Could Dualism possibly be true?

substance can cause mind substance to experience certain sensations.  However,

the fact that they were essentially different meant that Descartes held that

they were also independent.  One key difference, already demonstrated, is that

mental events are not publicly observable unlike those of a physical nature.  

Mental events are also often said not to be spatially located, clearly it is

not possible to pin down where specifically where a general feeling of

happiness is experienced.  Thirdly mental events don’t seem to have the

various physical properties which physical events have.  Mental events clearly

don’t involve properties of speed or weight and although physical events

themselves don’t either, the physical objects involved do.  Therefore,

physical events can be said to involve mass and physical motion in a way that

mental events do not.  Lastly, as demonstrated by the chocolate tasting

example above, mental events have a subjective quality to them, which physical

events do not possess.  Recently philosophers have been calling this

element ‘qualia.’  T. Nagel also demonstrated this point in his article ‘What

Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ where he asks us to do exactly that.  Bats emit high-

pitched shrieks which allow them to fly around in dark caves, using echoes to

judge relative distances.  Therefore, it is clear that bat vision works in a

very different way from our own and Nagel asks ‘what is it like to be a bat,

flying around in the dark using bat sonar?’  We could take apart a bat’s brain

and figure out how the neural apparatus for bat sonar works.  But though we

can now say that we understand how the bat’s brain works, we still fail to

understand what it is actually like to be a bat.  Therefore there are

particular mental events of a sort that only bats have, and we cannot learn

what they are like even if we have a detailed understanding of the physical

events that actually go on in a bat’s brain, which means that we will never

get to truly experience this strange bat sonar experience.  These contrasts

between mental events and physical events mean that our mental lives cannot be

adequately explained merely by reference to the physical brain.  This somewhat

unbridgeable gap is satisfactorily explained by the theory of dualism.  

Another argument in favour of dualism is that of religion.  Each of the major

religions places their belief in life after death and the concept of the

immortal soul.  The mind can simply be substituted for the soul.  Hence if

mental events were reducible to physical events, then when your brain stopped

functioning, your mind or soul would cease to exist.  Therefore disbelieving

in dualism goes against one of the main pillars of most religions, which would

tend to lead to a general rejection of the particular religion to which an

individual previously subscribed.  However, arguing from the basis of the

immortality of the soul makes this whole argument unconvincing for sceptics.  

The irreducibility argument is also one that is often advanced in favour of

dualism.  This argues against physicalism which attempts to argue that we may

discover that our experiences are really brain processes just as we have

discovered that other things have a real nature that we could not have guessed

until it was revealed by scientific investigation.  An example would be that

of water; it consists of both hydrogen and oxygen but is nothing like either

of these elements in separation.  However, dualists argue that the debate over

mind and matter is a situation that is far removed from such examples.  With

the chemical composition of water we are dealing with something that is

clearly out there in the physical world which we can all see and touch.  

However, we are not giving a breakdown of the way that water looks, feels and

tastes to us.  As Nagel writes “a physical whole can be analysed into smaller

physical parts but a mental process can’t be.  Physical parts just can’t add

up to a  mental whole.”  There are in fact a variety of mental phenomena that

no physical explanation that no physical explanation could account for and

therefore mental states can’t be reduced to purely physical terms.  Lastly it

has been said that dualism is a very common sense view.  Some developmental

psychologists claim to have shown that dualism is commonsensical for very

young children as well.  Obviously this is not a proof in itself but it can

still be cited as a reason for not abandoning dualism.

However, there are considerable problems with dualism that need to be taken

into account before simply accepting dualism as so.  Firstly there is the

appeal to simplicity, or the principle of Ockham’s razor, which supports the

idea that having one state as opposed to two.  It is plausible to think that

all of your behaviour is fully caused by physical events.  But if this is true

then there is no reason to believe in a non-physical mental state.  Therefore

it would seem that the physicalist point of view is the more rational one to

subscribe to. It is also easier to prove because there is no doubt that matter

exists, while a separate mental state is still currently a hypothesis.  This

follows onto the idea of ‘Explanatory Impotence.’ The existence of matter is

supported by the sheer wealth of information that neuroscientists and people

like them currently hold on the brain and its structure, in stark comparison

to the lack of factual information that the dualist could tell us about

spiritual substance.  Churchland said that “dualism is less a theory of mind

than it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in.”  

