Physicalism–the view that the human body is wholly physical–claims to have better explanatory power (and indeed, the only explanatory power) than other world views. Is this really true?
One way to defeat such a claim is to show that physcalism does not actually have such a monopoly on explanatory power. I believe that dualism offers just such a defeater:
The main argument I have against physicalism (and hence, for dualism) is that there are things in existence that physicalism cannot account for. These things include, but are not limited to:
1) There is causation. Physicalism essentially seems to claim that a thought or an idea, an emotion, is identical to the cause. In other words, touching part of the brain with an electrode, which triggers a sensation, IS the sensation. What physicalism then states is that things are not responses to emotions, they just are the emotion. But that is seemingly false, for all that is proven is that the mind is causally connected to the brain, not that they are identical. There is no part of the brain, for example, that is a memory. It may be shown that one can cause a memory to occur with stimulation, but that only proves that some memory (B) is caused by some firing of a neuron (A). But A is not B.
Take, for example, the idea within physicalism that love is the chemical reactions and neurological firings in the brain: love (B) is caused by chemicals (A). To say that the chemical is love is not true, for a chemical is ontologically different from an emotion—consider this example: if I conceive of a pink elephant, does that mean that whatever neurons need to fire in order to bring that thought into my brain are indeed a pink elephant (Moreland, 234)? Or do they merely cause the image of a pink elephant to appear? Likewise with any real object or imagining. These things are not physically contained in our brain, nor are they actually the chemicals or neurons themselves, they can simply be caused by such mechanical things. That does not make them identical. A may cause B, but A is not B.
2) Self-presenting properties. There are things that present themselves directly to the subject, and are considered wholly mental in nature. Things like love, the experience of red, thinking that three is an odd number—these things are directly present to a subject because that subject has them immediately in his/her field of consciousness. Two evidences exist for these properties: the first is that one can have private access to mental properties, but not physical properties… and the second is that one can know at least some of one’s own mental properties incorrigibly. People can know things themselves that they cannot be wrong about. In other words, I can know without question what the color green appears to be to me. No one else can know that.
3) The subjective nature of experience. This is called the “knowledge argument.” This one is something that is hard to explain without using an example (ty to J.P. Moreland for this). Suppose there is a deaf scientist who is the single leading expert on the neurology of hearing. It would be possible for him to know and describe everything involved in the physical aspects of hearing… yet not actually have knowledge of hearing itself. This experience is essential and subjective. It is also outside of the realm of physicalism to explain.
4) Intentionality. We can have an ‘ofness’ or ‘aboutness’ with our action that is inexplicable through physical needs. “Mental states have a directness that is intrinsic to them (Moreland 237).” In other words, many mental states are of or about something: fear of something, thoughts about something, etc. Now, there doesn’t seem to be any way to reduce something such as a thought about something to a physical explanation. In other words, the ‘aboutness’ of a thought defies physical explanation.
These are just a few arguments against physicalism. There are a couple more that could be made, but that would make this longer than I think it needs to be. Further, each individual kind of physicalism is subject to a wide array of critiques.
Moreland, J.P. & William Lane Craig. “Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.”
J.W. Wartick - Reconstructing Faith 
Dualism has long been dead. All of the above is explainable through the computational theory of mind.
Posted by Shamelessly Atheist | August 13, 2009, 3:27 PMPlease stop stating things as fact when they are not facts. You claim empiricism and yet seem to want to expand that worldview to areas it simply cannot govern.
You also continually stating things as actual facts when they simply aren’t the case. Your own presuppositions have seemingly undermined your ability to do anything but just state opinions as fact.
An example is a previous comment you made on my blog, following a quote from me: (my quote): ‘This single supernatural claim is the most important one, and it has enormous amounts of historical evidence.’
You followed that up with saying “Say it as many times as you like, but saying it does not make it so.”
The problem is that there are huge amounts of historical evidence pointing to the validity of the gospel accounts. Your presuppositions completely undermines your ability to argue.
To state that “dualism has long been dead” is not just false, but it is quite obviously so, as it is something still debated within modern philosphy.
Interestingly, in the link you posted from your own blog, you claim:
“Being an empiricist, I’m not swayed by purely philosophical arguments. That’s not to say philosophy isn’t useful. Science has little place in the arena of ethics, for instance, or art and literature (though more to say than most people think). But every philosophical argument for a position seems to have a counter argument. Sorry, philosophers, but wherever it is possible for science to have its say, I see it as the ultimate arbiter over such squabbling.”
This is what is inherently wrong in your reasoning. Science is utterly under the sway of philosophy. There is no way to empirically explain things without bending to logical rules. The quote I’ve cited above shows your completely obvious bias.
Immediately following the above quote, you state that “When we don’t know the answer to a question, I don’t view philosophy as a solution – only a speculation awaiting verification. Too often and too easily philosophical arguments are destroyed by an ugly fact. Perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘too easily’, since the fact falsifying the argument isn’t always so easy to obtain. But once available, facts can be lethal to philosophy.”
Interesting, because science is subject to those same problems. Science has to be, by definition, falsifiable. So any ‘ugly fact’ can destroy an empirically tested theory.
One argument you present against dualism is:
Dualism thus fails to give a mechanism for interaction with the brain, and thus also fails in providing a means for differentiating between mind-brain duality from a brain providing us with an illusion of a non-corporeal mind. If such an interaction occurs, we should be able to measure something in the brain that can only be explained via dualism. This is just not the case. If the mind is a product of the brain, no such problem exists for monists.”
There are of course several problems with that. Note that your objection here is that dualism fails to show the mechanization of causation. In other words, you assume that if we don’t know how A causes B, we can’t reasonably agree that A causes B. But this is simply a false assumption. We that things can causally interact without knowing how they do so. Gravity pulling from planet to planet, magnetic fields attracting objects, protons exerting repulsive forces, etc. We know that these things interact, and we know the causation, but we don’t necessarily know how it is that they interact.
Not only that, but each of these examples show unrelated natures interacting–such as gravity interacting forces & fields with objects.
Further, you assume that there must be an intermediary causation. It is quite possible (and likely) that in the case of the mind and body, there simply is no mechanization, it is direct and immediate.In which case the argument that we don’t know how the interaction occurs would not be valid, as there simply is no intermediary.
There is more but I need to go to work.
I’d vastly appreciate it that when you are presenting something that is an opinion, you state it as such. Don’t state things like “Dualism has long been dead” while citing yourself in a blog entry, when philosophy is still debating it. It may be dead in your mind, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is a dead idea.
Posted by J.W. Wartick | August 13, 2009, 5:58 PMAs promised, a further response: https://jwwartick.com/2009/08/15/the-supposed-explanatory-power-of-the-computational-theory-of-mind/
Posted by J.W. Wartick | August 15, 2009, 5:45 AM