| 2170 | Homer does not distinguish between soul and body [Homer, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Homer's descriptions of people did without a dualistic distinction between soul and body. | |
| From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.23 |
| 24049 | Thinkers place the soul within the body, but never explain how they are attached [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is another absurdity which follows, …since they attach the soul to a body, and place it in the body, without further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about. …Yet this seems necessary, because this association produces action. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b14) | |
| A reaction: A clear statement of the interaction objection to full substance dualism. Critics say that dualists have to invoke a 'miracle' at this point. |
| 1514 | Early thinkers concentrate on the soul but ignore the body, as if it didn't matter what body received the soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers try only to describe the soul, but they fail to go into any kind of detail about the body which is to receive the soul, as if it were possible (as it is in the Pythagorean tales) for just any old soul to be clothed in just any old body. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 407b20) | |
| A reaction: Precisely. Anyone who seriously believes that a human mind can be reincarnated in a flea needs their mind examined. Actually they need their brain examined, but that probably wouldn't impress them. I can, of course, imagine moving into a flea. |
| 24050 | If soul is separate from body, why does it die when the body dies? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the soul is something distinct from the mixture, why then are the being for flesh and for the other parts of the animal destroyed at the same time? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 408a25) | |
| A reaction: An obvious response to this reasonable question is to say that we see the body die, but not the soul, so the soul doesn't die. The problem is then to find some evidence for the soul's continued existence. |
| 21402 | Incorporeal substances can't do anything, and can't be acted upon either [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Zeno held that an incorporeal substance was incapable of any activity, whereas anything capable of acting, or being acted upon in any way, could not be incorporeal. | |
| From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.11.39 | |
| A reaction: This is substance dualism kicked into the long grass by Zeno, long before Descartes defended dualism, and was swiftly met with exactly the same response. The interaction problem. |
| 6028 | Bodies interact with other bodies, and cuts cause pain, and shame causes blushing, so the soul is a body [Cleanthes, by Nemesius] |
| Full Idea: Cleanthes says no incorporeal interacts with a body, but one body interacts with another body; the soul interacts with the body when it is sick and being cut, and the body feels shame and fear, and turns red or pale, so the soul is a body. | |
| From: report of Cleanthes (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by Nemesius - De Natura Hominis 78,7 | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the interaction problem with dualism, or, as we might now say, the problem of mental causation. The standard Stoic view is that the soul is a sort of rarefied fire, which disperses at death. |
| 2628 | Why would mind mix with matter if it didn't need it? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the gods have no need of the sensible world, why mix up mind with water and water with mind, if mind can exist by itself without any need of matter? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.24) | |
| A reaction: This question migrates into our puzzles about why a separate mental substance would be produced by evolution. If it is device physical systems use to promote themselves, mental substance is reduced to an inferior and dependent role. |
| 3625 | The 'thinking thing' may be the physical basis of the mind [Hobbes on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the thing that thinks is the subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong; and this subject may thus be something corporeal. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §2.27) by Thomas Hobbes - Objections to 'Meditations' (Third) 173 | |
| A reaction: Of course, Descartes goes on to reject this view. Presumably he is suggesting that mind etc. might be properties of something corporeal, rather than being identical with it. Descartes was well aware of materialism in Hobbes and Gassendi. |
| 2552 | Knowing different aspects of brain/mind doesn't make them different [Rorty on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Why should an epistemic distinction reflect an ontological distinction? Why should our epistemic privilege of being incorrigible about how things seem to us reflect a distinction between two realms of being? | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by Richard Rorty - Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 1.2 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being one of the most important ideas in philosophy, mainly as a corrective to a lot of bad philosophy, rather than as wisdom offered to non-philosophers (for whom Rorty's thought is probably common sense. How is it? How do we know? |
| 4305 | Descartes gives no clear criterion for individuating mental substances [Cottingham on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes gives no clear criterion for individuating mental substances. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.78) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.86 | |
| A reaction: Presumably I can individuate my own mind by the 'natural light' of reason, and the implications of the Cogito. The minds of others do seem to be a problem. Why should they coincide with bodies, and not overlap or blend or swap? |
| 4861 | Does Descartes have a clear conception of how mind unites with body? [Spinoza on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: What does Descartes understand by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §6.82) by Baruch de Spinoza - The Ethics V Pref | |
| A reaction: This is the classic, original and strongest objection to Cartesian dualism - that mind and body are held to be too different to interact. Spinoza may have overreacted a bit when he saw the only solution as the total identity of the two things. |
| 6540 | Even Descartes may concede that mental supervenes on neuroanatomical [Lycan on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Even Descartes may have conceded that the mental supervenes on the neuroanatomical. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], 6) by William Lycan - Consciousness 5.2 | |
| A reaction: This is true (early in Meditation Six) despite his later suggestion of the pineal gland as the linking point. It proves nothing, but I have heard John Cottingham suggest that Descartes might well be a materialist if he came back today. |
| 7733 | Superman's strength is indubitable, Clark Kent's is doubtful, so they are not the same? [Maslin on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes's claim that mind and body are separate because the first is necessary when thinking and the second isn't, is like arguing 'Superman's strength is indubitable; Clark Kent's strength is widely doubted; so Clark Kent is not Superman'. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], p.156) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 2.7.1 | |
| A reaction: I've heard people defend Descartes on this, and Kripke is interesting on the subject, but Descartes had better not be following this pattern of argument, or else a great philosopher would really be presenting an absurdity. |
| 23222 | A soul with physical extension is more likely than an immaterial soul that moves bodies [Elizabeth] |
| Full Idea: I would find it easier to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede that an immaterial thing could move and be moved by a body. | |
| From: Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia (Letters to Descartes [1643], p.42), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 2 | |
