The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking by Law Stephen

Author:Law, Stephen [Law, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2003-12-15T23:00:00+00:00

We have been looking at two competing theories about consciousness. First, there are those who believe that your conscious experiences are nothing over and above what goes on in your brain. Secondly, there are those who, like Descartes, deny this. But before we get to the arguments for and against these two positions, it will be useful if we distinguish two rather different versions of the second position.

In Descartes’ view, your mind and body are distinct substances: each is capable of existing independently of the other. Your conscious mind could, in principle, be detached from everything physical and exist on its own. This position is called substance dualism.

Hardly any scientists or philosophers are now prepared to accept substance dualism. But there are still plenty of philosophers (and at least some scientists) around who believe that there are two distinct and irreducible kinds of property: physical properties and mental properties. This position is called property dualism.

According to property dualism, there’s only one kind of stuff – physical stuff. But objects made out of this physical stuff can have two quite different sorts of property. In the view of the property dualist, there are both mental properties and physical properties: the mental properties of a human being are extra properties that exist in addition to all of his or her physical properties.

An Argument Against Dualism

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