Property Dualism

The argument

Property dualism occupies a middle position in the mind-body problem: it holds that mental phenomena are real and irreducible, yet that they exist only as properties of physical things. Two claims do the work. The first is that you cannot reduce the mental to the physical — an account of what is happening in matter does not, by itself, deliver an account of what it is like to undergo the experience. The second is that the mental does not float free: there are no mental phenomena without physical phenomena underlying them. Mind, on this view, is neither a separate substance nor simply identical to matter; it is a further property that matter has. The example of warmth illustrates both claims at once. Put gloves on and you feel warmth. Physics tells us what that warmth is in physical terms: kinetic molecular energy. But the mind does not register kinetic molecular energy as such — it registers a felt quality, a personal sensation of being warm. Neither side of the pair can be dropped. Remove the physical process and the feeling does not occur, which is why the mental depends on the physical. Remove the feeling and there is no way for the person to detect the molecular energy at all, which is why the mental cannot be replaced by a physical description without something being lost. The mental process is the perception of the physical process, not a duplicate of it and not a separate thing alongside it. This is why the position counts as a form of dualism. It preserves the dualist intuition that mental and physical are genuinely distinct — the feeling is not the energy — while declining the stronger claim that they are two independent substances. Mind and matter are two kinds of property, inseparable in fact but not interchangeable in description.

Context

The dualist position hinges on the idea that human beings are made up of two components; the physical and the non-physical. Our body and brain, everything we can touch, move, feel, and manipulate, lies within our physical construct. But we also have a non-physical mind. Our consciousness, emotions, desires, and experiences occupy the mind. They cannot be observed, touched, or perceived, but they still exist in the non-physical realm. While there are many different brands of dualism, the core idea of “dual” entities- a physical and a non-physical- connects them all. Nagel and Kripke fall into the dualist train of thought but promoted their own brand of property dualism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Richard Boyd constructed a counter-argument to Kripke’s brand of property dualism. In the example of pain, Kripke would argue that our perception of pain is the non-physical manifestation of the physical process of C-fibres firing. However, there have been incidents where pain has been felt without the physical process of C-fibres firing. Think of amputee victims who still experience pain in phantom limbs. This non-physical perception of pain, without the physical occurrence of C-fibres firing suggests that mental properties cannot be reduced to components of physical phenomena.

Rejecting the premises

Mental phenomena are just our interpretation of a physical action. They are not a different entity altogether, just a different perspective on the same entity.