I don't think so. As I said, the interaction problem is not the only problem. Dualists are dualists because they believe that there are problems that a physicalist account of consciousness cannot resolve. That a physicalist account of consciousness can resolve the interaction problem by avoiding it entirely doesn't help it avoid the problems that dualists claim it does have. — Michael

I know. But we're here speaking only of substance dualism, not whether physicalism is true (to claim that if the former is false, then the latter must be true would seem a false dilemma).

And my question could be applied to any metaphysical thesis (or even any philosophical thesis whatsoever, I suppose). If a thesis has a central, potentially fatal problem, which hundreds of years of theorizing have failed to resolve, does that lead to a justifiably diminished confidence that said thesis is correct (or whatever passes for "correct" with regard to philosophical theses)?

I know. But we're here speaking only of substance dualism, not whether physicalism is true (to claim that if the former if false, then the latter must be true would seem a false dilemma).

And my question could be applied to any metaphysical thesis (or even any philosophical thesis whatsoever, I suppose). If a thesis has a central, potentially fatal problem, which hundreds of years of theorizing have failed to resolve, does that lead to a justifiably diminished confidence that said thesis is correct (or whatever passes for "correct" with regard to philosophical theses)? — Arkady

I don't think so. Again, there's a difference between a mystery and a contradiction. Not being able to explain something is not the same as entailing something that isn't the case or denying something that is the case. The latter two I would count as fatal problems.

Speaking as a physics layman, my understanding is that theorists have been struggling to reconcile QM and relativity, as the theories work well in their own domains, but break down into nonsense when one attempts to integrate the theories (something about crazy infinities popping up all over the place, I think). Given this failure of reconciliation, would it not follow that at least one of theories (QM or relativity) are false? — Arkady

At least one has to be false, presumably both are. But, we have scores of predictions from the theories, all of which are true. E.g. All the fundamental particles and their interactions, entanglement, teleportation, no-cloning, decoherence, big-bang, black-holes, cosmic microwave background, gravitational waves, ... None of these unexpected features of reality are going to go away.

As for the theories breaking down into nonsense, well they don't. They don't to the extent that there are experiments (BICEP2) looking into pre-big-bang signals in the CMB.

So, the extent to which either theory is false is the extent to which either is an extremely good approximation to a deeper theory. Despite LHC and many other efforts, no observation that renders either theory problematic has been made.

Of these three propositions (3) would seem to be on the most secure footing, and is therefore the least likely to be false. — Arkady

Leibniz thought it was false. Does that make it any less likely?

And my question could be applied to any metaphysical thesis (or even any philosophical thesis whatsoever, I suppose). If a thesis has a central, potentially fatal problem, which hundreds of years of theorizing have failed to resolve, does that lead to a justifiably diminished confidence that said thesis is correct (or whatever passes for "correct" with regard to philosophical theses)? — Arkady

I think it is wrong to characterise Dualism as a metaphysics which has made zero progress. Did we not think once that life and non-live were different substances, body and soul, heaven and earth, etc. It seems a great deal of progress has been made.

Dualism's persistence may be due to the fact that it is a generic method of retreat from problems. What is to stop you claiming anything is due to some substance that interacts with physical reality by mysterious means? And, you can always move the goalposts.

(1) the mind is res cogitans.
(2) the body is res extensa.
(3) mind and body interact.

I don't think this analogy potrays the entire picture. The total mind-body problem, at least as I was taught, contains four premises:

(1) the mind is res cogitans (immaterial).
(2) the body is res extensa (material).
(3) mind and body interact.
(4) res cogitans and res extensa cannot interact.

Dualists deny premise four.

I know they would deny (4). Propositions (1)-(3) were supposed to encompass what substance dualists do believe.

I know they would deny (4). Propositions (1)-(3) were supposed to encompass what substance dualists do believe. — Arkady

Not sure substance dualists believe that though, if there are any that is.

I've appeared to have misunderstood your initial point. My bad.

