Tag Archives: physicalism

Mind-Body Theory

Why Is Identity Important in the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?

18 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In previous posts we have surveyed the physicalist and dualist positions with regard to human beings.  Now it is time to start looking at arguments for the dualist position.  Before we start to defend dualism, we need to introduce the concept of identity, which will be an extremely important concept in the debate.

The law of identity simply states that A is A.  Yes, it’s that simple, but we need to draw out some implications from this law.  Philosopher J. P. Moreland helps us understand with the following example:

Suppose you want to know whether J. P. Moreland is Eileen Speik’s youngest son.  If J. P. Moreland is identical to Eileen Speik’s youngest son (everything true of one is true of the other), then in reality we are talking about one single thing – J. P. Moreland, who is Eileen Speik’s youngest son.  However, if even one small thing is true of J. P. Moreland and not true of Eileen Speik’s youngest son, then these are two entirely different people.  Furthermore, J. P. Moreland is identical to himself and not different from himself.  So, if J. P. Moreland is not identical to Eileen Speik’s youngest son, then in reality we must be talking about two things, not one.

Where does this example take us?  Moreland explains:

This illustration suggests a truth about the nature of identity known as Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals: For any entities x and y, if x and y are identical (they are really the same thing – there is only one thing you are talking about, not two), then any truth that applies to x will apply to y as well.  This suggests a test for identity: If you could find one thing true of x not true of y, or vice versa, then x cannot be identical to (be the same thing as) y.  Further, if you could find one thing that could possibly be true of x and not y (or vice versa), even if it isn’t actually true, then x cannot be identical to y.

Hopefully you have followed along, because now Moreland explains why this matters to the mind/body debate:

Physicalists are committed to the claim that alleged mental entities are really identical to physical entities, such as brain states, properties of the brain, overt bodily behavior, and dispositions to behave (for example, pain is just the tendency to shout “Ouch!” when stuck by a pin, instead of pain being a certain mental feel).  If physicalism is true, then everything true of the brain (and its properties, states, and dispositions) is true of the mind (and its properties, states, and dispositions) and vice versa.  If we can find one thing true, or even possibly true of the mind and not of the brain, or vice versa, then dualism is established.  The mind is not the brain.

At this point, it is critical to note that it is not enough for the physicalist to show that mental and physical entities in the human brain/mind are in a causal relation or are constantly conjoined. 

It may be that brain events cause mental events or vice versa: Having certain electrical activity in the brain may cause me to experience a pain; having an intention to raise my arm may cause bodily events.  It may be that for every mental activity, a neurophysiologist can find a physical activity in the brain with which it is correlated.  But just because A causes B (or vice versa), or just because A and B are constantly correlated with each other, that does not mean that A is identical to B.

Therefore, and this is critical, physicalism cannot be established on the basis that mental states and brain states are causally related or constantly conjoined with each other in an embodied person.  Physicalism needs identity to make its case, and if something is true, or possibly true of a mental substance, property, or event that is not true or possibly true of a physical substance, property, or event, then physicalism is false.

In future posts, we will look at whether mental states and brain states are truly identical.  Stay tuned!!

Mind-Body Theory

What Is Dualism?

8 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the previous post, philosopher J. P. Moreland explained what physicalists believe, particularly with respect to human beings.  Physicalism holds that humans are composed of nothing but matter.

Now we will see what dualists believe.  Again, we are quoting from Moreland and Habermas’s Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality.  Dualists disagree with physicalists that matter is all there is.  For dualists, there also exist mental entities.  Moreland gives three examples of mental entities:

1.  Sensations: These would include “experiences of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, pains, and itches.  Sensations are individual things that occur at particular times.  I can have a sensation of red after looking in a certain direction or by closing my eyes and daydreaming.  An experience of pain will arise at a certain time, say, after I am stuck with a pin.”

Moreland continues his description of sensations:

Further, sensations are natural kinds of things that have, as their very essence, the felt quality or sensory property that makes them what they are.  Part of the very essence of a pain is the felt quality it has; part of the very essence of a red sensation is the presentation of a particular shade of color to my consciousness.  Sensations are not identical to things outside a person’s body – for instance, a feeling of pain is not the same thing as being stuck with a pin and shouting, “Ouch!”  Sensations are essentially characterized by a certain conscious feel, and thus, they presuppose consciousness for their existence and description.  If there were no conscious beings, there would be no sensations.

