My Problem with Dualist Arguments

There are plenty of reasons to believe in some sort of physicalist account of mind and reject the notion of dualism. Yet when I talk to dualists about it, they feel the same way about dualism. Of course this should be no surprise, as Catholics tend to feel that there are good reasons to be Catholic, and those who believe in psychic powers don't do so despite thinking there's a weak case for it.

Yet that we can justify what we already believe in doesn't mean that the case is very good. Perhaps the case for physicalism is really poor and the case for dualism overwhelming, from my perspective I try to understand where the case to the contrary is coming from and see whether that fits. At least in my head, I've got a list of certain things that dualism would have to account for in order to be considered a possibility. I've put these forward numerous times to dualists - yet I don't get any answers back at all.

Perhaps from their perspective, the problems are insignificant. Or perhaps I have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the problems involved in the philosophy of mind. I don't know, all I can do is keep reading, listen to experts, and discuss the issues with others. Which brings me to the point of this post...


When it comes to intelligent design, most arguments for intelligent design fixate around the notion that there are certain patterns we can see in nature that are hallmarks of being designed. How a designer acts in order to design is a different question that a designer was involved - that a watch has a watchmaker can be inferred without knowing how the watch was made. So while evolutionary biologists will ask for a mechanism, the ID proponent doesn't claim to be able to show that - just to show that a designer was involved. This is done by trying to show that natural mechanisms cannot account for what we know designers can.

In a recent discussion with a dualist, I encountered the same such argument. That it didn't matter how mental phenomena worked, but that mental phenomena by definition could account for what physicalist models couldn't - and thus dualism. My objection to this is that labelling them mental stuff doesn't actually explain anything at all, but the goal of the argument isn't there to act as an explanation; it's there to demonstrate dualism - whatever that means. So me calling dualism incoherent and not actually explaining those things any better than a physical model would be missing the point.

Yet to what extent does this explanation carry? To my mind, such arguments are merely labelling our ignorance. What does mental causation mean, for example? To say that mental causation is part of the definition of dualism doesn't give any conception of possibility. A physicalist account involving neural networks and firing synapses is at least an attempt to make sense of mental causation. Dualism makes no such attempt, yet physicalism is judged on what is seen as a failure of explanation.


It's in that respect that explanations like Intelligent Design, God, pyramid-building aliens, or mental forces have a distinct advantage over any naturalistic explanation. The naturalistic explanations try to explain how something works, which for the most part are going to be imperfect and incomplete, yet the failure of such explanations is seen as evidence for explanations that don't even try to explain the evidence. In other words, just arguments are just taking our ignorance and giving it a label.

If such explanations were true, however, they would have empirical consequences. If dualism was true and there was mental causation outside the brain, then that would have empirical consequences. No matter how much personal introspection one does, if the brain is shown to be closed causally, then mental causation has no place in which to operate. This problem was not lost on Descartes, but it seems to be ignored some 400 years later by modern-day dualists. That we're living in an era of exploration of the brain should be all the more reason to be more empirical about it. It says a lot in the age of empirical inquiry that people are avoiding putting would could be scientifically-testable to the test.

Of course, all this might be a rationalisation on my part... but I really don't know why there's not even an attempt to turn dualism into an empirical model that can be tested and potentially falsified by scientific inquiry. Being "not even wrong" shouldn't be a selling point!

A Priori Dualism

When it comes to the notion of minds, it's something that we are all intimately familiar with. "Cogito, ergo sum" is something we all can recognise instantly and understand the implications.

I think this, however, gives the false impression that we can understand the nature of minds a priori - or at the very least grounds for individuals to argue as such. The success of explaining phenomena in the universe in terms of physics is something to take into account. After all, we are organised compositions of cells, which in turn are organised compositions of atoms. And modern brain sciences are confirming the notion that the mind is material, from brain injury to brain scans to magnetic stimulation of targeted areas - a physical mind is an inescapable conclusion.

Yet pretty much all arguments brought against the physicalist conclusion* all come from that internal view. The idea, it seems, is that for one to demonstrate the dualist nature of the mind one only has to think about it. While brain sciences are advancing, and technology is increasing the capabilities of what can be empirically observed, dualists are doing nothing to ground their arguments in empiricism.

It seems obvious enough what needs to be done, have a dualistic model that sits within the brain sciences where it can be put to the test. Descartes proposed the pineal gland as a potential solution to the mind-body interface problem nearly 400 years ago, these days the best we get are transmitter receiver analogies that don't pin themselves down to anything that's empirically useful.


The simplest way to put it is that we don't know the nature of what makes a mind through introspection. We can consider how a mind works, what kinds of phenomena need explanation, but none of that says anything about what makes a mind. This is where the necessity of empirical investigation comes in, because unless we want to appeal to magic we won't know what makes a mind by thinking about minds.


