Features of mental states and dualism

What do dualists argue?

dualists argue the mind is distinct from body and that a complete physical account of a human being will not be able to explain consciousness

What do physicalists argue?

physicalists argue that we can ultimately define the mind in terms of the physical

What are ‘phenomenal properties’?

phenomenal properties are ‘intrinsic and non-intentional properties that are directly accessible via introspection and also known as qualia’

What are ‘intentional properties’?

‘intentionality is the quality of mental states that mental states such as beliefs, fears and hopes are about something’ rather than just existing e.g. belief that it is raining is belief pointing to the rain

What is substance dualism?

• descartes’ belief that humans are composed of two distinct types of substance, a mind and a body, and each of these have a distinct set of properties (mental and physical) 

• as substances, they do not depend on each other to exist and shows that your mind can survive bodily death

• there is causal interaction between mind and body -> stimulation of sense organs can cause the mind to feel sensations

First key argument for substance dualism - indivisibility argument

• the argument targets premise that physical bodies are spatially extended and thus divisible in principle (can be infinitely cut up into small parts because it can always be divided)

  • Descartes says you cannot divide the mind as during introspection, you cannot detect parts and instead only sense your self -> your experiences are always of the one mind which is yours and therefore you are a unitary centre of consciousness which is indivisible

• indivisibility arg relies on leibniz’s law: ‘if two things share all the same properties, they must be one thing’ and therefore it follows that if one has any property the other lacks, they must be distinct

  • p1 - the body is divisible; p2 - mind is not; c - mind is not body

Issues with the indivisibility argument

• first issue with indivisibility argument: the mental is divisible

  • How reliable is introspection as a guide of reality to the find? Descartes believes it is infallible as he conceives the mind to be the realm of the appearance of conscious experiences -> no gap between its appearance and reality

    • however, introspection does not necessarily reveal whole truth about mentality e.g. self-deception -> I can refuse to admit I have a shameful desire -> this can be best explained by saying that one part of my consciousness has the desire and another part denies it

    • Neuroscience reinforces this - corpus callosotomy patients (cutting hemispheres of brain in two) show two distinct centres of consciousness operating unaware to the patient - subjective reports via introspection do not represent reality and if consciousness can be divided, Descartes’ second premise fails

    • Hume also adds we are only ever aware of conscious experience yet never owner of it - mind is a bundle of conscious experiences that do not point toward an indivisible centre

• second issue with indivisibility argument - not everything physical is divisible

  • does not necessarily follow that it is sense to talk of dividing the self that the self must be a non-physical thing? there are many things that we would consider physical but cannot make sense of dividing e.g. physical states like being wet or hot

    • If mind is like these, it may be better understood as a property of the brain -> indivisibility might not necessarily show it is a non-physical substance but instead a property of a physical substance

definitions for conceivability arg

• possible worlds - a way in which the universe might have been e.g. life on mars or blue raspberries, but can be more different such as a world with different laws of physics where no planets exist

• logical possible - something that does not involve contradiction e.g. life on mars (it is conceivable). There is no possible world that contains round squares - it is logically impossible and therefore inconceivable

• physical possibility - consistent with laws of nature within the actual world e.g. sticking tongue out at a teacher is physically possible, whereas flying by flapping your arms is not possible - laws of physics prevent this as they stand in the universe 

  • physical possibility is a subset of logical possibility 

• metaphysical possibility - all the ways the universe might have been (in other words, all possible worlds represent the realm of metaphysical possibility) - if you can conceive of something, it is metaphysically possible

however not all logically possible are metaphysically possible e.g. before water was known to be H₂O, it was perfectly conceivable to suppose that water was not H₂O (was not a contradiction in terms) though given water is the same stuff as H₂O, there is no possible world in which water is not H₂O as it could not be water -> if this is right, not everything that is logically possible is also metaphysically possible

second key arg for substance dualism - conceivability argument

•  Descartes argues if he can have a ‘clear and distinct’ idea of two things, it must be possible in principle to separate them

  • in this case, they would have to be distinct substances which could exist independently of each other - If I recognise the natures of two things to be clearly distinct, they must actually be distinct things

  • Descartes has the essential nature of the mind as by nature a thing that thinks whereas in contrast the body is by nature extended and has no part of its nature formed by consciousness. Since I clearly recognise the distinct natures of mind and body, Descartes concludes they must be separate

