Dualism

The Mind/Body Problem

Leibniz’s Mill

Leibniz asks us to imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, feel, and perceive.

Now imagine that the machine is increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter it as one enters a mill.

If we walked around inside it, we would see only parts pushing one another.

We would never see anything that explains perception.

Leibniz writes:

We are obliged to admit that perception and that which depends on it cannot be explained mechanically, that is, by means of shapes and motions. And if we suppose that there were a machine whose structure makes it think, feel, and have perception, we could imagine it increased in size while keeping the same proportions, so that one could enter it as one does with a mill. If we were then to go around inside it, we would see only parts pushing one another, and never anything which would explain a perception.

Source: Monadology, section 17.

Responses to the Mind/Body Problem

There are three major responses to the mind/body problem:

1. Physicalism: only physical properties exist. This is the view held by the vast majority of philosophers.

2. Dualism: physical and mental properties exist. This is the view associated with René Descartes.

3. Idealism: only mental properties exist. This is the view associated with George Berkeley.

Frank Jackson’s Mary the Super Scientist

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black-and-white room by means of a black-and-white television monitor.

She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires all of the physical information there is to obtain about what happens when we see ripe tomatoes or the sky and use terms like “red,” “blue,” and so on.

She discovers, for example, exactly which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces, through the central nervous system, the contraction of the vocal cords and the expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the sentence, “The sky is blue.”

What happens when Mary is released from her black-and-white room, or when she is given a color television monitor?

Does she learn anything new?

It seems obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it.

But if she learns something new, then her previous knowledge was incomplete.

But she had all of the physical information.

Therefore, there is more to know than the physical information.

If that is right, then physicalism is false.

Source: Frank Jackson, “What Mary Didn’t Know” / “What Mary Doesn’t Know,” 1982.

Types of Dualism

Interactionism

Interactionism is the view that the mental and the physical interact.

This is the view associated with Descartes.

Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism is the view that the physical causes the mental, but the mental does not cause the physical.

This is the view associated with Frank Jackson.

Parallelism

Parallelism is the view that the physical and the mental do not interact but run in parallel with one another.

This is the view associated with Leibniz.

Questions

1. Which position do you think best fits with our everyday experiences? Which position do you think best fits with our scientific understanding of the world? Which one should we trust more?

2. Most of you seem to think that computers cannot be conscious. Do your arguments for computers not being conscious also support dualism? Are you okay with that?

3. Let’s suppose that dualism is true. How would we go about trying to understand the mental if it is not physical? Can we use science, even though science appears to investigate only the physical? If science cannot investigate the mind, then there appears to be a gaping hole in what we can understand with science. Is that okay? Can reason alone fill in the gap?

4. I am scared of seeing a ghost, but not because I am afraid of ghosts as such. Rather, I am afraid of ghosts because I am a dyed-in-the-wool physicalist, and I believe that if I see a ghost, I will have to rethink all of the philosophical theories I hold. Do you think this is a legitimate fear? If ghosts exist, does that prove dualism is true? What about the existence of ESP or telepathy?

5. Between the mind and the brain, which is more important? Which should we spend more time studying: the mind or the brain? If you could lose one but not the other, which one would you prefer to lose? Which one do you think is actually “you,” and which is something other than “you”?

6. Up until this point, I have used the words “mind” and “mental.” However, another word that philosophers use for the mind is the “soul.” In this language, “mental properties” become “properties of the soul.” Thus, another way of saying you believe dualism is true is saying that you think we have a soul. Does this change how you feel about dualism?

Recent Philosophy Articles Using Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Doesn’t Know”

Sources of Richness and Ineffability for Phenomenally Conscious States

This article explores how conscious experiences are rich yet hard to describe, or ineffable, using information theory and dynamical systems.

It suggests that richness relates to the amount of information, and that ineffability relates to information loss during processing.

This offers a physicalist perspective on consciousness.

Grounding Physicalism and the Knowledge Argument

This article challenges the conventional view of the Mary thought experiment.

Moran argues that while Mary is in the black-and-white room, she does not learn all physical facts.

When she experiences color, she acquires new physical facts grounded in fundamental physical facts.

This allows the argument to align with physicalism while still acknowledging Mary’s new knowledge.

Simultaneity of Consciousness with Physical Reality: The Key That Unlocks the Mind-Matter Problem

This article challenges traditional views by proposing that conscious experience and physical reality occur simultaneously.

This simultaneity provides a new angle for understanding how consciousness can have causal power and be integrated into physical science without invoking panpsychism.

The paper aims to establish a conceptual bridge between consciousness and physics, proposing testable hypotheses about brain function and consciousness.