DUALISM: CAUSAL INTERACTIONISM

Philosophy of Mind

Today’s lesson

To explain and analyse the problem of causal interaction

Booklets, p.28

The issues of causal interaction for versions of dualism: The problems facing interactionist dualism,

including conceptual and empirical causation issues

The issue of causal interaction

Recall the bathroom mirror example from p.15 of your booklet:

Was it really conceivable that you could see without a body, or did you feel that the whole idea didn’t really make sense?

The issue of causal interaction

This criticism of dualism claims that: There needs to be a causal connection between the objects

we perceive and our perception of them, but such a connection is inconceivable when we consider the notion of a disembodied existence.

In normal cases of perception, we know that what occurs is something like this: light bounced off an object is reflected off the mirror and travels in the form of photons to your eyeballs, where, the retina being stimulated, a series of complicated neural signals is initiated which results in the experience of seeing the object.

But what happens in the ‘seeing without a body’ example? Light bounced off an object is reflected off the mirror and

travels in the form of photons to … where exactly?

The issue of causal interaction

There are no eyeballs there for it to enter, no body at all for it to travel to. So where does it go?

How can physical light possibly get in contact with the non-physical mind?

It seems impossible – we might say inconceivable – that it could.

It seems that there can be no causal connection between a non-physical mind and the physical objects outside of it – so the mind couldn’t truly see or perceive such objects without a body.

So we can’t really conceive of seeing without a body after all. If it seems that we can, that’s only because we haven’t thought carefully enough about what’s involved in seeing something.

Is this a convincing criticism?

Does this criticism show that Descartes’ conceivability argument is mistaken?

The interaction problem

Read the first paragraph on p.29.What is the interaction problem?

Possible solutions to the interaction problem

OccasionalismThis theory asserts that God serves as the link

between mind and brain. Observing that light reflected from a cheeseburger

has impacted your retina and set up a series of neural firing patterns in your brain, God causes your mind to have an experience of seeing the burger.

Observing that this experience has led you to decide to eat the burger, God then causes another set of neural firing patterns to occur in your brain that result in you picking up the burger, putting it in your mouth and eating it.

Is this a convincing idea?

Possible solutions to the interaction problem

Parallelism asserts that the mind and the brain aren’t linked at all but simply act in parallel.

The mind and the brain are constructed (again, by God) so that the events occurring in one are always exactly appropriate to events occurring in the other.

Mind and body are like two clocks operating entirely independently, but keeping up with each other so perfectly that it seems there is interaction between them.

Is this a convincing idea?

Example questions

What is interactionism? (3 marks)Briefly explain why interactionism faces a

causal problem (5 marks)

Glossary of key terms

Clear and distinct ideas Conceivability argument Conceivable Consciousness Dualism – substance and property Indivisibility argument Knowledge / Mary argument Philosophical zombie argument Property Qualia Sensation Substance