  • p1 - If I can clearly + distinctly recognise nature of two things to be different then they must be different substances; p2 - I clearly + distinctly recognise nature of mind to be consciousness and nothing more; p3 - I clearly + distinctly recognise nature of body to be extension and nothing more; c - therefore the mind is a distinct substance from the body

Describe the criticism of the conceivability argument that what is conceivable may not be logically possible

• first issue with conceivability arg. - what is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible

• Arnauld objects to the argument - Pythagoras' theorem (a^2 +b^2=c^2) shows that the square on the hypotenuse of a triangle must have an area equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides, though it is possible for you to conceive of a triangle which lacks this property if you are unfamiliar with the proof. However, you would be mistaken if you believed this was possible in reality - what we can conceive of is not a good guide to what is actually possible / Descartes conception of his mind without his body does not show it is possible in reality

• Arnauld finds ‘masked man fallacy’ in Descartes’ reasoning: p1 - I recognise that Batman is a masked crusader; p2 - I recognise that Batman is a playboy millionaire; p3 - therefore Batman is not Bruce Wayne 

  • conclusion is false though first two premises are correct - Descartes can have an incomplete idea of something so that it can appear to be two when in reality it is one -> you only recognise one aspect of the person Batman and my lack of an idea of his full nature means I will wrongly conclude he is distinct from Bruce Wayne

• introspection reveals mind to be realm of conscious experiences and I am unaware of body as being involved in this, though the fact I am unaware of my body being responsible does not show it isn't in reality

• Counter - Descartes defends himself by pointing out that his argument includes the claim that he clearly and distinctly recognises that nothing more is involved in his ideas of mind and body - if he is correct that he can be certain that essences of body and mind are distinct, they would have to be distinct substances -> this would make argument valid though the problem now is whether we are persuaded that introspection can give us an infallible insight into the true nature of consciousness

Describe the criticism of the conceivability argument that what is logically possible tells us nothing about the actual world

• • Descartes has argued that it is conceivable that mind and body are distinct substances - this is, then, a metaphysical possibility (there are possible worlds where substance dualism is true) though he has not shown that physicalism is metaphysically impossible and that it is equally conceivable that minds are not distinct from bodies - nothing contradictory therefore in supposing mental states are produced by the brain

    • if both dualism and physicalism are metaphysically possible, we are no closer to knowing which situation is actual and thus empirical investigation is needed to determine whether we live in a world where dualism or physicalism is true

  • CRUCIAL AS SHOWS DESCARTES DOES NOT GUARANTEE SUBSTANCE

Describe the ‘mind without body is not inconceivable’ objection

• • we can conceive of mind distinct from body, though we may have a incomplete or confused understanding rather than clear and distinct

    verificationist argument begins by stating a claim can be meaningful if it is grounded in experience in some way (terms get their meaning through their reference to the empirically observable world) -> substance dualism claims that mind is non-physical and thus it cannot be detected by empirical means since it exists in non-physical realm -> a verificationist would argue that the claim of substance dualism is meaningless

Issues for property dualism

• first argument against substance dualism -  dependent of mind on brain

  • neuroscience supports claim that mind depends on brain - modern imaging can show that there are precise correlations between specific types of brain activity and types of conscious experience. Additionally if your brain is damaged, you may lose certain mental capacities such as ability to speak or understand language and use of drugs can affect consciousness such as alcohol bringing mood changes. These observations are best explained arguably if we suppose the mind depends on the brain. If these were processes in a purely spiritual substance, we might expect them to be able to continue no matter what state your brain was in and the fact we cannot perform mental functions without our brains being activated supports the idea of a dependence relation

• second argument against substance dualism - evolutionary history

  • modern biology supports the view that the mind depends on the brain - process of evolution where humans changed from other life forms is a physical one and all the properties of living creatures should be therefore explicable in physical terms

  • evolutionary explanation must be explained of its service to the survival of the species, and we can observe how our mental capacities differ to others as well as how they are related with respect to their environments to give them evolutionary advantages. We can also observe how the mental life of other animals is related to the structure of their brains in ways that make no reference to any non-physical substances 

    • this explanation is supported by scientific evidence, whereas the claim that the mind is a distinct substance raises a host of further questions concerning how and why this non-physical substance was created and how it was associated with a certain animal which likely require elaborate metaphysics to answer such as the intervention of a benevolent God. Ockham’s razor (theory that posits the fewest number of entities is the most accurate) therefore suggests that the explanation of the mind in terms of a single physical substance is superior

      • weak - ockham’s razor

What is property dualism (explained in relation to substance dualism)

