Substance Dualism Flashcards
Substance Dualism Overview
Minds exist and are not identical to the body.
Two fundamentally different types of substances, physical and mental.
Minds and bodies are ontologically distinct and independent.
Qualia
Instrinsic and non-intentional phenomenal properties that are introspectively accessible.
Those properties that characterise conscious states according to what it is like to what it is like to have them.
Intentionality
Intentionality is the thought or mental state which ‘aims at’ its object, no ‘doing’ needs to be involved.
Beliefs, desires, emtions all have intentionality; they all concern come object or other.
A relation between a thought and what a thought is about.
Ontological Independence
A thing that does not depend on another entity for its continued existence.
Argument FOR Substance Dualism: Conceivabilty Argument
Descartes’ Conceivability Argument.
1) Clear and distinct idea of mind and body.
2) Is conceivable for mind to exist without body, as God can make it that way.
3) So, it is possible for mind to exist without body.
4) Therefore, mind and body are distinct substances.
What is a substance?
Possess properties.
Properties depend on substances to exist.
Persist through changes in properties.
RESPONSE to Conceivability Argument: Mind without body is not coneivable
Logically, thoughts must come from a thinker. But with no physical body, where is the thinker? No senses, no vessel.
RESPONSE to Conceivability Argument: What is conceivable may not be metaphsically possible
Descartes’ infers possibility from concievability.
Doesn’t mean they really are, prehaps there is some metaphysical connection that Descartes isn’t aware of. Illicit use of Leibniz’s law.
Masked man fallacy - It is possible for D conception of the mind to be wrong, and unknown to him, not distinct and is metaphysically impossible for it exist separately. (Water + Hydrogen)
Leibniz’s Law
The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals.
If two objects are identical, then they share all their properties.
What is conceivable may not be metaphsically possible: DESCARTES’ RESPONSE
Agrees that, in general, we can’t infer possibility from conceivability.
But with clear and distinct ideas, inference is justifed. If C+D then having a property is not only possible, but is true and certain, through rational intuition (triangle).
Conceptions of masked man are not C+D in the way that D requires.
What is conceivable may not be metaphsically possible: EVALUATION
Compare to triangle.
Not really indubitable or certain.
RESPONSE to Conceivability Argument: What is metaphsically possible tells us nothing about the actual world
Doesn’t follow that mind is something that thinks and therefore isn’t extended. Also doesn’t follow that the body exists as something extended and therefore does not think. No contradiction in mind: thinking + extended or body: extended + thinking. So, we can think of thought and extension as properties of same substance.
Need to know which ‘option’ is true in the actual world.
So, just by knowing what is metaphysically possible does not tell us which possibility correctly describes the world.
Argument FOR Substance Dualism: Descartes’ Indivisibilty Argument
Leibniz’s Law
Body is divisible (can literally lose a hand)
Mind is non-disvisible (single and complete. The faculties of my mind are not parts, since it is the same mind that wills, understands and perceives - purely a thinking thing.)
Therefore, do not have identical properties. So, the mind and body are seperate substances.
RESPONSE to Indivisibility Argument: The mental is divisible in some sense
Bipolar Personality Disorder and Split-brain Patients might suggest the mind can be divided in some way. Some ‘parts’ of the mind cannot communicate with other parts. So, the mind is in some sense divisible.
RESPONSE to Indivisibility Argument: Not everything thought of as physical is divisible
D is arguing that physical substances are always divisible. But how can a finite amount of matter be infinitly divisible? (Divide in two example).
The smallest physical particles are best understood as packets of energy or force fields. It is possible that these can not be further divided. It is therefore possible for the mind to be a non-divisible physical thing.