| A reaction: Very nicely expressed! I'm trying to imagine a ghost which finds itself stuck with a physical body which it has to drag around like a reluctant dog. She is stating the classic interaction problem which plagues all mind-body dualism. |
| 4308 | Mind and body are one thing, seen sometimes as thought and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: I suppose we might now call this 'property dualism'. It is odd that when you examine one property, the other is nowhere to be seen. |
| 4846 | We are incapable of formulating an idea which excludes the existence of our body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea which excludes the existence of our body cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: A fascinating claim. At the heart of Descartes is an unspoken thought experiment exploring the possibility of a disembodied mind. This is a beautiful challenge to the very concept of such a thing, and points to a grealty superior theory of mind. |
| 7840 | For all we know, an omnipotent being might have enabled material beings to think [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We may never be able to know whether any material being thinks; it being impossible for us, by contemplation of our own ideas to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz attacked this vigorously, but I have to agree with Locke. We now see that it is just as mysterious for 'mental' substance to think as it is for physical substance. If in doubt, apply the Razor, and stick with the substance you know. |
| 7645 | When falling asleep, the soul becomes paralysed and weak, just like the body [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The soul and body fall asleep together. The soul slowly becomes paralysed, together with all the body's muscles. They can no longer hold up the weight of the head, while the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.6) | |
| A reaction: A very nice observation, to place alongside other evidence such as drunkenness and blushing. Personally I find it hard to see why anyone ever believed dualism. You don't need modern brain scans and brain lesion research to see the problem. |
| 5589 | Neither materialism nor spiritualism can reveal the separate existence of the soul [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If materialism will not explain my existence, then spiritualism is just as unsatisfactory, and the conclusion is that in no way can we cognise anything about the constitution of our soul that concerns its possible separate existence. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B420) | |
| A reaction: This is Kant's refusal to deal with the mind-body relation, because the mind and its identity have a 'transcendental' status. I.e. they are unavoidable presuppositions about which nothing can be asked. I don't think I agree with him. I'm a materialist. |
| 5630 | Our concept of an incorporeal nature is merely negative [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Our concept of an incorporeal nature is merely negative. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B827/A799) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a well-known problem with the dualist theory of mind. |
| 19596 | The whole body is involved in the formation of thoughts [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: In the formation of thoughts all parts of the body seem to me to be working together. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 20) | |
| A reaction: I can only think that Spinoza must be behind this thought, or La Mettrie. It seems a strikingly unusual intuition for its time, when almost everyone takes a spiritual sort of dualism for granted. |
| 14867 | It is just madness to think that the mind is supernatural (or even divine!) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To view 'spirit', the product of the brain, as supernatural. Even to deify it. What madness! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [127]) | |
| A reaction: When I started philolosophy I was obliged to take mind-body dualism very seriously, but I have finally managed to drag myself to the shores of this lake of madness, where Nietzsche awaited with a helping hand. |
| 5171 | The supposed 'gulf' between mind and matter is based on the senseless concept of 'substances' [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The problems of bridging the 'gulf' between mind and matter, in knowledge or in action, are all fictitious problems arising out of the senseless metaphysical conception of mind and matter as 'substances'. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: He is presumably implying that there is only one 'substance', the stuff of physics, thus voting for Spinoza's dual aspect theory. There could still be a 'gulf', between incommensurable properties, or untranslatable levels of description. |
| 3359 | Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Its inability to explain the possibility of "mental causation" doomed Cartesian dualism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p. 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a modern way of stating the interaction problem. Personally I am inclined to think that dualism was doomed by the spread of the scientific materialist view to every other corner of our knowledge except the mind. Plenty of causes baffle us. |
| 7365 | Dualism wallows in mystery, and to accept it is to give up [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Some things, of course, might be inherently mysterious to us, and we might as well give up. The big dualist mystery is the explanation of how such different substances can interact. How do two physical substances manage to interact? |
| 3513 | How does a dualist mind represent, exist outside space, and be transparent to itself? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Even dualists must explain how the mind represents things, but then their mind-stuff has so many special powers already (being outside space but in time, being transparent to itself etc.) that one more scarcely seems worth worrying about. | |
| From: David Papineau (Philosophical Naturalism [1993], 3.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: I share the exasperation. It is hard to see how a dualist could even begin to formulate a theory about HOW the mind does so many different things. Could Descartes get a research grant for it? Would we understand God if he tried to explain it to us? |
| 4982 | Dualism implies some brain events with no physical cause, and others with no physical effect [Kirk,R] |
| 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. | |
| From: Robert Kirk (Mind and Body [2003], §2.5) | |
| 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. |
| 2955 | If mental events occur in time, then relativity says they are in space [Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: If we assume that mental events are located in time, then it follows immediately, given special relativity, that they are also in space. | |
| From: Michael Lockwood (Mind, Brain and the Quantum [1989], p.73) | |
| A reaction: A powerful point. Of course, there might (you never know) be something which exists in time but not space (and thoughts clearly exist in time), but (as in Hume's argument against miracles), dualism will overthrow your other basic beliefs about nature. |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: I would say that that my consciousness doesn't seem either physical or non-physical, ..but the belief that the mind is non-physical partly took hold because that fits well with thinking of human agents as free. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.102) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right. I personally think there is no such thing as free will, and that belief in it has been the single greatest delusion amongst philosophers (and others) for the last two thousand years. Dualism has now gone, and free will is next. |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
| 4912 | Out-of-body experiences may be due to temporary loss of proprioception [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Out-of-body experiences may be due to temporary loss of proprioception. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.187) | |
| A reaction: This is only a speculation, but it is an effect which can be caused by brain injury, and dualists should face the possibility that this evidence (prized by many dualists) can have a physical explanation. |