• Property dualism differs from substance dualism by arguing there is only one substance, the physical brain, that possesses two distinct sets of properties with these being physical and mental properties whereas substance dualism holds that there are two distinct substances (mental and physical) which possess a single set of properties corresponding to their nature. Despite this, they both hold that mental properties are irreducible to the physical

• property dualism continues to believe that some mental properties are neither reducible to nor supervenient upon physical properties

Explain the first argument for property dualism - Chalmers’ philosophical zombies

• physicalism is the view that ultimately consciousness is nothing more than the physical. This implies that any physical duplicate of you would have to be conscious. Similarly, it implies that in a physical duplicate of this world the humans would have to be conscious just as they are in the actual world - thus zombies (identical in physical form yet lacking the mental properties of humans) are not metaphysically possible. Chalmers aims to show that they are possible to refute physicalism

  • there is no logical contradiction in the idea of philosophical zombies as though zombies do not exist, their logical possibilities suggest they are possible worlds in which they do -> zombies are metaphysically possible as is a ‘zombie world’ (a physical duplicate of this universe where none of the humans are conscious) -> if we accept that they are metaphysically possible, there must be more to consciousness than what is purely physical and we must reject physicalism

• p1 - physicalism states consciousness is ultimately physical in nature; c1 - if physicalism is true, any possible world which is identical to the actual world must contain consciousness and thus a zombie world would be metaphysically impossible; p2 - but we can conceive of a world that is physically identical to this one but in which there is no conscious experience (a zombie world); p3 - what is conceivable is metaphysically possible; c2 - therefore a zombie world must be metaphysically possible after all; c3 - therefore physicalism is false

objections to philosophical zombies argument

• first obj  - zombie world not conceivable

  • Chalmers says there is no evident contradiction in the ideas of zombies and therefore they are conceivable - contradictions do not have to be obvious and the reason we do not see one could be as we have a very underdeveloped understanding of how the physical properties of our brain produce consciousness - if physicalism is true, some such account could be given as if we did have a complete neuroscientific account of how phenomenal consciousness arises out of the complex functioning of a human brain, we would be able to see the incoherence of the idea of a philosophical zombie

    • this objection is saying is our profound ignorance about the workings of the human brain gives the zombie argument its plausibility, and the fact that we have no idea how the brain produces consciousness does not provide us with good evidence that it does not

• second obj - what is conceivable need not be metaphysically possible

  • if we do concede that zombies are conceivable, we can still possibly resist that they are metaphysically possible -> Putnam said that before we knew H₂O was water, it was possible to conceive of water as not being H₂O. However, whilst it was conceivable, given that water is actually the same stuff as H₂O there is no possible world in which it could not be the case thus not making it metaphysically possible 

  • in the same way, we can conceive of functioning physical duplicates of human beings without phenomenal consciousness - they are logically possible. However, if phenomenal consciousness is just something to do with the way a human being functions physically, then there can be no possible world in which the physical duplicates of human beings lack consciousness 

    • therefore zombies are not metaphysically possible and physicalism is not refuted

    • we can imagine that mind has nothing to do with the brain (Dualism is conceivable) but if physicalism is true, dualism is not metaphysically possible -> we must turn to empirical means to discover metaphysical identities 

• third obj - what is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world

  • similar to substance dualism, we may agree that various possibilities are metaphysically possible but then wonder whether this is of any help when it comes to working out what the actual world is like - there may be possible worlds containing philosophical zombies but in the actual world the natural laws are such as to make zombies an impossibility here

  • if physicalism is true, it is surely committed to the claim that consciousness is reducible to the physical in this world as well as any possible world as if consciousness is nothing more than the physical, any physical duplicate of a human being must be conscious

    • if physicalism is true, it is just not possible for something to be a functioning physical duplicate of a human being but not be conscious - physical duplicates of humans will have to be conscious as consciousness is a property of the physical nature of humans that must be true in all possible worlds just as H₂O is the same as water in all possible worlds

Second key argument for property dualism - Mary’s room argument

• suppose there were a scientist who has been confined to a black and white room all her life and has never seen colours -> despite her confinement she has learned everything there is to know about the physical processes underlying colour vision including what goes on neurologically. If she left the room and saw colour for the first time, would she learn something new?

