Dualistic Philosophy
In philosophy , dualism refers to a vision of the relationship matter - spirit based on the assertion that mental phenomena have characteristics that are beyond the scope of physics , . However, the first use of the term in this sense only since the first half of the eighteenth century and appears in the writings of Christian Wolff (1670-1754) . Today, dualism is opposed to various forms of monism , including the physicalism and phenomenalism. The dualism of substance opposes all forms of materialism , while the dualism of properties can be considered a form of emergent materialism, and would be opposed to a non-emergent materialism . This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the arguments that were raised for and against this thesis.
Summary |
History of dualism in philosophy
Plato
In his dialogue Phaedo , Plato formulated his famous conception of eternal Forms as substances which separate and immaterial objects and other phenomena that we see are the shadows . Plato's idea became the starting point for all subsequent formulations of what is now called dualism of substance in ontology. But this view should not be seen as a concept metaphysics old and outdated because it has consequences for the precise and definite philosophy of mind , especially the mind-body problem.
Plato clearly says in the Phaedo that the forms are universalia ante rem, that is to say they are concepts (or ideas) universal, making intelligible the entire phenomenal world. Therefore, for the intellect (the most important aspect of the mind in philosophy to Ren Descartes ) has access to some form of knowledge in relation to any aspect of the universe, it is necessary that it is itself an immaterial entity (or ownership of such entity). Thus, it is clear based on these texts that Plato was a very visionary precursor of Descartes and later formulations and more rigorous concept of dualism of substance .
Aristotle
Aristotle subsequently rejected the notion of Platonic Forms as independently existing entities, but now many aspects of idealism, such as the division of the substance of the accident. In his book Metaphysics , it is already pointing the central problem of this idea : On the one hand, if we say that every feature of the phenomenal world is or is included in the Forms, it seems to destroy the essential unity and essential to the Form. On the other hand, if one says that features are only similar, or are copies of forms, we then need additional forms to explain the connection between members of the class consisting of the peculiarities and the platforms, and so on, leading us into an infinite regress. This is what Aristotle called the argument of the "third man" .
It is for these reasons that Aristotle has reviewed the theory of Forms to eliminate the idea of their independent existence of particular concrete entities . The shape of a thing, for Aristotle, is the nature or essence (Greek ousia) of this thing. To say that Socrates and Callias are both men does not mean that there is a transcendent entity "man" to which Socrates and Callias both belong. The form is substance , but not substance beyond the substance of the concrete entities which it characterizes. Aristotle rejects both the universalia in rebus and universalia ante rem . Some philosophers and thinkers have regarded this as a form of materialism , not without reason. However, what is important from the perspective of philosophy of mind is the fact that Aristotle does not believe that the intellect can be conceived as something material. His reasoning is that if the intellect were material then it may not include all forms. If the intellect were material specific organ (or part of such a body), then there would be limited to receive only certain types of information, the same way that the eye is limited to receiving visual data and ear, auditory data. Since the intellect is capable of receiving and emulate all forms of data, it can not be a physical organ, and therefore, there can be intangible .
Neoplatonism
The first centuries of Christianity seems to have struggled to reach a single position on the question of the relationship between mind and body, just as it has struggled to define the status ontological of Christ. The consensus seems to have emerged around what is now called the Neo-Platonism , in the early Middle Ages. Doctrines related to Neoplatonism are essentially minor variations of the general idea of Plato on the immortality of the soul and the nature of shapes. Neoplatonic Christians equated Forms souls, and believed that the soul was the essence of each human being , while the body was only a shadow or a copy of his eternal phenomena .
