An Empirical Argument for Dualism
In the last post we introduced dualism, the view that a person is something more than his or her physical body. We talked about different versions of dualism, with particular focus on soul dualism, the version of dualism that says a person is essentially a non-physical soul. We considered what might be appealing about such a view – namely, that it allows for the possibility of an afterlife as well as the possibility of not being subject to the laws of nature. We also considered some potential problems with the view: that it doesn’t explain why there are correlations between brain damage and reasoning, that there is something mysterious about how nonphysical mental states could causally interact with the physical states of a particular body, that it’s not clear what sort of organisms have souls and that it’s not clear when during the development of an organism do souls emerge. We didn’t, however, consider any reasons as to why one should believe in dualism. In this post, we will consider an empirical argument for dualism.
Before we consider this empirical argument for dualism, we should remember that there are philosophers who deny dualism and the existence of souls and claim that a person is just a certain physical body (or some part of it, such as a brain) that functions in a certain way. According to this alternative view, a person has mental states, which are located (or “housed” or “supported”) in a certain physical body or some part of it, such as a brain. Since this view says that a person is entirely physical and dualism says that a person is more than something physical, in the debate between the two views, arguably the dualist has the burden of proof.
To say that someone has the burden of proof is to say that he or she has a made a certain kind of factual claim, one that can’t be directly verified by sensory experience, and therefore has an obligation to support that claim. It’s not the obligation of the person who denies the claim to prove the claim false. The reason why the dualist has the burden of proof is that he or she is making the factual claim that there is more to a person that just his or her body. So the dualist has to give a good reason to support dualism. He or she cannot just say “You cannot prove me wrong”. If one cannot give a good reason to support dualism, then no one should take the view seriously.
But what is a good reason for a view? How good a reason is a matter of degree. A reason for dualism might be so good that it’s conclusive. In such a case, you should believe the view. However, a reason for dualism might have some persuasive force, that is, it i might give you some reason to believe the view, but not be conclusive. In such a case, the reason has a certain degree of goodness. Let us therefore say that if a reason is good enough to give you a certain degree of confidence in dualism, then it’s reasonable to accept dualism to that degree. But if a reason doesn’t give you any confidence in dualism, then the person giving it hasn’t met the burden of proof. In such a case, it’s reasonable to believe in physical monism.