• Jackson’s answer is that she would see something new - she would learn what it is like to see colour as she could not have known the qualia of seeing colour. The physical processes of seeing colour does not entail seeing colour fully and thus there must be something with separate mental qualities to knowledge, thus proving physicalism to be false

  • p1 - mary knows everything there is to now about the physical processes involved in colour vision; p2 - she learns something new when she experiences colour vision herself; c1 - therefore there is more to know about colour vision than what is given in a complete physical account of it; c2 - physicalism is false

Three objections to mary’s room argument

first obj - acquaintance knowledge response

propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts and can be expressed in propositions e.g. Mary would have propositional knowledge that there are around 6 million photoreceptive cones in the retina for the detection of colour

acquaintance knowledge is the knowledge that comes from encountering something e.g. the taste of oranges

this response claims that the knowledge argument equivocates on these two types of knowledge: p1 (physical processes) is concerned with propositional knowledge and p2 her acquaintance knowledge -> therefore c1 does not follow as Mary did have a complete account of propositional knowledge about colour vision before leaving the room and Mary knew all this before leaving. Upon leaving, she has become acquainted with the phenomenal character of colour vision (qualia) and this is not knowledge of new facts

second obj - ability knowledge

this response also claims that the knowledge argument equivocates on the term ‘knowledge’ but this time with ability knowledge (knowledge of how to do things) rather than acquaintance knowledge

When mary leaves the room, she acquires new abilities such as the ability to recognise ripe tomatoes by sight

this new ability knowledge does not mean she has learned any new facts about colour vision (propositional) and so it is still true that she possessed all the factual knowledge before leaving the room

third obj - new knowledge / old fact response

according to this argument, upon her release Mary gains knowledge of what it is like to see colours and acquires new concepts, based on her new phenomenal experience

this means she can describe the processes of colour vision using concepts she didn't possess before leaving the room

however these descriptions are not of any new facts but instead they represent the same facts about colour vision she already possessed and spoke about in physical terms before

what is different is simply the way in which these same facts are presented, this time using phenomenal concepts

So mary does not learn any new facts about the world on leaving the room

First issue facing dualism - the problem of other minds

• it is a sceptical worry about whether knowledge is possible of minds other than one’s own

  • I have direct and privileged access to my own mind via introspection - by contrast, I am not able to directly inspect the contents of anyone else’s mind (minds are private)

  • because I cannot directly observe other minds, I must infer the mental states of others from what I can observe, their bodies and their behaviour

    • however, this behavioural evidence is insufficient to establish for certain what others’ mental states are or indeed that they have minds at all

Explain the argument from analogy response to the problem of other minds

• offers a solution by suggesting a piece of reasoning whereby we can justifiably infer the existence of other minds on the basis of others’ behaviour

• it first describes my own case where I am able to observe a regular connection between my mental states and the physical states of my body and my behaviour e.g. stubbing my toe makes me feel pain, and feeling pain brings me to cry

  • I can also see people with similar behaviours to mine such as crying after stubbing their toes

  • using my case by analogy, I can infer that others are likely to have similar internal states correlating with similar external observable states and behaviour

• p1 - I observe that I have a mind; p2 - I also observe that my mental states are systematically connected with my behaviour and the states of my body (for example, acts of will causing bodily movements and damage to my body causing pain); p3 - I observe that other people who have bodies like mine behave similar to me; c1 - so it is likely that their bodies and behaviour are connected to mental states too; c2 - and so it is likely that others have minds

• response to argument from analogy - arg from analogy is an inductive argument and inductive generalisation from one case is weak

  • scientists will conduct several experiments to establish a general law and I would not conclude that all white mushrooms are safe to eat after eating just one

  • arg from analogy is based on one case (my own) and for the argument to work I would have to be able to use several individuals as a starting point before generalising to all humans - since this is impossible, the inference from my own mind to the claim that all other human beings have minds is weak

Explain the existence of other minds is the best hypothesis response to problem of other minds

• second proposed solution is the abductive argument that existence of other minds is the best hypothesis

• argument observes the complexity of human behaviour and asks how this can be accounted for

  • one possibility is the zombie hypothesis - humans’ behaviour is caused by the complex workings of their nervous systems and brains but they are still mere automata (mindless machines)

  • another possibility is the other minds hypothesis - humans have a complex inner life of sensations, beliefs and desires which are caused by conscious mental states

  • this can be seen as a better explanation than the zombie hypothesis as it can account for desires better e.g. someone who chooses to be vegetarian because they want to do the right thing (human desire) -> zombies cannot really explain this behaviour

  • this reasoning can be seen as parallel to best hypothesis theories in science such as atomic theory which explains behaviour well even in the absence of direct observation

