Property Dualism 25 Marker

Property Dualism Issues:

  • arguments establishing PD face logical problems

  • cannot account for how the mind and body interact (mental causation)

  • doesn’t cohere with empirical knowledge

  • counter-intuitive to what we already know

Paragraphs:

  • Zombie argument

  • Interactionist PD

  • Epiphenomenalist PD

Statement of Intent: Property Dualism is not a successful theory of mind because

  1. One of the foundational arguments (the zombie argument) faces logical issues and fails to prove the conceivability of zombies (and as a result property dualism)

  2. Interactionist forms of PD faces crucial empirical issues and does not cohere with what we know scientifically

  3. Leaves us with Epiphenomenalist property dualism but this faces significant issues, leaving us with no introspective self-knowledge and a deeply counter-intuitive theory of mind

P1. Zombie Argument

R - Arguments that aim to establish PD fail. The most foundational argument (the zombie argument) fails to establish its first premise, upon which the rest of the argument is based. If it turns out that phenomenal properties can be analysed in terms of physical and functional properties, then there is no reason to think zombies might be conceivable. The first premise of the zombie argument only holds if the conclusion of the zombie argument (physicalism being false) is true. As a result, the argument becomes circular.

I - However, when challenging the first premise, the physicalist assumes that physicalism is true. They argue that a zombie is a physical and functional duplicate, without consciousness, is inconceivable, because phenomenal properties, according to physicalism, are physical properties which realise particular functional roles.

C - However, the zombie advocate also cannot assume that physicalism is not the case. If they assume in their first premise that physicalism is not the case, the zombie advocate is assuming that the conclusion of the zombie argument is true. Doing so would be begging the question and relying on a circular argument.

E - The exchange between the physicalist and the zombie advocate ends in a stalemate. Neither PD nor physicalists have shown their theory to be true or false. More crucially, the zombie argument is a conceivability argument, which face more general criticisms such as the ones posed by Patricia Churchland: conceivability tells us very little, we should start from science instead

P2. Interactionist Property Dualism

R - As well as facing theoretical issues, if we assume that PD is true, it does not cohere with what we know empirically from neuroscience; there is no evidence for property dualism. (causal interaction)

I - There is also no evidence against PD from neuroscience. Also, Chalmers argues that fundamental causal relationships cannot be further explained e.g. for many years, physicists had no account of how gravity works. Then Einstein suggested that it was the result of mass bending space. But at present, we have no account of how mass bends space. But this is no objection to accepting the claim that mass does bend space. Property dualism claims that mental properties are fundamental in the same sense as fundamental physical properties. There is no further explanation in other terms available, but there is no special problem of mental causation here.

C - We do not have evidence to show that PD involves a ‘fundamental causal relationship’. Furthermore, interactionist forms of PD violate the principle of causal closure, and face the crucial empirical issue of causal overdetermination. If we are willing to accept interactionist property dualism, which claims mental properties do cause physical events, then one physical event would have both a physical cause and a mental cause.This causal overdetermination violates the principle of causal closure, and it is implausible, it isn’t found in any of the sciences.

E - These issues highlight a crucial problem for interactionist PD because they cannot explain mental causation and nothing in empirical science encourages us to endorse it

P3. Epiphenomenalist Property Dualism

R - However, epiphenomenalist property dualism can account for issues like causal overdetermination, avoiding the issues faced by interactionist PD. However, epiphenomenalist PD faces its own issues, most crucially that it leaves us with a deeply counter-intuitive theory of mind.

I - Epiphenomenalist PD can respond to the issues of causal relationships, because what we actually see is correlation. It might appear that feeling pain or loving being epiphenomenal is counter-intuitive, but this only appears to be the case because the physical processes in the brain causing the phenomenal properties (e.g. pain) also cause the behaviour (e.g. wincing) at the same time, so we think the phenomenal properties cause it when they actually just correlate.

C - even if EPD can argue there is a correlation, EPD would need to explain how a physical substance (the brain) causes both a mental effect and a physical effect. It also seems counter-intuitive to think that mental properties do not cause other mental states. This leads to the problem of introspective self-knowledge. On the E account our beliefs about our mental states would be unjustified and unreliable

E - Epiphenomenalist Property Dualism is the only PD account that avoids the issue interactionism faces, and yet it leaves us with a deeply counter intuitive theory that doesn’t accord with empiricism or the phenomenology of our mental lives, leaving us unable to have introspective self-knowledge.