I suspect that the popular persistence of substance dualism is grounded in the common-sense apprehension that there seems to be a significant and fundamental difference between our first-person/internal experience of the world and our third-person/external description of the world. It is still fairly well-ingrained in Western culture to account for this by assuming that "I" am a non-physical soul that "has" a physical body, and that they (somehow) routinely interact.

Charles Sanders Peirce scoffed at both dualism (of any kind) and materialism/physicalism, instead hypothesizing what I think is an interesting monist alternative: objective idealism. He did not claim that everything is mental, thoughts in the mind of God, etc.; instead, he acknowledged a distinction between mind and matter, but conceived it as one of degree rather than kind: "the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial ... matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws" (CP 6.24-25; 1891). In this context, the psychical law - the "law of mind" - is the "law of habit."

This view "holds matter to be mere specialized and partially deadened mind" (CP 6.102; 1892), such that "what we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hidebound with habits (CP 6.158; 1892). Eventually, "dead matter would be merely the final result of the complete induration of habit reducing the free play of feeling and the brute irrationality of effort to complete death" (CP 6.201; 1898). We are successfully able to model much of nature mathematically - i.e., with necessary reasoning - because its (physical) habits are relatively fixed; not so with people, whose (mental) habits are considerably more malleable.

So what is the argument? In what way is the interaction between the mental and physical mysterious, that interaction between physical objects already is not? What provision can you make for one that will not carry over to the other? — The Great Whatever

Y'all need Leibnizian monads and vicarious causation, bitches.

Something not spatiotemporal would be kind of inert, though.
Couldn't interact, couldn't be subject to causation, or be an effect (in part or whole), couldn't change.
A bit like Platonic abstracts I suppose (assuming Platonia is coherent).
The other way around might be conceivable, that there could be effects thereof, though there would be additional implications.
Causation could, at most, be uni-directional.
Odd.
I don't think this could be mind, at least not in any ordinary sense.

Who actually believes in causation, anyone? Fucking plebs.

The total mind-body problem, at least as I was taught, contains four premises:

(1) the mind is res cogitans (immaterial).
(2) the body is res extensa (material).
(3) mind and body interact.
(4) res cogitans and res extensa cannot interact.

Dualists deny premise four. — Chany

I think that this is a better representation than Arkady's. Now if we want to bring the evidence of physics into this, there are interpretations of QM, hidden variables and non-local interaction, which allow for an "immaterial" which interacts with the material. Once we establish through the principles of physics, that the immaterial may interact with the material then we have no basis for a denial of #4.

Again, I agree with that assessment to a degree. I find arguments directly confronting dualism that amount to "your metaphysics are weird and has mysterious elements" to be poor. However, I generally do not like arguments that revolve around relatively new physics concepts given that, as @Arkady mentioned, we know that our current understandings of modern physics, quantum mechanics included, do not mesh together and are currently incomplete. Yes, there may be some interpretations that allow for immaterial causes to influence material causes, but unless we have reason to believe those interpretations over others, I do not see the point here.

However, I generally do not like arguments that revolve around relatively new physics concepts given that, as Arkady mentioned, we know that our current understandings of modern physics, quantum mechanics included, do not mesh together and are currently incomplete. Yes, there may be some interpretations that allow for immaterial causes to influence material causes, but unless we have reason to believe those interpretations over others, I do not see the point here. — Chany

The point is that science gives us evidence that there is no good reason to consider (4). There is no good reason for the claim that the immaterial cannot interact with the material, because modern science clearly demonstrates that it is possible that the immaterial interacts with the material.

I find arguments directly confronting dualism that amount to "your metaphysics are weird and has mysterious elements" to be poor. — Chany

I agree. Once we clear that up, the fact that there is no good reason to reject dualism as a metaphysics, then we can move toward assessing the benefits which dualism offers. These include a rational approach to the existence of freewill, intention, and human creativity, as well as an empirical approach to the nature of time, the past being distinctly different from the future.

