General Problems with Dualism

Question 1

The epistemological problem with other minds?

Answer 1

1. Dualism seemingly leads to solipsism, or at least impossibility to prove the existence of other minds,
2. If mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties or mental exists as a separate substance, there would be no amount of physical knowledge, the only empirical kind, that will ever tell us whether there is a mind attached to another body,
3. Thus, the issue lies in the fact that we could never confirm the existence of minds other than our own, which strikes as an incomplete conclusion.

Question 2

How does Descartes respond to the problem with other minds?

Answer 2

1. Descartes has several criteria for the presence of minds, including creative, flexible, adaptive activity, and the use of language,
2. Thus, we can determine other minds through the perception of these activities in others.

Question 3

What other responses are there to the problem with other minds?

Answer 3

1. Dualist might simply accept that the impossibility of such knowledge is simply a difficult state of life,
2. Argument from analogy,
3. Argument from the best hypothesis.

Question 4

Argument from Analogy?

Answer 4

1. Mill highlights the idea that we learn about people’s minds through our knowledge of our own,
2. We observe through introspection our own mental states, and then those external actions and events which they are connected to, and then conclude that, for example, if people smell the same smell I do when I smell a rose,
3. We see that others have similar bodies to us and behave and react in similar ways in similar situations. Even when someone responds differently in a certain situation - for example, if they spit out their mint tea with a contorted look on their face - we can still infer that they dislike the taste of mint tea, and we do so again recognise a connection between certain experiences, such as that of displeasure or disgust, and the actions and facial expressions that tend to accompany them.

Question 5

Response to the argument from analogy?

Answer 5

1. As we only acquire experience in which we perceive such mental-external connections with respect to our own mental life and behaviour, that we do not have such evidence to make inductive, well-grounded arguments from,
2. We perceive people as acting in a certain way because it is similar to a way we might react but the reasoning behind their action could be entirely different, i.e. a computer that emulates perfectly our own physical responses to mental states.

Question 6

How can the argument from analogy be strengthened by evolutionary theory?

Answer 6

1. We are aware of the similarities we have as members of the same biological species, and that we also know that we have common evolutionary origins,
2. Based on the biological and anatomical similarities, that these biological features include sense organs which we have little doubt are connected to our sense-experiences, and the fact that beings of common and close evolutionary origins will tend to share certain key features, then we could argue that it is ridiculous to think that only I have mental properties, while others lack them, especially if I also think that mental properties also have important mental effects, such as beliefs and desires causing certain decisions and behaviours.

Question 7

The Conceptual Problem with Other Minds?

Answer 7

1. Challenges the idea that it is possible to acquire a coherent concept of the mind,
2. The idea here is that if I can only form the concept of the mind by considering my own mind, then it is problematic whether I can form an idea of the mind in general that would apply to others as well,
3. In example, if my feeling of pain is based exclusively on my own case, then, given the nature of the mind as purely private and intrinsic-unanalysable, would we not conclude that it is, in some way, intrinsically my pain, and then conclude that it is problematic for me to try and base an idea of pain or any other mental state or property, on what is inherently my own, purely private conception.

Question 8

Wittgenstein on the conceptual problem with other minds?

Answer 8

1. Wittgenstein is, in general, rejecting the idea that words and concepts can be coherently or really formed which do not have some kind of public basis of use,
2. He argues that to even be able to form the idea of private pain, we must first have the idea of pain in general, pain that others feel,
3. He is arguing that the idea itself cannot be understood outside the context in which the concept and term emerges,
4. It is incoherent to suggest that I have a purely personal, private idea of the mind, as it in fact presupposes that we have an idea of other minds.

Question 9

Argument to the best hypothesis? response to the epistemological problem with other minds

Answer 9

1. We are justified in introducing the idea of the mind because it has an explanatory power, in that it allows us to explain things which we can observe, even though the other minds which we posit in order to do the explaining cannot themselves be observed,
2. We naturally think that the mental, therefore the mind, has causal efficacy, that it is causally efficacious in that it has causal effects,
3. How can explain actions and behaviours if we did not suppose there to be something like minds and the relevant mental states.