Scholasticism
Philosophers have subsequently continued in the neo-Aristotelian drawn by Thomas Aquinas , developing a concept tripartite forms, making the parallel with the Trinity consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit : the forms, intellect and the soul were the three aspects or parts of the same singular phenomenon. For Thomas Aquinas, the soul (or intellect) was always the essence of being human, but in a manner similar to that suggested by Aristotle , it is only through its manifestations in a human body that a person could acquire the status of human being. While the soul (intellect or form) can exist independently of the body (contrary to what Aristotle), the soul itself was not a person. Thus, Thomas Aquinas suggested that one says "the soul of St. Peter pray for us" rather than saying "St. Peter pray for us," since all that remained of St. Peter, after his death was his soul. All things related to the body, such as individual memory were erased with the end of bodily existence of each . There are different views on this issue in modern Christianity. The official doctrine of the Catholic Church, as shown by the Apostles' Creed (Credo), says that the second coming of Christ on earth, the soul is united to the body at the resurrection, and any person complete (body and soul) then goes to the Paradise or Hell. Thus, there is a sort of inseparability of the soul, the mind and body, which seems even closer to Aristotle that the views expressed by Thomas Aquinas. Theologians do not accept this doctrine and insist that only the immaterial soul (and therefore the mind or intellect with her) hand to heaven, leaving the body (and brain) behind her forever.
Descartes and his followers
In his metaphysical meditations , Descartes embarked on a quest during which he pledged to doubt everything for what he believed, to discover what it could be some . In doing so, he discovered he could doubt the fact that whether or not a body (whether he could simply dreaming of her body, or that it was an illusion created by a "evil genius"), but he could not doubt the existence of his mind. This is for Descartes the first indication that the body and mind were two different things really. The mind , according to Descartes , was a "thinking thing" (from Latin res cogitans), and essentially immaterial. This "thing" was the essence of his person, one who doubted, believed, hoped and thought. This distinction between body and mind is well documented in the meditations VI: "I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as I am only a thinking thing, not expanded, and .
The central claim is that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body intangible materials interact causally, an idea that continues to appear so privileged in many non-European philosophies. Mental events cause physical events and vice versa. This leads to a very deep problem for Cartesian dualism: How a mind can cause intangible anything in a material body and vice versa? This has often been called the "problem of interactionism.
Descartes himself has struggled to get a coherent answer to this problem. In his letter to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, he suggested that the minds of living beings interacting with the body through the pineal gland , a small gland at the center of the brain between the two hemispheres . However, this explanation was not satisfactory: how a mind intangible can interact with the pineal gland material? Given the difficulty there was to defend the theory of Descartes, some of his disciples, such as Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche , proposed a different explanation: all the mind-body interactions sought the direct intervention of God. According to these philosophers, the different states of mind and body consisted of only the opportunity for such intervention, not its cause. These occasionalism maintained the thesis that all causation was natural except the one linking the body and the mind .
Typology of dualisms in philosophy
Types of ontological dualism
Ontological dualism involves the assertion of the dual nature of existence in relation to the spirit and matter, and can be divided into three categories:
(1) dualism essentially argues that the mind and matter are the types of substance fundamentally different Substance dualism The dualism of substance is a form of dualism made famous by Descartes , who argued that there are two types of substance : the substance and mental substance material . The substance has no mental spatial extent, and substance material can not think. The dualism of substance is a view which contradicts physicalism , one views the most popular philosophy of mind today. However, we can consider the historical significance of the dualism of substance , which gave rise to many reflections on the mind-body problem. One can also note that the philosophical interpretation of quantum physics , and in particular the interpretation according to which consciousness causes the collapse of a system composed of the superposition of several quantum states, are not reminiscent of the dualism of substance since these interpretations leave generally assumed that the observer is quantum entanglement in the observed object, and not a substance separated as in the case of the dualism of substance. The dualism of substance is a position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy a realm of existence separate and distinct from the physical world Dualism property The duality property implies that when the material is organized properly (that is to say how human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. Thus, it is a sub-branch of materialism emergentist. Different versions of property dualism describe them in different ways. The epiphenomenalism implies that while the substance gives rise to sensations , volitions , ideas , etc.. these mental phenomena themselves do not cause anything in return: they are causal breakpoints. The interactionism , on the other hand, allows that mental phenomena are the causes of physical effects, and vice versa . Dualism