2. Propositional attitudes: A propositional attitude is having “a certain mental attitude toward a proposition that is part of a that-clause.  For example, one can hope, desire, fear, dread, wish, think, believe that P where P may be the proposition: ‘The Royals are a great baseball team.'”

There are at least two components to propositional attitudes:

First, there is the attitude itself.  Hopes, fears, dreads, wishes, thoughts, etc. are all different attitudes, different states of consciousness, and they are all different from each other based on their conscious feel.  A hope is a different form of consciousness from an episode of fear.  A hope that it will rain is different from a fear that it will rain.  What’s the difference?  A hope has a very different conscious feel from a fear.

Second, they all have a content or a meaning embedded in the propositional attitude – namely the propositional content of my consciousness while I am having the propositional attitude.  My hope that P differs from my hope that Q, because P and Q are different propositions or meanings in my consciousness.  If there were no conscious selves, there would be no propositional attitudes.  My hope that it will rain is different from my hope that taxes will be cut.  The contents of these hopes have quite different meanings.

3. Acts of will or purposings: “What is a purposing?  If, unknown to me, my arm is tied down and I still try to raise it, then the purposing is the “trying to bring about” the event of raising my arm.  Intentional actions are episodes of volition by conscious selves wherein and whereby they do various actions.  They are acts of will performed by conscious selves.”

So that is dualism in brief.  Our next task is to defend dualism against physicalism, and we will start that process next week by examining the nature of identity.

Mind-Body Theory

What Is Physicalism?

9 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the previous post, we explained what substances, properties, and events are.  Now it is time to use those terms to explain what physicalists believe about human beings.  Philosopher J. P. Moreland explains below:

According to physicalism, a human being is merely a physical entity.  The only things that exist are physical substances, properties, and events.  When it comes to humans, the physical substance is the material body, especially the parts called the brain and central nervous system.  The physical substance called the brain has physical properties, such as a certain weight, volume, size, electrical activity, chemical composition, and so forth.

As far as human beings go, physicalists hold that they are physical substances with physical properties.  But what about events?  Are they also physical?

There are also physical events that occur in the brain.  For example, the brain contains a number of elongated cells that carry various impulses.  These cells are called neurons.  Various neurons make contact with other neurons through connections or points of contact called synapses.  C-fibers are certain types of neurons that innervate the skin (supply the skin with nerves) and carry pain impulses.  So when someone has an occasion of pain or an occurrence of a thought, physicalists hold that these are merely physical events – events where certain C-fibers are firing or certain electrical and chemical events are happening in the brain and central nervous system.

Are you getting the idea?  Everything about human beings can be reduced to physical substances, properties, and events.  You might be wondering how physicalists explain our thoughts, emotions, and pains.  Are these also physical?  Yes, they are.  According to Moreland,

My conscious mental life of thoughts, emotions, and pain are nothing but physical events in my brain and nervous system.  The neurophysiologist can, in principle, describe these events solely in terms of C-fibers, neurons, and the chemical and physical properties of the brain.

For the physicalist, a human being is 100% composed of matter, and nothing else.  There is a further crucial point that needs to be made about matter:  “No material thing presupposes or has reference to consciousness for it to exist or be characterized.”

Moreland elaborates:

You will search in vain through a physics or chemistry textbook to find consciousness included in any description of matter.  A completely physical description of the world would not include any terms that make reference to or characterize the existence and nature of consciousness.

So now you have a description of what physicalists believe about the mind and body.  They affirm that the body exists, but deny that anything like an immaterial mind exists.  For them, everything about human beings, and the world in its entirety, must be explained by physical/material substances, properties, and events. 

In our next post , we will look at what dualists believe.

Mind-Body Theory

What Are the Key Concepts In the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Physicalism affirms the existence of the body and denies the existence of the mind or soul, while dualism affirms the existence of both the body and the soul.  Before we get into the arguments for dualism and against physicalism, we need to define some terms.

Philosopher J. P. Moreland, in the book Beyond Death, defines three key terms: substance, property, and event.  First, we look at the nature of a substance.  According to Moreland, “A substance is an entity like an apple, an acorn, a leaf, a carbon atom, a dog, or an angel.  Substances have a number of important characteristics.”

