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Full Idea
If the mind causes brain events, then they are not caused by other brain events, and such causal gaps should be detectable by scientists; there should also be a gap of brain-events which cause no other brain events, because they are causing mind events.
Gist of Idea
Dualism implies some brain events with no physical cause, and others with no physical effect
Source
Robert Kirk (Mind and Body [2003], §2.5)
Book Ref
Kirk,Robert: 'Mind and Body' [Acumen 2003], p.37
A Reaction
This is the double causation problem which Spinoza had spotted (Idea 4862). Expressed this way, it seems a screamingly large problem for dualism. We should be able to discover some VERY strange physical activity in the brain.
Related Idea
Idea 4862 Can the pineal gland be moved more slowly or quickly by the mind than by animal spirits? [Spinoza on Descartes]
| 4982 | Dualism implies some brain events with no physical cause, and others with no physical effect [Kirk,R] |
| 4986 | A weaker kind of reductionism than direct translation is the use of 'bridge laws' [Kirk,R] |
| 4984 | All meaningful psychological statements can be translated into physics [Kirk,R] |
| 4985 | If mental states are multiply realisable, they could not be translated into physical terms [Kirk,R] |
| 4990 | The inverted spectrum idea is often regarded as an objection to behaviourism [Kirk,R] |
| 4991 | Behaviourism seems a good theory for intentional states, but bad for phenomenal ones [Kirk,R] |
| 4992 | In 'holistic' behaviourism we say a mental state is a complex of many dispositions [Kirk,R] |
| 4993 | If a bird captures a worm, we could say its behaviour is 'about' the worm [Kirk,R] |
| 4994 | Behaviourism offers a good alternative to simplistic unitary accounts of mental relationships [Kirk,R] |
| 4995 | Behaviourists doubt whether reference is a single type of relation [Kirk,R] |
| 5000 | Behaviourism says intentionality is an external relation; language of thought says it's internal [Kirk,R] |
| 4997 | It seems unlikely that most concepts are innate, if a theory must be understood to grasp them [Kirk,R] |
| 4998 | Instead of representation by sentences, it can be by a distribution of connectionist strengths [Kirk,R] |
| 4999 | For behaviourists language is just a special kind of behaviour [Kirk,R] |
| 5001 | Maybe we should see intentionality and consciousness as a single problem, not two [Kirk,R] |