attribute is the view espoused by most physicalist reductionist not like Donald Davidson and Jerry Fodor , who maintain that, while there is only one ontological category of substance and properties of substance (usually physical) attributes that are used to describe mental events can not be described in turn in terms of physical attributes in natural language, or be reduced , . If we attribute characterizes monism as the point of view subscribed eliminative materialists, who maintain that the intentional attributes such as belief, desire, resentment, etc.. Will inevitably removed from the language of science and ordinary language because the entities to which they refer do not exist, then the duality of attributes is most easily defined as the negation of this position. The dualistic attribute believe that what one might call the "psychology of the people" with all its powers of propositional attitudes is an inevitable part of the business description, explanation and understanding of mental states and human behavior. For example, Davidson adheres to a vision of anomalous monism, that there can not be strict psychophysical laws linking mental and physical events according to their descriptions as events mentally and physically. However, each of these mental events is a physical description. It is under this latter description that such events can be connected by causal relations with other physical events. Mental Attributes (rational, holistic and necessary) are different) so intractable physical attributes (contingent, atomic and causal) . Interactionism is the view that mental states such as belief and desire, interact causally with physical states. This is a very attractive which corroborates the intuitive vision of our common sense, despite the fact that it is very difficult to establish its validity by means of an argument logical or empirical evidence. She seems to be attractive because we are surrounded by such everyday occurrences as a child touching a hot stove (physical event), which makes him feel the pain (mental event), then scream and cry (physical event ), which has the effect of causing his parents a feeling of fear and a need to protect it (mental event) and so on . The vision epiphenomenalism, all mental events are caused by physical events and they have no physical consequence. Thus, the mental event of wanting to pick up a stone (call this event M) is caused by the outbreak of specific neurons in the brain (P call this event), however, when the arm and hand begin to move to pick up the stone (call this event E), the latter event is caused by P. Physical causes are in principle reducible to fundamental physics, and therefore mental causes are eliminated through this reductionist explanation. If P is the cause of E and also of M, there is no overdetermination by "M" for the explanation of E . Psychophysical parallelism is a very unusual perspective on the interaction between physical and mental events, a view which was supported mainly, and probably the only time really, by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Like Malebranche and others before him, Leibniz recognized the weakness of the consideration of Descartes' causal interactions occurring in a defined location in the brain. Malebranche decided that invoking a physical medium such as the pineal gland to explain the interaction between material and immaterial was impossible and he eventually made his doctrine of occasionalism, assuming that the interactions were actually caused by the intervention of God in each individual opportunities. Leibniz's idea is that God has created, once and for all, a pre-established harmony such that it is as if the physical and mental events were the cause, and were caused by one another mutually. In reality, mental causes have effects that mental and physical causes only have physical effects. That is why this view has been called parallelism . The arguments for dualism are several kinds. An important argument against physicalism (and therefore in favor of some form of dualism) involves the idea that the spiritual and the material appear to have properties quite different and probably irreconcilable. Mental events have a subjective quality associated with them, whereas physical events obviously did not. For example, what do they feel when a finger is burned? What looks like the sky blue? What is a nice music ? Philosophers call qualia these subjective aspects of the mind. Something looks like a color, a burn, and so on; qualia involved in these mental events. The argument is that these qualia seem particularly difficult to bring back anything of Physics This argument is that, if the attribute dualism is true, then there are irreducible special sciences to physics. These irreducible special sciences, which are the source of the perception of attributes assumed irreducible, are presumed to differ from the hard sciences to the extent they are dependent on intentionality. If they depend on intentionality, then they must depend on the existence of minds capable of an intentional stance. Psychology is the typical case of such a special science. Therefore, this science and its attributes must depend even more deeply about the existence of the spirit. Ideally, the physical function is to tell us how the world, break it down into its simplest elements understandable by humans, and describe it without interference from the viewpoints of individuals or limited to personal interests Thurs other hand, things like the predictable nature of the weather or the behavior of human beings are only of interest to humans itself. The problem is that having a perspective on the world itself is a psychological state. Therefore, the special sciences presuppose the existence of spirits that can achieve these states. If one wishes to avoid ontological dualism, then the spirit , which has a point of view, must be part of physical reality on which he has his point of view. If so, then in order to perceive the physical world as a psychological world, the mind must have a perspective on the physical world. This in turn presupposes the