Dualism

  • to Philosophy of Mind"> An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind

    adminAnimals, Computers, Dualism, Free Choice, Knowledge, Mental States, Pain, Pleasure, Science

    When you think about the mind you can easily find yourself feeling confused. You might start asking questions like these: What is a mind? How does it relate to the body, something that is physical? Is it something we have control over? How does one know that other people have minds? Could computers have minds? Do animals have minds? These are the sorts of questions that philosophers of mind wonder about and have also given answers to. Though there is no consensus to these answers. In the lectures to come, you will get to think about these questions and other related questions. You will see how philosophers think about them too. As you ponder the questions try to think slowly about them. I once read that to do philosophy is to think in slow motion. You may react initially emotionally to a question, but try to fight this reaction. Think about your reasons for your beliefs and think about why someone might disagree with you. You strengthen your views when you can give reasonable responses to objections to them. The questions that philosophers ask about the mind are difficult to answer. This is why philosophers are still trying to answer them for so many centuries.  Part of the reason philosophy is enjoyed is that it can be therapeutic. Even if you can’t be sure of the answers to the questions, the act of thinking about them in a slow, reasoned way can sometimes help remove some of the confusion.

    In the paragraph above I used the term ‘mind’. However, in the lectures I will rarely, if ever, use this term. Instead, I will use the term ‘mental state’ for two reasons. One reason I do this is that the term ‘mind’ may suggest that it is a kind of thing, and this view is controversial. Some philosophers do think of the mind as a kind of thing that has or supports mental states, such as thoughts and feelings. But there are other philosophers who think of the mind, not as a thing, but rather as collection of mental states, that belong to a brain. Although philosophers disagree about whether a mind is a thing, almost all agree that there are mental states. Another reason I have chosen to use the term ‘mental state’ instead of ‘mind’ in the lectures is that the term ‘mind’ may cause you to think that we’re just talking about human minds. We must, however, think more generally when thinking about the mind, for there may be other things besides humans that may have minds. Most of us believe that animals have minds. Some philosophers believe that computers could have minds. If there are extra-terrestrial beings or if God exists, we may wonder about their minds. So for the sake of generality, the questions that we will explore will focus on mental states, not minds. Let me say a little more about these questions. (more…)

  • A Philosophical Argument for Dualism

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    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.

    1. You can coherently imagine yourself without your physical body.
    2. If you can coherently imagine X, then you have reason to believe that X is metaphysically possible.
    3. So you have reason to believe that it is metaphysically possible for you to exist without your physical body.
    4. If it is metaphysically possible for you to exist without your physical body, then you are not the same as your physical body.
    5. Therefore, you have reason to believe that you are not the same as your physical body. [Dualism is true!]

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  • An Empirical Argument for Dualism

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    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.

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  • The Subject of Mental States: What is Dualism?

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    I say things like “I am hungry” or “I am thinking”.  It seems that when I speak this way I am attributing mental states, such as being hungry and thinking, to me – a person. But what is the nature of this thing called a person? Is a person just a certain physical body, or some physical part of it, such as a brain, as some philosophers believe? Or, is a person something other than his or her physical body, a view held by philosophers called “dualists“?

    Dualism says that a person is not to be identified with his or her physical body, or any part of it. But dualists are divided about whether a person has physical properties, such as shape and location in space. Let us say that a “soul” is a non-physical thing – which some people believe exists, and think is crucial to my being a person and having mental states. Then our three versions of dualism disagree on what role (if any) a soul plays in what makes me a person. Here are three versions of dualism.

    Soul Dualism = A person is simply a soul, that is related in some way to a certain physical body. The body is not part of the person.

    Hybrid-Soul Dualism = A person is a combination of a non-physical soul and a certain physical body.

    Non-Soul Dualism = A person has no soul, and has physical properties, but is not identical to a certain physical body or any part of it.

    Each of these three versions of dualism agree that a person is the subject of mental states. Each of these three versions of dualism deny that a person is just a certain physical body, or some physical part of it, such as the brain.

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