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Single Idea 2411

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 2. Interactionism ]

Full Idea

There is an objection to dualism that it cannot explain how the physical and the nonphysical interact, but the answer is simple on a natural supervenience framework - they interact by virtue of psychophysical laws (…which are as eternal as physics).

Gist of Idea

Supervenience makes interaction laws possible

Source

David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.4.6)

Book Ref

Chalmers,David J.: 'The Conscious Mind' [OUP 1997], p.170

A Reaction

There are different sorts of laws. What Chalmers is hoping for would be a mere regularity, like the connection of cancer to smoking, but the objection is that the discovery of causal mechanisms, to give truly explanatory laws, is simply impossible.

The 57 ideas from David J.Chalmers

16473 Modal Rationalism: conceivability gives a priori access to modal truths [Chalmers, by Stalnaker]
19258 Evaluate primary possibility from some world, and secondary possibility from this world [Chalmers, by Vaidya]
14708 Rationalist 2D semantics posits necessary relations between meaning, apriority, and possibility [Chalmers, by Schroeter]
9318 Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford]
2386 Hard Problem: why brains experience things [Chalmers]
2389 Sometimes we don't notice our pains [Chalmers]
2390 We attribute beliefs to people in order to explain their behaviour [Chalmers]
2391 Can we be aware but not conscious? [Chalmers]
2392 Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers]
2393 Logical supervenience is when one set of properties must be accompanied by another set [Chalmers]
2394 Natural supervenience is when one set of properties is always accompanied by another set [Chalmers]
2395 Zombies imply natural but not logical supervenience [Chalmers]
2397 'Perception' means either an action or a mental state [Chalmers]
2396 Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers]
2398 Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers]
13960 In two-dimensional semantics we have two aspects to truth in virtue of meaning [Chalmers]
13956 Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers]
13963 Maybe logical possibility does imply conceivability - by an ideal mind [Chalmers]
13962 Two-dimensional semantics gives a 'primary' and 'secondary' proposition for each statement [Chalmers]
13958 The 'primary intension' is non-empirical, and fixes extensions based on the actual-world reference [Chalmers]
2399 Meaning has split into primary ("watery stuff"), and secondary counterfactual meaning ("H2O") [Chalmers]
13959 The 'secondary intension' is determined by rigidifying (as H2O) the 'water' picked out in the actual world [Chalmers]
13957 Primary and secondary intensions are the a priori (actual) and a posteriori (counterfactual) aspects of meaning [Chalmers]
13961 We have 'primary' truth-conditions for the actual world, and derived 'secondary' ones for counterfactual worlds [Chalmers]
2400 Is intentionality just causal connections? [Chalmers]
2401 All facts are either physical, experiential, laws of nature, second-order final facts, or indexical facts about me [Chalmers]
18403 Indexicals may not be objective, but they are a fact about the world as I see it [Chalmers]
16048 Physicalism says in any two physically indiscernible worlds the positive facts are the same [Chalmers, by Bennett,K]
2402 It seems possible to invert qualia [Chalmers]
2403 Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers]
2404 Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers]
2405 Perhaps consciousness is physically based, but not logically required by that base [Chalmers]
2406 H2O causes liquidity, but no one is a dualist about that [Chalmers]
2407 One can wrongly imagine two things being non-identical even though they are the same (morning/evening star) [Chalmers]
16424 Strong metaphysical necessity allows fewer possible worlds than logical necessity [Chalmers]
16425 Metaphysical necessity is a bizarre, brute and inexplicable constraint on possibilities [Chalmers]
16426 How can we know the metaphysical impossibilities; the a posteriori only concerns this world [Chalmers]
16427 Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers]
2409 Maybe dualist interaction is possible at the quantum level? [Chalmers]
2411 Supervenience makes interaction laws possible [Chalmers]
2413 If I can have a zombie twin, my own behaviour doesn't need consciousness [Chalmers]
2412 Can we explain behaviour without consciousness? [Chalmers]
2414 When distracted we can totally misjudge our own experiences [Chalmers]
2415 In blindsight both qualia and intentionality are missing [Chalmers]
2416 What turns awareness into consciousness? [Chalmers]
2417 Does consciousness arise from fine-grained non-reductive functional organisation? [Chalmers]
2418 The Chinese Mind doesn't seem conscious, but then nor do brains from outside [Chalmers]
2419 Why should qualia fade during silicon replacement? [Chalmers]
2422 The structure of the retina has already simplified the colour information which hits it [Chalmers]
2423 Going down the scale, where would consciousness vanish? [Chalmers]
2424 It is odd if experience is a very recent development [Chalmers]
2426 Why are minds homogeneous and brains fine-grained? [Chalmers]
2428 Maybe the whole Chinese Room understands Chinese, though the person doesn't [Chalmers]
2429 Temperature (etc.) is agreed to be reducible, but it is multiply realisable [Chalmers]
14712 A sentence is a priori if no possible way the world might actually be could make it false [Chalmers]
14713 Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent [Chalmers]
14739 'Water' is two-dimensionally inconstant, with different intensions in different worlds [Chalmers, by Sider]