A Philosophical Argument for Dualism
In the last two posts (here and here) we discussed dualism, the view that a person, the subject of mental states, is something more than his or her physical body. We’ve examined a type of empirical argument for dualism. Empirical arguments are arguments based on sense experience. The type of empirical argument that we’ve examined is one that tries to show that there exists a feature F that people possess, a feature that we know about through sense experience, but a feature which couldn’t be possessed by something entirely physical, such as body or a brain. According to some philosophers, we don’t understand how consciousness is located in something physical. But, given that the dualist has the burden of proof, he needs to show more than the fact that we lack this understanding. He has to show that consciousness couldn’t be supported or housed in something entirely physical. The most promising candidate for such a feature F are near-death experiences. However, we concluded that such an appeal might give us some reason to believe in dualism, but it’s not a conclusive reason. If we cannot give any reasons to believe that dualism is true, we should be tentative at best in accepting the view, given that it has the burden of proof. But empirical arguments are not the only way philosophers have tried to establish dualism. Some philosophers have tried to argue for dualism in a non-empirical way – not based on what we can sense – but rather on what we can imagine or conceive. I call these types of arguments “philosophical” arguments for dualism.
Here is one of the most famous philosophical arguments for dualism. It is very similar to an argument given by the famous French philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century.
- You can coherently imagine yourself without your physical body.
- If you can coherently imagine X, then you have reason to believe that X is metaphysically possible.
- So you have reason to believe that it is metaphysically possible for you to exist without your physical body.
- If it is metaphysically possible for you to exist without your physical body, then you are not the same as your physical body.
- Therefore, you have reason to believe that you are not the same as your physical body. [Dualism is true!]