The Penguins and Dualism

From guest blogger, Daniel.

An interesting point was brought up in class that everyone believes that there are not 50 penguins in the room for the obvious reason that our senses clearly showed us that there were not 50 penguins in the room. However, no one specifically thought this upon entering the room. It didn’t cross their minds. According to the divisibility argument for dualism it would seem that while the body can be divided, the mind cannot. That is to say that I can leave my thumb at home, or any other part of my body which is divisible, but I cannot leave parts of my mind in different places. It is interesting then to look at the penguin example and how it seems we cannot subtract from the mind but we can add to it. There are an infinite number of things that could replace the 50 penguins, say 100 horses, 3,000 shoes, one-million hamsters etc. that could have been brought up and become part of our active thoughts. So even though there were not 50 penguins in the room none of us thought of this because it was not poignant at the time, and thinking about the infinite amount of possibilities that could have been in the room would have been impossible. This might be an interesting foothold in the argument against dualism, or at least that the mind isn’t divisible. While it may be true that we cannot leave something we are actively thinking in one spatial plane and another thing we are actively thinking in another it does seem that the mind can indeed be prompted to think about what it would not have otherwise by things pointed out to it in the spatial dimension. There is an interesting argument here that while the mind is not divisible in any given moment it is divided in the fourth-dimension by potential additions that simply have not been added yet. Looking through the divisibility argument for dualism through a four-dimensionalist’s eyes it is clear that the mind is in fact divided, split, added to etc. throughout its existence.

Some thoughts about the argument for Dualism

From guest blogger, Shiying. 

On a class about life after death, we discussed several arguments for Dualism proposed by Descartes. Dualism views are views about the relationship between the body and the mind that claim that the mind and the body, or the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other. Here is one of the arguments:

(1)   My mind is essentially thinking.

(2)   My body isn’t essentially thinking.

(3)   Thus, my mind is not my body.

In order to examine this argument, I want to first look at the second premise which says

that bodies are not essentially thinking. One objection non-dualists can raise about this premise is to say that a well functioning body is essentially thinking. In reply to this objection, dualists use the thought experiment of the philosophical zombie to prove that a well functioning body is not essentially thinking. A philosophical zombie is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience. There are several types of philosophical zombies including behavioral zombies, neurological zombies and soulless zombies. But we can come up with a type of zombie that has a well functioning body, including the brain, but is not thinking, because it does not have conscious experience. There are some disputes about whether the zombies are metaphysically possible. Some argues that logical possibility does not entail metaphysical possibility. Thus, the philosophical zombies are either only logically possible or metaphysically possible.

Now let’s look at the first premise, saying the mind is essentially thinking. I think whether this statement is true largely depends on the definitions of the “mind”, and of “thinking”. If we use definitions of the “mind” and “thinking” so that the mind is not essentially thinking, then premise is not true and the argument fails. However, if we use definitions of the “mind” and “thinking” that enables the mind to be essentially thinking, then it is logically impossible for the mind to stop thinking. Therefore, the difference between the mind and the body is that it is logically impossible for the mind to stop thinking, but it is logically possible for the body to stop thinking, or it is metaphysically possible for the body to stop thinking. These are different properties and if Leibniz’s Law applies to these properties, the mind and the body are distinct entities that cannot be assimilated to each other. However, I think there can be disputes about whether these properties are important properties that we really care about and if Leibniz’s Law can be applied to these properties.