I have never been fond of dualism. I
have confidence in the ability of science to explain the world, and so when I
was first exposed to the mind-body problem it seemed plausible to me that
science could explain consciousness. And this means that in some way
consciousness and the mind must reduce to or be explainable in terms of the
physical; in other words, that materialism is essentially correct and dualism
essentially mistaken. From that perspective dualism seems unscientific or
anti-scientific; it takes one of the phenomena we find in the world and says
that it is off limits to science, that science will never be able to explain
it. But does dualism have to take that form? Can’t we separate the ideas in
dualism that make it attractive from this anti-scientific position? My goals in
this paper are twofold: first to illustrate how I see the common arguments for
dualism, and thus the common forms of dualism, as lacking; and secondly to
describe a form of dualism that manages to avoid those problems.
A: Arguments From Ignorance
The major arguments for dualism are,
at their core, arguments from ignorance. An argument from ignorance is one that
proceeds from the fact that we don’t know how to do or explain something to the
conclusion that it can’t be done or can’t be explained. This is what gives many
forms of dualism their anti-scientific flavor; from the fact that science
hasn’t yet explained that mind and the mind body connection it is concluded
that science can’t explain the mind and the mind-body connection. Such
arguments have no merit; our ignorance reveals nothing about the world, only
our lack of knowledge about it. To reasonably argue that something can’t be
done or can’t be explained by science requires some understanding of the things
involved, and to show that this understanding rules out the proposal. This is,
of course, not how dualism is argued for. The dualist does not come to the
table with a fully developed and well supported theory of the mind and the
mind-body connection which precludes a scientific theory.
Consider, for starters, the argument
for dualism from the existence of the explanatory gap. The explanatory gap, in
brief, is our current inability to explain the phenomenal character of
consciousness – qualia, as some call it – in non-mental terms. And from this
gap in our knowledge some conclude that there must be something non-physical
involved that such explanations simply can’t capture. This is obviously a
fallacious argument. The fact that we don’t yet know how to capture the mental
in physical terms doesn’t say anything about whether the mental can – or can’t
– be explained in such terms. There are many things we can’t yet explain, such
as how quantum mechanics fits with general relativity (another explanatory gap
that has been with us for quite some time). It would be absurd to leap to the
conclusion that we can’t explain something every time we encounter difficulty
in doing so.
Arguments for dualism are rarely put
in that form, to accuse most dualists of using the argument above as I have
described it would be uncharitable. But certain arguments that have made it
into print are really just disguised versions of it. There is a class of
arguments for dualism that attempt to refute the possibility of an explanation
of the mind in physical terms by asking us to imagine such an explanation at
work. Imagine someone without the ability to see colors, or without the ability
to sense objects through sonar. No matter how much they study the mind of
someone with such sensations they will never know what it is like to have those
sensations. Thus we are asked to conclude that such explanations will never in
principle capture the phenomenal character of consciousness. But how do we know
that they won’t end up knowing what those qualia are like through such an
explanation? Obviously we couldn’t, but we don’t know yet how to explain the
consciousness in physical terms. Since we don’t know what such an explanation
would look like we can’t know what knowledge it will or will not give us. Thus
the argument is asking us to conclude, on the basis of our inability to imagine
how a scientific explanation of the mind could give us knowledge of what
various sensations are like, that it can’t possibly provide such knowledge. In
other words, it is an argument from ignorance.
Dualism is also argued for on
occasion by claiming that consciousness has some special property, such as
subjectivity, phenomenal character, or a first person ontology, that simply
can’t be explained in terms of of objective, non-phenomenal, things with a
third person ontology. On the face of it this doesn’t look like an argument
from ignorance, because it seems to be asserting that there is some logical
incompatibility between two kinds of properties that prevents either from
explaining the other. But what reason do we have to believe that such
explanations are impossible? Certainly we don’t know how to explain one in
terms of the other. Nor have we ever seen such an explanation. But – unless
better reasons can be provided – this means that at its root the claim that
these two sorts of properties are incompatible rests on an argument from
ignorance, ignorance of how properties of one sort might be explained in terms
of another. And thus, again, the argument as a whole is nothing more than a
disguised argument from ignorance.