I think the claim:

there is no good reason to reject dualism as a metaphysics — Metaphysician Undercover

only works if the rejection is on mechanical grounds alone. By inverse, this means that we cannot use arguments against physicalism that amount to "your metaphysics are weird and has mysterious elements". Physicalism might pass Occam's razor better than dualism. This is why arguments like the p-zombie argument are important to dualism- if we do not need to appeal to something other than the physical, or even appeal to some other type of monism, then it seems redundant and unnecessary to posit some other substance. There may be a general problem with this though, because as @tom pointed out, dualism might be moving goalposts continually smaller and may suffer from a "god-of-the-gaps" style reasoning. At one point in time, I could imagine that dualists might have argued that chess and number of the things computers can do today were uniquely mind-based activities. You mention creativity. However, I would not be surprised if over the next few decades we see machines getting rapidly better at producing art that passes an artistic Turing test, therefore eliminating the need to appeal to a non-physical substance to explain creativity.

we can move toward assessing the benefits which dualism offers. These include a rational approach to the existence of freewill, intention, and human creativity, as well as an empirical approach to the nature of time, the past being distinctly different from the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is where what I alluded to in another post starts to come to light: we are less interested in analyzing the merits of the mind-body problem as a unique issue and are more interested in what we can get out of it.

There is a fine paper by Herbert Feigl called 'The Mental and the Physical' which dates back to 1957 and you can read it online here. I hasten to add that I strongly disagree with it, but it's beautifully written, and marks the beginning of the analytic philosophical drift to physicalism, as far as I can map it. Rather remarkably he imagined teaching children to stop saying 'belief' and 'expectation' and to start talking instead about 'brain-states', a development which he thought would be 'an enormous enrichment'.

Feigl was a remarkable man, Austrian but of broad interests - he met Wittgenstein in Vienna in the 1920's and had some chats with him even though he'd quickly realised that Ludwig was not the positivist his Vienna Circle friends had been hoping to meet. Feigl escaped to Minnesota in the 1930's and had a fruitful collaboration with Sellars, see other threads. He had strong humanist options and sympathy with practising scientists.

Nice resource, thanks. I'm not likely to share his overall attitude - he's rather too positivist for my liking - but he's an exceptionally clear writer and the format is terrific.

I think this argument of res cogitans and res extensa not being able to interact is the reason why Descartes tried to place soul in corpus pineale. However, Leibniz tried to overcome the problem by stating the pre-established harmony which explains that mind and body can be corresponding with each other without interaction.

Nevertheless, I think dualism has a big problem indeed. If we say mind is not anywhere in space and yet it is obviously temporal then why we don't hear each other's thoughts? That is what bothers me. If the thought occur at the same time then what makes us not here all the thoughts?

the question of how something material and something non-material can possibly interact seems to presuppose that it is clear how two material things interact. — The Great Whatever

Well, it is clear how two material things can interact, in fact just as clear as how two ideal things can interact. They can interact because they are one substance. If a basketball is made of atoms, and a a football is also made of atoms, then they can interact, if they collide, by virtue of the simple fact that they cannot share the same position in space, so when they come in contact with each other, something must happen.

because then we can do the same with physical and mental activity, the correlations between which are even pre-theoretically obvious and abundant. — The Great Whatever

Hence because they are pre-theoretically obvious and abundant, we adopt a one substance view with two parallel attributes...

Dualism is fucked up precisely because it cannot account for correlation - it creates two separate realms, which aren't even correlated to begin with! Their correlation becomes an unsolvable mystery.

Nevertheless, I think dualism has a big problem indeed. If we say mind is not anywhere in space and yet it is obviously temporal then why we don't hear each other's thoughts? That is what bothers me. If the thought occur at the same time then what makes us not here all the thoughts? — Veronika Pugach

I think you need to distinguish between being non-spatial, and being located in space. My soul may have a location, coinciding with my body, but it can still be non-spatial itself. Consider the dimensionless point. The point may have a location in space, but it is dimensionless, occupying no space, and therefore non-spatial. Two non-spatial points will have space separating them.

