The philosophy of the mind: Dualism
The traditional philosophical mind-body problem has been between dualism, the theory that the mind is a non-physical substance which causally interacts with the brain, and physicalism, the theory that the mind and mental states simply are physical states, such as brain activities. The most persuasive argument for physicalism is the rejection of dualism: it naturally follows from a rejection of the idea that there is a non-physical mind that the mind must therefore be physical. I shall consider the Cartesian argument for dualism but reject it as fallacious and, after considering the problem of physical/non-physical interaction, shall conclude that dualism is unsatisfactory as a theory of the mind. I shall then consider physicalism, which is more plausible than dualism because of the scientific evidence supporting correlation between brain activity and mental activity. However, I shall conclude that physicalism is still unsatisfactory as a philosophical account of the mind because it leaves the hardest and most central issues concerning how the physical can create the mental untouched. I shall raise the possibility that the reason why both these theories are unsatisfactory is that they are derived from shared mistaken assumptions concerning the ontological status of the mind.
I shall use certain terms with a specific definition in mind. When I refer to dualism, I refer to Cartesian-style substance dualism -- the thesis that the mind is a non-physical entity which causally interacts with one specific body - rather than the more general definition of dualism, which is the theory that reality consists of two disparate parts. When I refer to physicalism I shall refer to the thesis that mental states are identical with physical states, rather than the more general thesis that everything that exists is physical and the more limited reductionist thesis that whatever exists, including mental states, can be completely described in physical terms. Thus the physicalist can still maintain that that, though mental states are identical with physical states, mental states cannot necessarily be described in terms of physical states -- though they are extensionally the same, they are not necessarily intensionally the same.