Four Objections To Cartesian Dualism Options

[Shawn]

just something to get this board started (this is from http://www.msu.edu/user/hacheema/lecture9.htm ):


Four Objections to Cartesian Dualism
• (1) Philosophical Objection: Where does interaction occur?

– Two substances must causally interact. But where?
– Spatial vs. Nonspatial interaction
– Contradiction? -- Dualism both requires that interaction must take place, but denies that mental events occur anywhere.




Four Objections cont.

• (2) Philosophical Objection: How does interaction occur?

– Descartes: ‘animal spirits’ convey mind’s influence to body.

– Response: Still leaves same problem. How does nonspatial substance interact with ‘animal spirits’?
Material causation: force is exerted. But force is a product of mass + acceleration. But nothing mental has mass and nothing mental is capable of acceleration. Therefore, if dualism is true, interaction appears impossible.




Four forms of Cartesian causation

• (1) physical-to-mental
• (2) mental-to-mental
• (3) mental-to-physical
• (4) physical-to-physical
• We can understand (4), but Descartes (and other dualists) owe us an explanation for each of (1), (2), and (3).




Four Objections cont.

• (3) Scientific Objection: Occam’s (‘Okham’s) Razor.

– All things being equal, the simpler hypothesis should be preferred.

• (i) Materialist posits 1 substance (1 type of causation)
• (ii) Dualist posits 2 substances (four types of causation)

– Dualist can tell us nothing of the internal constitution of mind-stuff, or of different types of causation.



Four Objections cont.

• (4) Scientific Objection: the Principle of the Conservation of Energy and the ‘causal closure of the empirical world’

The amount of energy in a closed physical system remains constant at all times (energy is neither created nor destroyed). Therefore, there can be no physical events without physical causes.

– mental-->physical / physical-->mental = gain and loss of energy.




One historical attempt to save dualism: Deny that mental-to-physical causation occurs
• Epiphenomenalism

[CWUPhilStudent]

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=1]Or perhaps, it is much likened to the Spinozian belief of one substance acting in two completely different ways. You can look at it in terms of a lens. Coming from one side of the lens, it appears to be convex, from the other side, concave, yet it is still the same lens. This is much like Spinoza's thought on the mind-body problem. For he thought there was only one substance, but being that it had infinite attributes, it could act in infinitely different ways. I agree with the first post's objections to Cartesian dualism, but there are many more arguements that you could expose. For instance, how can my mind be free if my body is determined. Descartes said that bodies are determined by the world they come into, but that the minds are completely free. This would have to be true if one proposed a complete separation of the body and mind. But it brings about a fundamental problem. If they must interact, which they do, how can it be possible for my mind to be totally free? How is it free when it is forced to interact with the corporeal body, which is destined to die, whereas the mind is destined for immortality.