existence of the spirit . The zombie argument is based on a thought experiment proposed by David Chalmers. The basic idea is that you can imagine, and therefore implement, the existence of a human body without consciousness associated. Chalmers's argument is that it seems quite possible, in the sense of logical possibility, not an empirical possibility that such an entity exists, since all that is necessary for the design is that all things described by the physical sciences, and only they, are true to the zombie. Since none of the concepts involved in these sciences refers to consciousness or other mental phenomena, the passage of the imagination in the design is not as great as it seems . Thus, a version of "Zombie" by David Chalmers would be identical in all respects to David Chalmers present, at least identical in terms of both its physical constitution as its behavior. In principle, it would be impossible to identify the "zombie" as such, or to differentiate the current Chalmers, who has a conscience. Only Chalmers conscious access to the phenomenal aspect of his consciousness. As the two are identical Chalmers, specifically their brain is in all respects the same and works the same way, a neurologist could not differentiate them. However, according to the thought experiment, one thing can be differentiated: one is devoid of conscious life, has no qualia. Daniel Dennett has made a critical thinking exercise. He bases his attack on a critique of the notion of qualia . This argument concerns differences in the implementation of proposals / A> counterfactual physical objects on the one hand, and entities endowed with consciousness on the other ? Different kinds of dualisms imply that the mind affects matter causally sustained onslaught from all sides laborious, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century. How something purely intangible can affect something purely material? This is the fundamental problem of causal interaction. We analyze this problem in three ways. First, the scene of the interaction is not very clear. For example, the act of burning their fingers because of pain. Apparently, there is a chain of events, starting from the burning of the skin, leading to stimulation of nerve endings and then one (or more) events occurring in a particular area of the brain, finally ending with the sensation of pain. But pain is not supposed to be localizable. So where does the interaction takes place? If you answered, "It takes place in the brain," then I might reply, "But I thought the pain was localized anywhere. And, as a dualist, you could hang your idea and answer "because the pain is located anywhere but the brain event that is the direct cause of pain is localized in the brain. And we end up with causal very strange. The cause is located in one place, but the effect is localized anywhere. Perhaps this criticism is it not so devastating as that. We are interested now to a second problem with the interaction: How the interaction occurs it? One might think, "Well, it's a question for science scientists will eventually discover the link between physical and mental events. But philosophers also have something to say about it: the very idea of a mechanism explaining the link between mind and body would, at best, very strange. Why? Compare it to a mechanism that we understand. Consider a simple causal relationship, such as what happens when the cue ball knocks the black ball in pool, and makes it go in the hole. Here, we can say that the cue ball has a certain momentum when the mass passes through the pool table at a certain speed, then this momentum is transferred to the black ball, which then moves towards the hole. Now compare this with what happens in the brain, where a decision would result in the triggering of certain neurons and thus cause the movement of my body. Intention "I'll walk across the room" is a mental event and, as such, has no physical property as a strength. If she has no strength, so how could it cause the onset of any neuron? Is it magic? How does something with no physical property could he have any physical effect? To this we might answer, as some philosophers have done their time, as follows: "Well indeed, there is something mysterious in the way when the interaction between the mental and the physical location. But the fact that there is something mysterious does not mean that the interaction does not occur. Simply, there is an interaction that takes place between two totally different kinds of events. "The problem with this answer is that it does not seem to fully answer the objection. Try to formulate more precisely this objection. Take for example my decision to cross the room. The dualistic interpretation is this: My decision, a mental event causes immediate activation of a group of neurons in my brain, a physical event, resulting ultimately in the fact that indeed I crossed the room. The problem is that if something totally nonphysical causes the release of a pack of neurons, then there is no physical event that causes the activation of neurons. This means that energy physics seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Even if we say that my decision has some form of mental energy, and that this decision is the cause of the outbreak of neurons, it still has not explained where did that energy physics, for the outbreak is coming. It just seems to have been created from scratch . One of the main objections to dualistic interactionism, as mentioned above, is that it is very difficult if not impossible, to understand how two types of substances entirely different (material and immaterial) can interact causally. One possible answer to this problem is to highlight the fact that, perhaps, the causal interaction that takes place is not the same type as the interaction of Newtonian mechanics as in classical example of billiard balls but is rather involved energy, dark matter or some other mysterious process . Even if this statement is true, some maintain that there is always a problem: such interactions appear to violate the fundamental laws of physics. If an external energy