The characteristics of substances are as follows:

  1. “Substances are particular, individual things.  A substance . . . cannot be in more than one place at the same time.”
  2. “A substance is a continuant – it can change by gaining new properties and losing old ones, yet it remains the same thing throughout the change.”  For example, a leaf can change color from red to green, but it still remains the same substance, the same leaf.
  3. “Third, substances are basic, fundamental existents.  They are not in other things or had by other things.”  For example, our cat, Lily, is not in or had by something more basic than herself; she is a basic existent. 
  4. “Fourth, substances are unities of parts, properties, and capacities.”  Lily, as a substance, has properties such as grayness and fatness (we’ve had her on diet, but she’s still pretty fat).  She has parts such as four legs and a tail.  She has capacities that are not always being actualized, like the capacity to purr.  As a substance, Lily is a unity of all these things.
  5. Finally, substances have causal powers.  Lily can do things in the world, such as meowing or scratching.

The second key term is property.  “A property is an existent reality, examples of which are brownness, triangularity, hardness, wisdom, painfulness.  As with substances, properties have a number of important features.”

  1. “A property is a universal that can be in more than one thing at the same time.  Redness can be in a flag, a coat, and an apple at once.”
  2. Properties are immutable.  “When a leaf goes from green to red, the leaf changes by losing an old property and gaining a new one.  But the property of redness does not change and become the property of greenness.  Properties can come and go, but they do not change in their internal constitution or nature.”
  3. Properties are generally in or had by “other things more basic than themselves. . . . For example, redness is in the apple.  The apple has the redness.  One does not find redness existing all by itself. . . . Substances have properties; properties are had by substances.”

The third key term is event.  “Examples of events are a flash of lightning, the dropping of a ball, the having of a thought, the change of a leaf, and the continued possession of sweetness by an apple (this would be a series of events).  Events are states or changes of states of substances.  An event is the coming or going of a property in a substance at a particular time, or the continued possession of a property by a substance throughout a time.”

Now that we have substances, properties, and events clarified, we can move on to an examination of the physicalist and dualist positions.

Mind-Body Theory

Can a Rational Case Be Made for the Existence of the Soul?

59 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Yes, it can, and I will be following the arguments of philosopher J. P. Moreland through several blog posts on this topic.  The source for this material is a book called Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality, which was co-authored by Moreland and Gary Habermas. 

So how does Moreland introduce this important topic?  He first introduces us to the two major philosophical camps that have formed around the debate:

Is a human being just composed of matter – a body, a brain, and a central nervous system – or does a person also have an immaterial component called a mind or soul?  Physicalists claim we are only material beings; dualists claim we are composed of both body and soul.  This is a fundamental difference.

What are the practical implications of these two points of view for life after death?   

If we are simply material beings, then when our bodies die, we die because we are our bodies, nothing more, nothing less.  On the other hand, if dualism is true, then we are both bodies and souls.  In this case, with the destruction of the former, it could be true that we continue to exist in a disembodied state indefinitely, or, according to Christianity, while awaiting a new, resurrected body.

Since the soul is something that we cannot see, some people doubt that a rational case can be made for it.  They believe that the only way to believe in the existence of the soul is through blind faith or appeal to revelation.  This viewpoint has even crept into the church.  What ideas have entered our culture to make us think this way about the soul?

Moreland concurs with the philosopher John Hick that strict empiricism and scientism are at the root of our modern skepticism of the existence of the soul.  Strict empiricism is the idea that “something can be a proper object of knowledge if and only if it can be verified with one or more of the five senses.  Seeing is believing, and since the soul appears to be embarrassingly invisible, then we must remain agnostic about its existence.”

Scientism is the belief that “science is the measure of all things.  A belief is true and reasonable only if it can be tested scientifically – observed, measured, quantified, and so forth.  But here again, the soul does not appear to be an entity that the so-called ideal sciences, physics and chemistry, can quantify and measure.”

But, Moreland argues, in spite of  “the cultural bias toward empiricism and scientism, we believe a very strong case can be made for dualism.”  Indeed, a strong rational case can be made for the existence of the immaterial soul.

In subsequent blog posts, we will explore Moreland’s arguments for dualism and against physicalism.  I hope you’ll stay with me while we dig into this important topic.