Question 10

Dualism is a category mistake (Gilbert Ryle)?

Answer 10

1. Argues that the dualist uses mental concepts in such a way that we make mistakes about the nature of such concepts and how they should be accurately used,
2. In particular, the dualist picture gives an impression of a double aspect tot he human being, in which there is a physical body, and then some kind of mental substance, life, or set of mental properties that are somehow attached to, or contained within, the physical body,
3. Ryle, here, thinks that a key to the mistake is to treat the mind as if it were some kind of thing. We are thinking as if the concept of the mind were of the logical type of the category of ‘things’,
4. I.e. the error is made in thinking that the mind is a thing rather than a term which is made up of constituent things.

Question 11

Responses to Ryle’s category mistake argument?

Answer 11

1. Some respond that he is obviously wrong, that they know they have thoughts, desires, beliefs, etc., which are not simply properties of how I might behave,
2. To others, his account seems unacceptably reductionistic.

Question 12

Ryle’s response to critcisms of his category mistake critique?

Answer 12

1. Ryle points out that we, in practice, have no issue ascribing mental states to others, and that it might be difficult to understand how we doe this if mental states are not publicly accessible, we must, therefore, conclude that the meanings of mental states are publicly based and derived, rather than private,
2. Ryle would also question the idea that Descartes’ view arises as some kind of natural, organic, and inevitable conception of the mind. It is not something that simply emerges in everyday life, people are not cursed by the desire or need to philosophise, we do not even stop to think about whether other people have minds or mental properties, and always act implicitly concluding that they do have mental lives, we do not have to first reason to the existence of some mysterious spiritual substance which goes beyond the physical.

Question 13

Epiphenomenalism?

Answer 13

1. The mind is real, caused by the physical, and is not part of the world which we can perceive and interact with,
2. The mind itself cannot influence the rest of the physical world,
3. In other words, the causal relation is one way. Even if the mind has such effects, this a by-product of the relations of the physical world with the body and effects of other physical processes of the body,
4. For example, if I think that my desire for coffee causes me to pick up the cup and drink, I am mistaken, and it is in fact the nervous system of my body that is responsible.

Question 14

Problems with epiphenomenalism - mental states are efficacious?

Answer 14

1. We can note through introspection that it seems that certain experiences can cause us to imagine or think of certain things, or to have certain memories,
2. The smell of basil might take me back to a memory of a delicious meal with a loved one. There seems to be a causal relationship here between the mental states and the sensory experience, which suggests that mental states are mentally efficacious,
3. Or we could evidence speech as a process, I can introspect on philosophy, in example, this doesn’t stem from some physical process, yet I can verbalise this thought of philosophy as speech; seemingly a mental state causing a physical action.

Question 15

Epiphenomenalist response to the problem of efficacious mental states?

Answer 15

1. Huxley would respond that there is no significance between the smell and the memory,
2. We have the introspective interpretation that there is this causal relation, due to the correlation, perhaps repeated, of the smell and the memory, both the memory and the correlation are in fact nothing more than mental effects of the physical.

Question 16

Causal relation of knowledge response to epiphenomenalism?

Answer 16

1. With introspection, we observe our own thoughts, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and then form beliefs, opinions, and knowledge of these mental states,
2. If epiphenomenalism were true, then it would prevent this form of efficacy of mental activity notably of introspection and belief formation,
3. Further, it is common to hold that when I acquire knowledge of something, I must be in a causal relation with it. So, if I have knowledge of my mental states, then the mental states should play some causal role in the formation of this knowledge - i.e., the mental states must be causes of the knowledge or beliefs we have of them.

Question 17

How would the epiphenomenalist respond to the knowledge critique?

Answer 17

1. We could still physically explain this, by arguing that the brain has evolved such that we can and do use linguistic terms which act as symbols expressing knowledge, beliefs, desires, etc., when the body finds itself in certain circumstances,
2. The body would needed to have evolved the right physiology such that under the right physical stimuli, it would enter certain states and that this would have all the appropriate mental effects.

