ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the consequences of the struggle for materialist thought. It breaks into two distinct sections. It argues that Rene Descartes himself, along with the Newtonian David Hartley, understood the nervous system as plastic rather than simply passive. The chapter considers the work of the contemporary philosopher Adrian Johnston. Descartes serves as the ideal foil for the new materialist's conception of matter, agency, and ontology. Descartes' Treatise of Man accords with the new materialists' depiction of Cartesian philosophy as a dualist system erected upon the foundation of dead matter. As Johnston's interest in the "denaturalized nature" of the plastic brain indicates, his project advances claims that accord with but also challenge the new materialism. Citing neuroscientists like Joseph LeDoux and Jean-Pierre Changeux, as well as neuro-psychoanalysts like Gerard Pommier, Johnston describes the importance of neuroplasticity in early childhood development and, in particular, language acquisition.