Although this would seem like an overly vicious attack, a slightly more

moderate version, namely that dualism is full of unanswered questions, holds

true.  Descartes argued that the mind and the body exhibit two way

interaction.  However it is unclear as to where this interaction would take

place.  As previously acknowledged the mental element as not being spatially

located.  This means that the cause, namely the event in the brain that

immediately proceeds the experience of pain, is located in a particular place

but that the effect is located in no particular place at all.  This is a

rather odd relationship, although it does not have an overly adverse on the

theory of dualism as a whole.  Alternatively some dualists have argued that

the nexus of mind-body causation is in the pineal gland.  However, this is

just another physical organ.  A dualist could respond that it could be likened

to gravity in that it is not a physical object but it causes motion.  However,

gravity is a special phenomenon and works accordingly to well-known laws of

physics.  Gravitational fields are still features of physical objects.  

Therefore it would seem that attempting to pin down the location of the

supposed interaction between mind and matter has failed.  Another unanswered,

and related, question is how the interaction takes place.  A person’s decision

to cross the room, a mental event, immediately causes a group of neurons in

their brain to be set off, a physical event, which ultimately results in the

individual walking across the room.  The problem is that if we have no

physical event causing the setting off of the neurons in the brain, which

seems to imply that physical energy has appeared out of thin air.  This would

seem to be in direct contradiction to the conservation of energy, a

fundamental principle of physics.  This states that “In all physical

processes, the total amount of energy in the universe remains constant.”  

Dualists have struggled to answer these objections and has meant that recent

years have seen less stress placed on the interaction between mind and matter.

Another problem is that of neural dependence.  If certain parts of the brain

are damaged then we lose certain capacities such as the ability to read,

speak, move or retain memories.  Even key capacities such as reason, emotion

and consciousness can be affected by drugs. Van Inwagen’s Remote Control

argument states that if dualism were true, then when we were hit on the head,

we would lose control of our bodies whilst continuing to be conscious, and

when we drank a lot of alcohol we would lose motor control but still have

clear minds.  However, much evidence to the contrary demonstrates that the

above assumptions are false and therefore Van Inwagen concludes that dualism

is false.  However, this proof is only true if it is based on an

interpretation of dualism as completely separating mind and matter.  Although

independence of mind and matter is stressed uniformly, the majority of

dualists stress the fact that the brain and the mind are closely intertwined,

and that each affects the other.  Hence it would seem that this proof is

somewhat irrelevant.  Evolutionary theory would also seem to be something of a

stumbling block for dualism.  Human beings are a result of a purely physical

process of evolution and adaptation.  We were developed from simpler creatures

with no non-physical element, developing our nervous system because it has

survival value.  There is no equivalent way to account for the development of

our minds and the fact that it was not present in earlier species would seem

to mean that there is no way to account for it. Indeed, as Nagel writes, “our

bodies grow by a complex physical process from the single cell produced by the

joining of sperm and egg at conception.  Ordinary matter is added gradually in

such a way that the cell turns into a baby. With arms, legs, eyes, ears and a

brain, able to move and feel and see, and eventually to talk and think.”  

Physicalists believe that this complex physical system is sufficient by itself

to give rise to mental life, which is not independent of the physical state.  

Lastly, Gilbert Ryle has criticised the dualistic view as being guilty of

making a category mistake.  To view the body and soul as being two separate

and distinct entities is like watching a game of cricket and asking ‘where’s

the team spirit?’ or looking around the colleges, libraries and departments of

Oxford and asking ‘Where’s the University?’  Such questions fail to recognise

that they are part of the whole, not separate entities.

 In conclusion, it would seem that dualism could possibly be true.  However,

this is in a somewhat modified form from that initially proposed by Descartes;

with less emphasis being placed on the interaction between mind and matter and

more emphasis being placed on the critical examination of the claim that our

mental lives can be adequately explained by reference to the physical brain.  

This physical theory of the whole of reality is far less possible when

compared with dualism as it has progressed by simply leaving the mind out of

what it tries to explain.  However, the possibility that there may be far more

to the world than can be understood by this somewhat simplistic interpretation

cannot be ignored.

Bibliography

Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations II and IV (trans. J.

Cottingham)

G. Ryle ‘Descartes Myth’ from  The Nature of Mind (OUP 1991)

T. Nagel  What Does It All Mean? (OUP 1987)

Various internet resources