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

[Nebulous Inferno]

To add to my last post:

Pain feels terrible because, in relation to the rest of the body it *is* terrible. You may ask: "Why is it terrible?". The answer in this case is that it is terrible to the survival, reproduction or basically the natural selection of the genes of the body.

However, there are certain kinds of feelings related to synthetic ideas - ideas created by humans which are "independent" of our bodies. I spoke above about memes, which are communicable ideas which evolve over time, giving rise to cultural and moral evolution, and society itself. I need to make a distinction, now, between the "firmware" and the "software" of the brain. Obviously, everyone feels physical pain and everyone can taste food (well, almost everyone). This I would call "firmware". "Software" should probably be reserved for more complex ideas that can be communicated. Lets call these ideas 'memes' from now on.

Memes are expressed in each individual by sets of instructions (algorithms). Somehow your brain knows how to run memes on its animal machinery - somehow *you* know how to think. With practice you can express ideas in your mind with ease - basically you have implemented or installed many ideas into your mind through thought and communication.

Lets go back to our original example of pain. Pain from "firmware", for example getting burned, is terrible in relation to the genes of our bodies. With pain resulting from "software" (memes), it may be different. Pain from loss of a game of chess is probably terrible in the context of many different systems. It is a different matter for each instance of pain. In some cases pain may actually be a learned response, not good for our genes at all, but useful for society. Society itself is exapted indirectly from the genetics of humans, but it need not be slave to these genes - it often works for the good of itself, just as multi-cellular organisms often work for the good of themselves instead of their individual cells, although the individual cells have their own genes. You may think still think that social ideas must be slave to biology, but just consider social ideas to be *new* genes, and now you can see that these new social "genes" (actually they are memes) can be as selfish as can be - perhaps acting with no regard to some biological genes. Here, game theoretic accounts of biological and cultural evolution can give the best explanations. I won't go any further into it right now.

I want, right now, to say that we should forget about Descartes mind-first assumption. Descartes *assumed* there was a self, then went on from there. He believed he was being really cautious, but I think he assumed too much. I am more of an existentialist, so I don't even assume that there is a self. Instead I surmise that things exist (thoughts, feelings, etc.), and that somehow a "self" surrounds many of these observations. It should not be assumed that this "self" is any more valid than observations of things outside of the "self", or that this "self" is anything special or native to the universe, until it is determined otherwise.