* At least the arguments I have come across

Why I Am A Physicalist

There seems to be an irreconcilable divide between the world of the physical and the world of the mental. It's so intuitive that the mind is distinct from the body, yet what is a mind without one? It's also so intuitive that life is distinct from non-life, yet this idea has been shown to be nothing but an artefact of the mind. At the core all life is chemistry, and the hard problem of life has dissolved in the last 100 years or so of scientific investigation.

Yet the mind doesn't have that apparent capacity of irreducibility, as David Chalmers puts it, there's the characteristic of what it's like to experience that cannot reduce to to the functional. So life can be seen as a different expression of the physical, but how does the mind reduce to that? This is the hard problem of consciousness, and one that won't go away any time soon.

So why am I a physicalist then? Surely the best position would be one of refraining from judgement until such time as a strong case has been made. And I think if the question were taken in isolation, this would be the case. But if we take the question seriously, it has to fit into the wider context of what we know about the world. After all, we are overwhelming surrounded by the physical, we don't know of any non-physical substance or force. What we're left positing is that there must be a unobserved stuff completely unlike what is physical, yet has the capacity to interact with the physical. It might be so, but we're left positing a complete new substance that itself is unexplained.

In addition to being composed of physical things, all interaction in our body points to purely physical measures. Our sensory material is all physical, information is sent through physical interactions, and processed in the physical brain, where again physical signals are sent through to cause physical movement. As far as what's observed, that's it. There could be something else involved, but there's no interface in the brain observed to show this.

Along this line, regions of the brain have been identified in what role they play in cognition. Through a number of lines of evidence this is well established. From observation of loss of function, through brain injury, to fMRI, to transcranial magnetic stimulation - there's overwhelming evidence that the brain is the fundamental component to cognition.

Then there's a comparative argument from nature. Other animals have similar behavioural functionality to us. In terms of what we can do, the difference seems to be the degree to which we can do it. If there's something to our mind beyond the physical, then do these other creatures share it? If not, do we need to posit anything more?


So what are we left not explaining? The first-person ontology of the mind, and that seems the hardest to overcome because its what we recognise as being the mind. But that leaves a huge problem to overcome. If physical accounts for everything causally, then what the mind is reduced to is not the mind as we know it. After all, we have the experience of thought to action. If the body does all that, then any sense of control we have is illusory.

We're left with an epiphenomenalist account where the mind is but a passive observer. But it gets worse, for if the mind is merely an observer of the body, then if there's no body then there's a cessation of experience for the mind. When our body ceases to function, what is there for the mind left to observe?

It's problems such as these that make dualism seem undesirable, in addition to the already problematic attempt to integrate the non-physical into our apparent physical reality. It seems odd to posit that it's all physical, but it's overwhelmingly where evidence and reason leads. The lack of a good physicalist account of a theory of mind, or qualia, or intentionality, are interesting questions for philosophers of mind to ponder over. But the absence of explanation or apparent reconciliation aren't really sufficient to ignore what the evidence overwhelmingly points to - that we are physical beings, and the mind is no exception.

Biology Of Mind

We are evolved creatures, thus the mind is a product of evolutionary forces. Sometimes this is neglected for a priori musings about what the mind is, and problems get exacerbated by removing them from our biology an into the abstract.

So when I hear about particular problems of mind that seem to excite dualists, I really wonder just how closely they've thought about the problem. Have they taken into consideration the utility of such a function in an evolutionary perspective? Have they taken into consideration other animals that have similar behaviours to us? Have they identified something outside of the brain at play? If not, then why are we even considering something beyond the material?

The absence of a good account of organisation of thoughts into knowledge, or failures of the reduction of intentionality to brain states, doesn't to me seem at all good reasons to reject that it's causally reducible to the material. It simply says "we don't know", and warrants further investigation.

Experience Or Experiment?

Our perceptual experience is a major part of understanding the world. Yet sometimes our perceptual experience can give seemingly contradictory accounts with previous experience, as well with the accounts of others. One interesting thing about our nature is that we have the capacity to turn perception onto itself and perceive how we perceive. As a result, science is now beginning to be able to explain what it is we perceive as a matter of brain function. The first-person recollection is able to be explained by experiment. But since the first-person experience is all we have, how are we to trust what the scientists say when what they're saying profoundly disagrees with our perceptions?

A thought experiment:

What should we trust more, our first-person experience, or the results of scientific experiment? Consider the hypothetical situation of someone who has an out-of-body experience, from there internal perspective they see themselves leaving their body and floating through the room. They are able to float through the door and into the corridor outside. The experience ends and they're back in their body. Standing in front of him is a neuroscientist utilising an electromagnetic device. The scientist explains that while the person was strapped into his chair, the scientist operated this machine, that sent electric stimulations to the brain's right angular gyris, a part of the temporal lobe. The person didn't have an OBE, just the illusion of it.

