (Kaitaro, 1999a). The psychological entities that were localized had originally been postulated to solve epistemological problems and the attempts at correlating or identifying them with anatomical or physiological entities tended to create philosophical problems of their own.…”