A transcendental materialist frame for neuropsychoanalysis: rethinking dual-aspect monism

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the philosophical basis for neuropsychoanalysis, dual-aspect monism is fundamental to the entire neuropsychoanalytic project. However, dual-aspect monism has been criticized not only from without but also from within neuropsychoanalysis. This paper considers criticisms of dual-aspect monism from within neuropsychoanalysis. These might be summed up as a concern that the difference at the level of epistemology (neuroscience, psychoanalysis) and phenomena (objectivity, subjectivity) must not be washed away by an appeal to a common ontology. In response, I propose to supplement dual-aspect monism with the philosophical framework of Transcendental Materialism. In this view, epistemological difference between the dual aspects is secondary to antagonism at the level of monistic ontology. Transcendental Materialism begins with the question: what sort of nature must nature be to give rise to two irreducible perspectives such as neuroscience and psychoanalysis? I argue for supplementing dual-aspect monism with Transcendental Materialism through a review of Mark Solms’s work on the hard problem of consciousness via Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle. Within the Solms-Friston framework, the informatic mechanisms that give rise to dual-aspect epistemologies rely upon ontological antagonism. Principles of a transcendental materialist dual-aspect monism for neuropsychoanalysis are put forward.