In this situation, what is more likely? The internal perspective gives a vivid account of experience, yet from a causal perspective the experience was a brain activity. Of course, this isn't a hypothetical situation, the technology exists already and this account parallels a paper published in Nature back in 2002. The experience seems at odds with the explanation, but the explanation has a causal role. Are we meant to dismiss that the scientist was there inducing the hallucination any more than when a brain tumour causes sexual thoughts towards young girls or that a stroke in the right occipital lobe leaves someone seeing phantoms rising out of the floor on their left-side?

Morning Scepticism: Mind Matters

One reductio ad absurdum often argued against materialism is the question "how can matter think?" It seems an intuitively obvious point after all, thoughts and emotions are very different to rocks and chemical reactions. Yet much work has been done in uncovering just how "matter thinks", while the discipline is still in its infancy there's already much in the way of promising results. Yet in the absence of matter thinking, what is there on offer? Let's say the cognition is done by an immaterial soul, how does it process information? How does it make decisions? How does it store memories and respond to physical causes like drugs or magnetic fields?

How does matter think? By the intricate arrangement of complex structures firing in patterns. The real question is how does non-matter think?

Experience vs Evidence

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. - Thomas Henry Huxley

At times what science tells us is true (or more accurately what scientists put forth as theories that explain the data) conflicts with how nature appears to us. Even now there are still geocentrists because it "looks that way".

One striking example is dualism, the notion that the mind and body are separate. It's an intuitively powerful idea, I find at times I even catch myself as falling into the dualism trap. The reason I do this is because while intuitive, the success of physical models of the universe overrides the intuitive notion. In other words, the mind is a product of the brain and my experiences have a physical basis.

When an individual has an experience they say cannot be explained by evidence, does it mean that the laws of physics are ill-equipped to explain what happened? Or does it mean that the experience gives the impression of the impossibility of compatibility? This is an important distinction, it's the distinction between what is contradictory to our understanding of nature and what seems contradictory from the vantage point of the individual.

Take out-of-body experiences (OBEs) for example. This could be taken as evidence for dualism, because the experience of the brain leaving the body and giving a 3rd person vantage point shouldn't happen if the mind were physical. But such experiences can be seen as a product of brain activity, electromagnetically stimulate the right part of the brain and it can cause such effects. Perfectly explainable under a physicalist model of the universe, but to the individual profound evidence from experience.

If someone has a "spiritual" experience while taking LSD or peyote, surely the best explanation of the experience involves neurological reactions brought on by the use of chemical substances. That it's profound, that it is well beyond the usual experience, doesn't change that it's perfectly explainable in physicalist terms.

So many phenomena have at their heart a dualistic requirement. To name a few: astral projection, psychokinesis, ghosts, telepathy, communication with the dead, etc. Reports of experiences of such phenomena and others are common. Any of these if true would be powerful evidence against a physicalist notion of the brain.


This is where I feel the failure in taking experience over evidence. Something profound happens internally, yet the experience is biased by rationalisation in the brain. The one feels they were having an OBE doesn't mean they were literally having one, it's their internalised narrative to reconcile the experience. It's selling the interpretation with the experience!

Empirical inquiry is currently the best possible means to determine the validity of such claims. By taking the phenomena away from the internalised interpretation and testing to see how the claims stack up in a controlled environment, we are able to remove the subjective interpretation (from the subject at least) and make look to see if there is something really there. As yet, nothing.

People use this a reason to reject the scientific method, yet what it shows is a dissonance between comprehending the experience and comprehending the evidence. Denying the interpretation is not denying the experience, if it is profound then it doesn't need a profound explanation in order to be explained.


Qualia does seem in some philosophers' minds to pose a problem for physicialism if true. Whether or not qualia exist is of debate and one I'm nowhere near familiar enough with to comment on. I bring it up because at the core of qualia is subjective experience, and this is to contrast with the degree of experience which people use to question a pure physicalist reality.

If we can accept that emotional responses such as happiness and anger, or to feel pain or pleasure can be part of our reality, then it is talking about degrees of experience as opposed to just experience itself. If one can feel some sense of importance in a mundane situation (such as satisfaction at completing a task) then an overwhelming sense is but a stronger experience of the same phenomena. If one can feel a connection with another, then an overwhelming sense of love is but an extension of the same type of experience.


The point I'm trying to get across is the value of following evidence wherever it leads. From our vantage point it looks like the earth is at the centre of the universe. Everything rotates around us, and only through keen observation such anomalies such as the retrograde motion of the planets can be seen. Yet how else would it look to us? A heliocentric model of the solar system would have that same superficial appearance as a geocentric one, yet the heliocentric model can explain the anomalies which geocentrism can't. It just requires looking deeper.

That something has the appearance of being beyond the realm of the natural world, it doesn't mean it is. It's an argument from ignorance without so much as even trying to reconcile what is known. Until one takes it beyond the subjective, there's no way of differentiating between appearance and reality.