Question 18

Evolutionary objections to epiphenomenalism?

Answer 18

1. The brain and mind, together, seem to have obvious advantages, since they allow us to think, reflect, plan, strategise, organise, remember, imagine, etc.,
2. However, this seems to suppose that they are causally efficacious, for something must tend to have causal effects of benefits to the organism in order to provide an evolutionary advantage; if the mind were not causally efficacious, then it could not provide such an advantage,
3. Evolution, thus, we could suggest, would not provide such advantages if they weren’t evolutionarily advantageous; they must be causally efficacious, and consequently epiphenomenalism is wrong.

Question 19

What is interactionism?

Answer 19

1. The general assumption that there is mental-physical interaction,
2. That this needs to be explained.

Question 20

What is the problem of conceptual interaction?

Answer 20

1. Suppose we accept the classical conception of the mind as un-extended, non-spatial, without volume, shape, or mass,
2. If we cannot attribute any of these basic physical properties to the mind, then how can we explain the causal interaction.

Question 21

What is Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia’s objection (expression of the conceptual problem of interaction)?

Answer 21

1. It is inconceivable that two things interact when there is no contact between them. Therefore, their surfaces must touch for there to be interaction,
2. The mind has no surface,
3. Therefore, there can be no contact between the mind and the physical,
4. So, if is inconceivable that they interact,
5. If something is inconceivable, then it is impossible,
6. Therefore, interaction between the mental and the physical is impossible, consequently mind-body interaction is impossible.

Question 22

Possible response to Elisabeth’s argumentation? Problem with this response?

Answer 22

1. Could argue that (5) is incorrect, that the fact we find ourselves incapable of conceiving something doesn’t mean that it is impossible, for there may be things which are possible which we are contingently or perhaps even necessarily incapable of conceiving,
2. We can ask why the mind is associated with a body. If a mind is not a physical thing, then it is not located anywhere in space in the same way that any other physical object is, which raises the question of how it becomes ‘attached’ to a particular body. This reinforces the previous critique in that not only does the mind not have a surface which could allow contact with other objects, but it is not even located in space. Where would the mind have the opportunity of interacting with something, even if it had a surface?

Question 23

Descartes’ response to the interaction problem?

Answer 23

1. Maintains that the mind-body union is basic,
   2, So, the only concepts that can be used to understand it are the concepts of the body and mind themselves. We should not try to make sense of them using any other concepts,
2. We cannot determine how they interact through analogy to other things; the mind-body union is unique, it must be understood on its own terms.

Question 24

The Empirical Interaction Problem?

Answer 24

1. Known as physical closure of causation, meaning that causation is closed with respect to the physical, i.e. that if something physical is caused by, or causes, something else, then the effects or cause of this physical thing must themselves be physical, in other words, we cannot move to or from the physical through causation from or to the non-physical,
2. Any causal relation including something physical must contain only physical things; the moment a physical thing is in a causal structure, every other cause and effect in the structure is physical,
3. If the mind interacts with the physical in that it is affected by or affect the physical, then it would seem like the mind must also be physical, to maintain the principle of physical closure of causation.

Question 25

Principle of conservation of energy in support of the empirical interaction problem?

Answer 25

1. The principle of the conservation of energy is true, 2. Therefore, for any closed system, total energy is constant/conserved, 3. The physical universe is a closed system, 4. Therefore, the total energy of the universe is constant, 5. There is mental-physical interaction, 6. Therefore, the mental causally affects the physical, 7. Causation involves transfer of energy, 8. Consequently, there is a transfer of energy from the mental to the physical, 9. This energy does not come from the physical, assuming dualism, 10. Therefore, there is an increase in the total energy of the physical universe, 11. However, (10) contradicts (4), 12. Therefore, we must reject (9). If we reject (9), but keep (5) and so (6) and (8), then the mind must be physical, as the transfer of energy must be from something physical to something physical.