Issues facing dualism

Question 1

name all the objections to substance dualism

Answer 1

• The problem of other minds
• Dualism makes a “category mistake” (Gilbert Ryle)
• the conceptual interaction problem (as articulated by Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia)
• the empirical interaction problem.

Question 2

Explain the problem of other minds

Answer 2

Fundamentally, I believe that other people have minds
but how can we know that other people have minds?
we experience our own minds from within, through introspection.
Our knowledge of other people’s minds is very different, we cannot experience other people’s mental states. It seems that all we have to go on is other people’s behaviour, which is expressed through their bodies.

Question 3

Anita Avramides - special problem for SUBSTANCE DUALISM- radical scepticism about the mind of others.

Answer 3

P1: Descartes says that mind and body are radically separate entities.
P2: I know my own mind directly by introspection
P3: I do not know other minds as I do not have access to other people’s mental states.
C: Therefore I do not know others have minds.

Once mind is radically divorced from the body, then even if we can show that there can be knowledge of body there remains the further question, How do we know whether there is a mind connected with any given body that we may encounter?

Question 4

Response 1 (to the problem of other minds): The argument from analogy

Answer 4

Shows that we can use the behaviour of other people to infer that they have minds too.
P1: I have a mind
P2: I know from experience that my mental states causes my behaviour
P3: Other people have bodies similar to mine and behave similarly to me in similar situations.
C1: Therefore, by analogy, their behaviour has the same type of cause as my behaviour, namely mental states.
C2: Therefore, other people have minds.

Question 5

Objection to the argument from analogy

Answer 5

In general to argue from analogy with a single case is not a very strong procedure.