Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism

Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism

EJ Lowe

Substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is, naturally enough, commonly thought of on a Cartesian model, according to which it is a dualism of two radically different kinds of substance, one (the ‘body’) purely material and the other (the ‘mind’) wholly immaterial in nature. This view is subject to many familiar difficulties. However, the almost universal rejection of Cartesian substance dualism has blinded many philosophers to the possibility of formulating other and more plausible versions of substance dualism. Non-Cartesian substance dualism (NCSD), as it may most perspicuously be called, is a dualism not of minds and bodies, but of persons —or, more generally, of subjects of experience —and their ‘organized’ bodies. This is an ontological distinction that is chiefly motivated not by some fanciful notion that there could be disembodied persons—although NCSD does not rule out that possibility—but by much more solid considerations which require us, for instance, to distinguish between the identity-conditions of
persons and their bodies. Much of the intuitive appeal of Cartesian dualism is retained and explained by NCSD, without any of the former’s counterintuitive features and metaphysical difficulties. NCSD is, however, still a non-materialist position, because it is incompatible even with very weak forms of non-reductive physicalism. In what follows, I shall begin, in section 1, by explaining and justifying NCSD’s distinctive ontology of persons, before moving on, in section 2, to present and argue for its novel anti-physicalist account of the metaphysics of mental causation.

Returning to the self, we see, thus, that while we may well think that we have good scientific grounds for believing that the functioning of the brain is causally necessary for the continued existence of the self, nonetheless, in the nature of the case, such evidence as we possess for this is bound to be inconclusive—and not just for the reason that all empirical evidence is defeasible—since we lack any reductive analysis of what would constitute the ceasing-to-be of a self. Lacking such an analysis, we cannot really say what empirical evidence would or would not support a claim that a self had definitely ceased to be. This is why the prospects for life after bodily death must inevitably remain imponderable and unamenable to decisive empirical determination.

An admittedly odd take given the variety of evidence suggestive, at the very least, of Survival. However given some of the discussions we've had about irreducibility of Persons the next part is of greater interest:

Against this it may be urged that, since I have insisted that perception and agency are essential to selfhood, I must allow that the cessation of these would constitute a decisive terminus for the self ’s existence. However, it is the capacity for perception and agency that is essential, not its perpetual exercise. Very well, so can we not say that the demise of this capacity —and certainly its permanent demise— would constitute the demise of the self ? But the trouble is that saying this is not really informative. For what would constitute the permanent demise of this capacity? Only, as far as I can see, the very demise of the self—in other words, no genuinely noncircular answer to the question can be provided. It will not do to say that the permanent cessation of brain function would constitute the demise of the capacity for perception and agency. For the most that we can really say is that there seems to be an empirical correlation between mental activity and brain function, at least in the case of human persons. But the capacity for perception and agency does not by its very nature reside in any sort of cerebral condition. Indeed, there is nothing whatever unintelligible about supposing the existence of a capacity for perception and agency in a being entirely lacking a brain.

I would go even further than Lowe, as I cannot really grasp what it means to create a Person let alon[e] describe how a Person could be destroyed.

Perhaps the One-Many relation is not the Many coming from the One, but the Many themselves existing eternally alongside the One...whatever we take this "One" to be...