source is unknown and the interactions, for example, would violate the principle of conservation of energy . On the other hand, the conservation laws only apply to closed systems and isolated and, since human beings are not isolated and closed systems, say the interactionist, these laws do not apply here absolutely. In the same state of mind , some reject the dualistic interactionism, explaining that it violates a principle heuristic general science: the causal closure of the physical world. But Mills has responded to this argument by pointing to the fact that mental events can be overdetermined. Overdetermination means that some aspects of an effect can not be completely explained by its sufficient cause. For example, "Music has acute break the glass, but this is the third time this glass broke this week. "It is certain that music is the sufficient cause acute because the glass is broken, but this does not explain the other element of the sentence that" this is the third time this week ... . This item is causally related, in a sense, the two previous events. Therefore, it was stressed that we should probably focus on the intrinsic or inherent aspects of a situation or event, if any, and apply the idea that the causal closure elements. Moreover, the question arises of determinism versus indeterminism. In quantum mechanics, the events at the microscopic level are indeterminate. More accurate is the location of the position of an electron , becomes less precise measurement of its angular momentum, and vice versa. Some philosophers like Karl Popper and John Eccles have speculated that such uncertainty could also be applied to the macroscopic scale . Most scientists, however, insist that the effects of such indeterminacy cancel each other for large assemblages of particles. This short but powerful argument was made by Paul Churchland, among others. The idea is simply that, in case of brain injury (eg traumatic, or secondary to neurological disease) properties and / or the substance of the mental subject are routinely affected. If the spirit was a substance entirely separate from the brain, how is it possible that whenever the brain is injured, the mind is affected? Indeed, it is often even possible to predict and explain the type of deterioration or mental or psychological changes that a human will experience when specific parts of his brain damaged. Thus, the question that faces the dual is to know how all this can be explained if the mind is essentially immaterial and distinct, or ontologically independent of the brain . It can respond to this argument in a simple way by considering the brain as an interface between body and mind, the body being likened to a machine (like a car) and the mind being seen as its user. This requires a good interface to control his machine. If the interface is damaged, it will not work and spirit will no longer appear in its entirety. By analogy, if your computer crashes for any reason, for example if the processor back, then you can perform more complex calculations, reading this article, or connect via the Internet, so that in the eyes of an observer you would see through the network, the better you will look somewhat diminished, at worst you would have simply disappeared. It is quite possible to envisage a similar function of the interaction between mind and body via the brain, so that if the brain is damaged the spirit - which remains intact - appears to have lost his faculties have even completely disappeared. The parallel is often made in cognitive science between the brain and a computer. But any computer that requires a user to operate. If we push the analogy to the maximum, one is tempted to seek what could be the user's brain and thus to consider the possibility of a totally independent spirit that will drive the brain. It remains to explain the mechanism of this interaction. Another common argument against dualism involves the idea that since the human being comes into existence (both phylogenetically and ontogenetically ) as a separate purely physical or material, and since nothing outside the domain of physics has been added later in its development then we must necessarily conclude our development as human beings fully materialized. Phylogenetically, the human species has evolved, like all other species from a single cell being made of matter. Since all subsequent events leading to the formation of our species can be explained through the process of random mutation and natural selection, the difficulty for the dualist is to explain where and why it could have been the intervention of a non-physical event, not material in the process of natural evolution. Ontogenetically, we begin our existence as an egg fertilized. There is nothing non-material or mentalist in the design, formation of blastocyst , the gastrula , and so on. Our development can be explained entirely in terms of accumulation of material through the process of nutrition. So where could come from our spirit not physical? The argument for simplicity is probably the simplest and also the most common cons dualism body / mind. The dual is always confronted with the question of why we should necessarily believe in the existence of two ontologically distinct entities (the mind and the brain ), while it seems possible, and easily refutable with tools scientific investigation, to explain the same events and properties to a single entity. It is a heuristic principle in science and philosophy does not consider the existence of more entities than is necessary for a clear explanation and prediction (see Occam's Razor ). Dualism attribute
Different types of interactionist dualisms
Interactionism
epiphenomenalism
Alignment
Arguments for dualism
Arguments in favor of subjective dualism
The argument of the special sciences
The argument of the zombie
Argument of individual identity
Arguments against dualism
Argument from causal interaction
Energy conservation and causal closure
Arguments provided by clinical observation
Argument of biological development
Argument from simplicity
References
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