I believe both physicalism and dualism to be somewhat incomplete in their own different ways, but given the choice between the two I find the ideas behind physicalism to be most believable. Dualism states that the mind and the body are two completely different things, independent from one another. Physicalism other other hand, says the body and the mind are essentially the same thing. This also may not be entirely true; however, I cannot deny that they interact with and depend upon each other in some way, meaning they cannot be completely separate as dualism suggests.
Some arguments used to back dualism, like the idea of doubt and consciousness being separate from the physical body, may not be completely accurate. I'm no scientist, but based on what I've been taught about the brain and the way it interacts with the rest of the body, I think there's a very good chance that when we have a feeling like doubt certain neurons are firing and physically certain things are taking place in the brain - this is what physicalism argues. They're not necessarily saying that what you do with every part of your physical body like your hands or legs will affect the mind, but what is taking place physically in your brain is responsible for everything that happens in your mind.
Take love for example: Love is something that dualists would probably say is clearly entirely separate from the physical body. You can't point to love, you can't open up your head and see the love there in your skull, so they would argue that it is clearly separate from the physical body. However, modern science has shown us that when someone is in love or has feelings of love, different parts of the brain light up and certain chemicals are released. Although love may not be it's own physical structure inside your head, it is creating some sort of physical change in the brain, which then also creates a change in the mind (serotonin, endorphins, etc.) Clearly they have an strong effect on one another and therefor cannot be entirely separate from each other.
This is a persuasive defense of the physicalist position. You bring out the idea of a dependence on physical processes very nicely here.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of the dualist-interactionist approach which incorporates the interaction of mind and body into the theory?
ReplyDeleteFunny. I type in "Physicalism and Love" into Google and you're the #2 hit! It's hard for content from over 3 years ago to maintain such a high Google standing. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteLike Misakichifan, I too think a dualist-interactionism may be the best way to describe what is going on. You even hint at "Love" creating some sort of change in the brain. Physicalism would say that the changes in the brain are love, not that a separate non-physical entity ("Love" you call it) is causing those changes.
You seem to sense the eerie feeling that if love is only physical then it looses it's beauty and power because under physicalism free choices are determined by some mechanism in the brain being stimulated in an appropriate way. This doesn't seem to jive with both our experience of love and desire for love. We sense love to be unfulfilling if we know the person loving us didn't have the freedom to choose to do so (by either coercion or determinism). We also would be ashamed to tell others we love that our love for them was only dependent on us being coerced or determined by some outside physical factor to love for them. Such a love is weak and reactionary and turns our heroes of love (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom, Jesus, etc...) in victims of love because they couldn't choose to not love and not die.
There is also the eerie feeling that if love is not at all physical then it also looses its beauty and power. If it were so then we shouldn't ever cry at weddings, "fall head-over-heals" for someone, hug our friends, or be moved by the work of an artist. Such a love devoid of the physical aspects we know so well seems inhumane and mechanical.
A dualist-interactionism would say that love can be both in the mind and the body, both physical and non-physical. This would be more satisfying I believe than having to pick one or the other.