Criticisms of Dualism

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Criticisms of Dualism
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Descartes argument for dualism

• I can clearly and distinctly conceive of the mind
  without the body and the body without the mind
• If I can clearly and distinctly understand two
  things as distinct they really are distinct.
• Therefore the mind and body are two distinct
  things.

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• The mind is characterized by one sort of
  property, thought
• Physical things are characterized by another sort
  of property, extension.
• Two different kinds of things understood in terms
  of two radically different kinds of properties

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The Mind Body Problem

• If mind and body are really share no properties
  in common, then it is impossible for them to
  interact.
• But mind and body do interact
• Therefore Descartes substance dualism is false

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Another mind/body problem

• It is a law of nature that matter and energy can
  be neither created or destroyed
• But if the mind causally interacts with the body,
  there is some new energy that comes into
  existence when the mind causes the brain to be in
  a certain state
• So interactionist dualism violates a fundamental
  principle of science

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Substance and property dualism

• Substance dualism two different things, mind and
  body
• Property dualism Only one kind of thing, but
  human beings and animals have certain properties
  that are not physicalmental properties

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Kinds of property dualism

• Epiphenomenalism mental properties are
  byproducts of the physical body. They are caused
  by brain processes, but do not cause physical
  states. Its like smoke coming out of a locomotive
  engine.
• Interactive property dualism mental properties
  do have causal effects on the brain

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Emergence and non-reducibility

• Property dualism holds that mental properties are
  emergent properties
• When organisms reach a certain degree of
  complexity, they get mental properties
• Property dualism also holds that mental
  properties are non-reducible. You cannot
  understand the nature of mental properties by
  appealing to physical properties

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Examples of Emergence

• Biological properties are emergent on chemical
  properties. Being solid is emergent on the
  properties of lots of of molecules and their
  interactions, same with being colored.
• But each of these are reducible. You can
  understand, for example, how a living cell works
  in terms of the chemical processes in that cell.

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Do mental properties have to be emergent?

• Churchland mental properties could be like
  electromagnetic properties. A different part of
  nature not reducible to others.
• But electromagnetism is displayed on all levels
  of reality, mental properties are only in complex
  organisms.
• How do we know this?

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Panpsychism

• A property dualism might insist there are mental
  properties all the way down.
• This would make the emergence of conscious beings
  more comprehensible
• But it would also involve the belief that mental
  properties exist in so-called inanimate things.

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The introspective argument for dualism

• Descartes held that because thinking, reasoning,
  mental processes seem to be distinct from
  physical states, they really are.
• Churchland argues that this may not be so. Colors
  dont seem to be a matrix of molecules reflecting
  light, warmth does not feel like molecules
  vibrating.

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