  • other minds hypothesis postulates existence of sensations, desires and beliefs and uses these concepts to explain and predict behaviour -> aka folk psychology

  • a valid argument deduced from observations of others’ behaviour cannot establish the existence of mental states - it is possible that others are zombies - but the other minds hypothesis is by far the better explanation of others’ behaviour and is therefore reasonable to adopt

• p1 - humans have complex behaviour; p2 - if humans have minds, then this would explain their behaviour; p3 - there is no other theory that can account for their behaviour as well; c - therefore it is likely that humans have minds

• response to other minds hypothesis

  • this response retains the dualist picture according to which we must infer the existence of other minds on behavioural evidence -> if this was how we ascribed mental states, we would be able to doubt that others have minds in everyday life just as we may doubt existence of unobservable entities like atoms

  • If you try to doubt whether the person you are conversing with has thoughts or that the person who stubs their toe is in pain, you may likely find this impossible.  The fact we are seriously incapable of doubting others' minds suggests that the notion that others have minds is not a hypothesis more or less well supported by the behavioural evidence. It instead suggests a more direct relationship between behaviour and mindedness; this leads to behaviourism which argues others’ minds are open to view and do not need to be inferred

Explain second issue facing dualism - Ryle’s category mistake

• Ryle accuses cartesian dualism of a ‘category mistake’ where one confuses one type of concept with another e.g. someone watching cricket who asks which player is responsible for the team spirit - category mistake here is thinking team spirit is an operation conducted by the players on a par with bowling or batting - it is instead a way of talking about how the team plays

• in relation to dualism, the mistake is treating mind as though it were in the same category as physical things or substances

  • in this way of seeing the mind, it can exist on its own, has various special properties and can causally interact with other substances like physical substances

  • this understanding of the concept of the mind brings substance dualist to have the flawed dualist understanding - since it makes no sense to talk about mind as having physical characteristics, it is described as immaterial and unextended

    • this unextended substance is then said to have causal interaction with the physical body which leads to the conceptual interaction problem

    • since mind is only accessible to the subject of experience, other people’s minds are necessarily hidden from view, leading to the problem of other minds

• all these problems can be defused once we conduct analysis of our ordinary talk about the mind -> this analysis reveals the mind is not a thing at all and instead that the ascription of mental states to others makes reference to their publicly observable behaviour which can lead to behaviourism

Explain the first issue with interactionist dualism - conceptual interaction problem

• Conceptual interaction problem (Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia): p1 - it is inconceivable for two things to causally interact, unless their surfaces come into contact with each other; p2 - according to substance dualism the mind is unextended and so has no surface; c1 - therefore it is inconceivable for the mind to interact with the body; p3 - what is inconceivable is impossible; c2 - therefore mind-body interaction is impossible 

• response - reject premise 1 as causal interaction is not interaction between two physical things - the non-extended mind can have causal interaction with the extended body without physical contact (not contradictory)

  • Hume adds that we we form beliefs about causal connections on the basis of two events being conjoined in our experience e.g. eating bread and feeling satisfied -> we are often ignorant of the underlying mechanisms behind this yet it does not prevent us from judging that there is a causal connections 

  • physical contact is not necessary for causal connectedness such as with electromagnetic field influences another or the Earth can influence the path of the moon - no requirement for physical contact so immaterial mind can interact with body

Explain the second issue with interactionist dualism - empirical interaction problem

• Empirical interaction problem: physics committed to causal closure principle that occurrence of every event in the universe can be completely explained in terms of interactions with other physical events (physical events only have physical causes) -> all events in human bodies must be explicable in terms of purely physical causes leaving no causal role for non-physical mind

  • p1 - all physical events have purely physical causes; p2 - human actions are physical events; c1 - human actions must have purely physical causes; c2 - human actions do not have non-physical causes and dualist interactionism is false

• another law that an be used is law of conservation of energy - energy cannot be created or destroyed but instead changes form -> non-physical mind has to increase the amount of energy in the physical universe to interact with the body, breaking the law of the conservation of energy -> reject interactionism

• response - mind-body interaction is two way so balance of energy remains constant (counter - no reason to assume balancing should occur) -> another response could be mind can influence body without injecting energy into physical universe by redistributing energy in brain (counter - any influence on brain from outside must make some addition of energy and would still involve breaking the causal closure principle)

  • dualists forced to reject laws of physics - can’t neuroscientists detect events in the brain which represent an increase in energy from outside the physical? haven’t been detected yet which count against dualism (dualist might say neuroscience isn’t that developed yet)