A third popular argument to consider
is the conceivably argument. In its simplest form the argument runs as follows:
we can conceive of the mind as distinct from the body, thus it is possible for
the mind to be distinct from the body, and thus the mind is not identical to
the body. So materialism, which claims that the mind is in some way identical
to the body must be false, and dualism true. But why can we conceive of the
mind as distinct from the body? Indeed, what in general limits how we conceive
of things? One limiting factor, among many, is how we understand them, which in
turn involves how we explain them. Allow me to illustrate with gravity as an
example. In modern times the phenomena of gravity is reduced to the curvature
of space-time. Thus, if the argument for dualism presented makes sense, we must
not be able to conceive of gravity as distinct from curvature in space-time.
But of course not everyone is so conceptually bound; someone who lived before
Einstein might have conceived of gravity as caused by tiny and invisible
springs connecting things. They can conceive of gravity as distinct from curved
space-time. If we can’t it must be because our explanation of gravity in terms
of curved space-time puts limits on what we can conceive. But this means that
the non-existence of an explanation of the mind in physical terms is a hidden
premise in the argument (that underlies the claim that we can conceive of it as
distinct from the body, along with whatever other factors limit
conceivability). So either the argument begs the question or, more charitably,
it essentially rests on an argument from ignorance.
Such arguments for dualism make it
look like a very unappealing theory, at least in my eyes. They make dualism
look like a theory that takes intuitions and superstitions more seriously than
scientific inquiry, such that they can set the limits of what science can and
cannot explain. They make dualism look like a theory cast from the same mold as
vitalism, inasmuch as vitalism claimed that there was something special and
irreducible about life that could never be explained in merely chemical terms.
I don’t think that this has to be true of dualism; dualism does not have to be
an anti-scientific philosophical position, and by casting it in such a light
the arguments from ignorance discussed above do much more harm to the theory
than good.
B: Ontological Dualism
So what then might a reasonable
argument for dualism, and a reasonable form of dualism, look like? The first
step towards such an argument is to stop playing the materialists’ game. The
materialists cast the question as about how consciousness can be explained.
They argue that it can be explained physically, and thus scientifically. Which
means that if the dualist agrees to fight them on their own terms he or she
will fall into a position that entails that consciousness is something outside
the ability of science to explain (at least not unless some new basics mental
entities or properties are added to science).
The dualist can and should deny this
characterization of the question and of the difference between materialism and
dualism. The materialist, so described, is not even doing philosophy proper. It
is not the job of philosophy to explain how things work in terms of simpler
things; that is a scientific problem (or at least it hasn’t been ever since
since science was split off into its own discipline). What the materialist has
been doing is no more than asserting that a scientific problem can be solved
scientifically. But the task of philosophy is to say what things are; an
explanation in philosophy is one that tries to explain the nature of things,
not how they work. The mind-body problem, as a philosophical problem, is an
ontological one – one that deals with how we categorize the world – which is
orthogonal to whether consciousness can be explained in terms of or reduced to
purely physical entities and properties.
Ontologically we are interested in
what kinds of things there are in the world. Now we could construct a
scientific ontology, where we divide the world along the lines of scientific
explanations. But nothing forces us to adopt such an ontology – it is just one
possibility. With an ontology we are trying to capture significant differences
and similarities between things; even if one object in our ontology reduces to
or can be explained in terms of some other items in it we aren’t forced to
place them in the same category. A computer, for example, is nothing but
silicon and electrons at the physical level. However, computers are of great
interest to us. There are a number of properties that are peculiar to
computers, such as the ability to run certain pieces of software, and often
computers as a class are pertinent in ways that silicon and electrons in
general are not. Thus it could be argued that it makes sense to treat computers
as an ontologically different kind of thing than silicon and electrons in some
contexts, despite the fact that there is nothing in a computer over and above
silicon and electrons, and even though every property that the computer has can
be shown to ultimately arise from properties that the silicon and electrons
have.
For essentially the same kind of
reasons it makes sense to treat the mind as a different kind of thing than
neurons and amino acids, even if we admit that in some way every mental
property can ultimately be shown to arise from (and thus reduce to) properties
of the neurons and amino acids. Only in consciousness do we find genuine
intentionality. Only in consciousness to we find a genuine perspective that the
world is presented to. Only a consciousness can impose meaning onto the world.
If we are interested in such things, and many philosophers certainly are, then
it makes sense to treat minds as their own kind of thing. Yes, perhaps we could
discuss intentionality one day by referring to some complicated neural
structure. Doing so, however, would only serve to obscure the issue. It is
intentionality that is interesting philosophically, not the particular neural
structure that may or may not underlie it (although it is surely interesting to
cognitive scientists). A change in the neural explanation of intentionality
should have no consequences for a philosophical theory involving intentionality
(which it would if we tried to replace any use of intentionality with such a
neural explanation). I call a form of dualism that takes the ontological nature
of the problem seriously, and which argues that there is a significant
ontological distinction between the mental and the physical, ontological
dualism. Ontological dualism is not forced to rest on arguments from ignorance,
because ontological dualism is not an attempt to deny the possibility of
certain explanations. Rather it aims to demonstrate something positive, namely
that there is a philosophically significant difference between mind and body.