The part of me which is non-spatial, my soul, and the part of you which is non-spatial, your soul, are separated by space and therefore we have no direct access to each other's thoughts. Even within my own body, "my soul", may consist of numerous such non-spatial points which have established control over the immediate spatial environment, through the creation of "my body". You and I, and others, may communicate, and attempt to establish control over a larger spatial environment.

Well, it is clear how two material things can interact, in fact just as clear as how two ideal things can interact — Agustino

It is not any more clear than how a material and 'ideal' thing can interact (although 'ideal' is a poor descriptor for the mental in Descartes' view).

If a basketball is made of atoms, and a a football is also made of atoms, then they can interact, if they collide, by virtue of the simple fact that they cannot share the same position in space — Agustino

OK, why can't they, and how do you know that? If you know it by experience, then we also know about physical-mental correlations and their effects on one another from experience. If you made it up as a postulate, then we can equally make up postulates about physical-mental interaction.

Dualism is fucked up precisely because it cannot account for correlation - it creates two separate realms, which aren't even correlated to begin with! — Agustino

But this is just false. Obviously the dualist thinks the two realms interact in systematic ways – hence interactionist dualism.

Just because two things are distinct doesn't mean they can't interact: if that were true, distinct physical things couldn't interact either.

It is not any more clear than how a material and 'ideal' thing can interact (although 'ideal' is a poor descriptor for the mental in Descartes' view). — The Great Whatever

They don't. They're merely correlated with one another. The ideal is parallel to the material.

OK, why can't they, and how do you know that? If you know it by experience, then we also know about physical-mental correlations and their effects on one another from experience. — The Great Whatever

Tell me TGW, can you conceive of two objects occupying the same position in space at one and the same time? No.

But this is just false. Obviously the dualist thinks the two realms interact in systematic ways – hence interactionist dualism. — The Great Whatever

Which is stupid. If they interact, they could really affect each other, but they don't. They're merely correlated with each other - two attributes of the same substance. Serotonin in the brain is correlated to a feeling of happiness, just as a feeling of happiness is correlated to serotonin in the brain. One doesn't "cause" another.

Just because two things are distinct doesn't mean they can't interact: if that were true, distinct physical things couldn't interact either. — The Great Whatever

No, things which have a different nature cannot interact. A thought cannot kick a stone.

Tell me TGW, can you conceive of two objects occupying the same position in space at one and the same time? No. — Agustino

As far as I'm aware, particles interact only when they do occupy the same space.

It's only identical fermions that can't occupy the same space.

As far as I'm aware, particles interact only when they do occupy the same space.

It's only identical fermions that can't occupy the same space. — Michael

So a particle is literarily in the same spatial position as the other? Isn't it around the same vague (in QM) position? That's entirely different from what I said.

So a particle is literarily in the same spatial position as the other? Isn't it around the same vague (in QM) position? That's entirely different from what I said. — Agustino

I believe this "vague" position is all the position particles have. It's not that they "really" have a non-vague position but we're just incapable of determining it. So to occupy the same "vague" position is to occupy the same space.

I believe this "vague" position is all the position particles have. It's not that they "really" have a non-vague position but we're just incapable of determining it. So to occupy the same "vague" position is to occupy the same space. — Michael

That's because it is both wave and particle... and it's not the only interpretation of QM. Pilot wave theories also exist for example.

If quanta is a wave, then one cannot speak of its position at a point of time. Heisenberg's principle implies this, not as a limitation but as a real aspect of quanta. Something that is constantly in flux and cannot be frozen in a position. Such a freezing would be an incomplete description and picture. There are no particles, but there is something. To call it a particle unnecessarily constrains and inhibits exploration as to the meaning of the fabric of the universe. It is contrary to free investigation of the nature of energy fields and substantial matter - which I believe are the same. A particle image needs to be discarded or minimally looked upon as a grossly simplified and incorrect view.

Any philosophical discussion that reaches for QM has gone astray.

Any philosophical discussion that reaches for QM has gone astray. — Banno

Why? Quantum indeterminacy, for instance, surely has at least some bearing on philosophical theses such as the Principle of Sufficient Reason?