Explain epiphenomenalist dualism as a solution to the interaction problem

• principle of conservation of energy implies that there can be no causal influence on the physical from any non-physical mental realm -> principle of clausal closure implies that the current state of brain can be explained by purely physical causes

• accepting these principles but also holding view that mental properties are distinct / irreducible brings you to commit to view that mental properties have no causal influence on physical - epiphenomenalist dualism

• view that the mind is a by-product of activity of the brain - produced by it but has no reciprocal influence on it

  • conscious volitions have no causal influence on your actions and are instead an illusion to think your mind has a role in determining what you do

  • illusion to think pain caused by putting hand in fire is what brings you to recoil - pain is a by-product of physiological processes leading to recoiling of hand

  • mental states do not causally affect each other - pain about fire is not what brings you to form belief that fire can burn

• reasons to adopt view are that they support property dualism whilst also bypassing issues of mind-body interaction

objections to epiphenomenalism

• first obj. to epi. dualism - challenge posed by introspective self knowledge

  • if epiphenomenalist is correct, then when we talk about mental states our utterances are not caused by those mental states but instead their neurological correlates -> statements ascribing mental states to myself are not causally connected to my subjective experiences

  • e.g. complaining to dentist about toothache is a result of the decay in tooth that is responsible for your utterances and the pain is a mere by-product -> pain itself has no role in the utterance ‘I have a toothache’

    • issue with semantics - we suppose meaning of the word is derived from the conscious experience of the toothache and if it is not, the word has no content itself

    • same with talking about conscious mental state e.g. belief - cannot be talking about your own mental states when using such terms as the mental states are not what has caused you to use the words

    • if mental states do not refer to introspective awareness of those states, what is it about? such utterances have no meaning -> this conclusion is absurd as it rejects that we are able to meaningfully talk about our introspectively accessible mental states

  • response - if we are conscious automata, it is possible for brains to ahve learned to employ certain vocalisations in certain conditions e.g. say toochache when certain pain neurons are firing -> the by-product of these neurons firing need not cause the utterance as all that is needed is that there be a correlation

• second obj. to epi. dualism - challenge posed by phenomenology of our mental life

  • what is more certain than deliverances of consciousness and what more common experience is there than causal interaction between conscious states and other conscious states or actions e.g. when you go to the dentist, surely it is the pain that leads to this decision -> one mental event (pain) has caused the decision (Event) which then brings you to book an appointment -> volition causing actions

  • denying this seems to be an affront against facts which are revealed self-evidently in everyday life

  • response - epiphenomenalists can argue phenomenology of our own mental life is misleading as close inspection of our experience reveals that it is perfectly consistent with the truth of epiphenomenalism -> we are aware of our volitions and our actions but not the mechanism of power between the two

    • e.g. when wanting to raise your hand, you are not aware of the intermediate steps of neurons and passageways and muscle contractions in your arm 

    • we are not aware of power connecting the will with our actions so our belief that there is a causal interaction between the two is only based on the constant conjunction of the two -> this can be explained by volition being a by-product of the physical processes that lead to an act - introspective experience is not enough to determine whether volition are by-products or causes

• third obj. to epi. dualism - the challenge posed by natural selection

  • evolutionary theory says that the characteristics of a species have evolved because they confer some survival or reproductive advantage - if these traits did not, they would not be selected for and would tend to die out

  • according to epiphenomenalism, consciousness has no causal influence on the physical. Since evolution is a physical process, it follows that consciousness could not provide the species with any evolutionary advantage

  • in this case, consciousness wouldn’t have been selected for during our evolutionary history -> therefore if epiphenomenalism is true, we should not expect conscious mental states to exist now

  • the fact conscious mental states do exist suggests therefore that they do confer some survival advantage and therefore that they must have some causal influence on the physical realm

  • response - jackson uses polar bear coat analogy

    • polar bear’s coat is heavy and additional weight is some disadvantage in its efforts to survive but it is wrong to conclude that the heaviness should have been deselected by evolutionary pressures - heaviness is inevitable by-product of evolving a warm coat and a warm coat has advantages in the arctic

    • as long as advantages of having a warm coat outweigh the disadvantages, the coat would still be selected and kept

  • in the same way, consciousness may be an inevitable by-product of the development of a conscious brain which still helped us to survive -> qualia and other conscious mental states may have evolved even though they have no direct evolutionary advantage