Now a materialist may respond to
this proposal by claiming that I am merely playing a game with words. If an
ontology doesn’t bring with it entailments about how things are to be explained
or about what properties are fundamental (in the sense that others can be
reduced to them, but they themselves cannot be reduced) then what good is it?
What does it matter if I divide the world up into categories if the categories
don’t bear on such questions? By asking this the materialist would miss the
point. By dividing the world up into categories we make a number of claims,
they are just not of the sort the materialist is used to. By proposing an
ontology we are making a claim about what the most philosophically significant
and interesting divisions between things are. If we place minds in one category
and mindless physical objects in another we are asserting that the distinctive
properties of the minded category are substantially different than those in the
mindless category and are of philosophical importance. This is why we would
reject chairs and non-chairs as a division at the top level of an ontology. The
difference between some chairs and non-chairs is not very substantial, and,
more importantly, whether something is a chair or not is of little
philosophical importance. No philosopher has ever given the property of being a
chair play important role in their theories, but many have made the property of
having a mind, or something only minds do, central. To call this enterprise
merely semantic is thus to deny that how we categorize the world is of any
importance. But it is of great importance. How we categorize the world shapes
what “kinds” of phenomena we are interested in explaining. And how we
categorize the world shapes what “kinds” of phenomena we develop our
philosophical theories in terms of. Thus our choice of ontology shapes
everything else we do in philosophy, both what we investigate, and what we find
acceptable as results of such an investigation.
C: Ontological Materialism
Given my presentation of this new
variety of dualism I may appear to be claiming that this version of dualism is
correct and that materialism is wrongheaded. I do admit to accusing
materialists of confusing philosophical issues concerning the connection between
mind and body with scientific ones. But most dualists are no better; this is
why dualism often ends up seeming anti-scientific. So while I would certainly
agree that this version of dualism is more philosophically attractive than
existing varieties of materialism there is nothing in principle preventing us
from repairing materialism in the same way, of separating it too from
scientific questions of reduction. My proposal is not an attempt to end the
debate between dualism and materialism by proving one side or disproving the
other. My proposal is rather that we shift the content of the debate so that
neither side is entangled with scientific commitments.
Materialism can also be construed as
a purely ontological theory, as one that proposes that there be no categorical
divisions between mental and physical properties or beings with and without
minds. Just as ontological dualism implies that the division between the mental
and the physical is philosophically significant, ontological materialism
asserts that those divisions should play no significant role in philosophical
theories. This means, for example, that ontological materialism is incompatible
with an ethical theory that limits ethical agency to entities with minds. Such
a theory is committed to a substantial divide between the mental and the
physical, inasmuch as ethics is only relevant to one of the two. To make this
theory acceptable to ontological materialism we would have to characterize the
requirements for ethical agency without appealing to minds or mental features.
For example, the ontological materialist could make agency contingent on the
ability to communicate and reason about ethical concepts. This might still
sound like it has a mental flavor, but such a requirement can be understood as
behavioral, as being really about how the entity interacts with others, and not
about any consciousness, intentionality, experiences, or occurent beliefs it
may or may not have.
The debate between ontological
materialism and ontological dualism is not easily settled. Is the distinction
between mental and non-mental a fundamental and significant part of
philosophical theories, or can it be profitably dispensed with (possibly
replaced with concepts such as the cognitive capacity to learn, interactions
between agents, and linguistic behavior, all of which can be construed as
independent from the mental)? Any attempt to definitively answer this question
would involve examining theories that lean on a division between the mental and
the non-mental and seeing whether that division is an essential and
irreplaceable part of the theory. That examination in itself could be of great
philosophical worth. To return to ethics again: considering whether having a
mind plays an important and indispensable role in agent-hood, or whether it is
just an easy way of ruling out rocks and trees, could provide new insights into
ethical questions. A cursory inspection, though, makes ontological dualism
appear to be the superior theory. Such a large number of philosophical
positions appeal to minds or mental features that it is hard to see how the
ontological distinction between mind and body could be removed from philosophy
as a whole. Certainly ontological materialists have their work cut out for
them.
Comments Off
September
21, 2008
