Discuss on Reconstructing & Evaluating Arguments for DualismThis is a writing assignment on understanding and evaluating five different arguments for substance dualism.
Below are five arguments for substance dualism. For each argument, answer the following prompts:
1. First, summarize each argument in your own words.
(Your answer to #1 is expected to be a few sentences for each argument. 3 points per argument)
2. Second, put each argument in formal numbered premise/conclusion form (like you did for the Unit 1 AS2).
For instance, here is an argument is written in formal premise/conclusion form:
P1) If there’s no God, then life is meaningless.
P2) Life is not meaningless.
C) There is a God.
Remember that each of these is an argument for substance dualism, the theory that the mind and the brain are different. Most of these arguments are based on a principle called Leibniz’s Law, so you will likely want to use something like Leibniz’s Law as a premise.
(4 points per argument)
3. Finally, evaluate each argument. Check each premise: is it true, false or questionable? Why? Then check the argument’s support:
is the information in the premises enough to logically figure out the conclusion? Why or why not? Be sure to fully defend your evaluation.
(Your answer to #3 is expected to be about one paragraph for each argument. 4 points per argument.)
Argument #1: The Immortality Argument for Substance Dualism
“There is no disagreement about the fact that our bodies die. Most philosophers agree that the reason they die is that they are physical, subject to all the constraints imposed by biology, chemistry, and physics. Physical things normally disintegrate in various ways. Living physical bodies get sick, get old, stop functioning properly, and ultimately die. There is, however, a widespread belief that something about us will live on after our bodies die. If that something is going to survive our bodily death, it must not be physical and it must be a substance—something that can exist in its own right even when the body dies. That nonphysical substance is sometimes called a soul, sometimes a mind. For Descartes, ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ were simply different names for the same thing.”
(from What Is a Mind? By Suzanne Cunningham)
Argument #2: The Free Will Argument for Substance Dualism
“A second reason that some philosophers have had for defending Substance Dualism is that it seems to provide a framework within which one can make sense of freedom of the will. The traditional doctrine of free will is the view that in some situations, but not all, human beings are able to choose between at least two alternative courses of action, and the choice of either of those alternatives is not forced by causal factors beyond the person’s control. However, if everything about us is physical and is therefore governed by the laws of biology, chemistry, and physics, then it would seem that everything about us is outside our control. If that is the case, then we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions because we are incapable of choosing them ourselves. However, some argue that we do feel that we make our own choices and that we are morally responsible for them, so there must be some part of us that is not physical and is not subject to the control of the physical laws of the universe. That part of us, so the argument goes, is the nonphysical mind (or soul).”
(from What Is a Mind? By Suzanne Cunningham)
Argument #3: René Descartes’s Divisibility Argument for Substance Dualism
“I now turn to Descartes’s second argument for dualism. It is far simpler than the one just analyzed. In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes claims that physical things have spatial parts. For example, a surgeon could divide my brain into pieces. My mind, however, does not have spatial parts. If so, dualism follows, by Leibniz’s Law. Descartes also says that the body, but not the mind, has extension. By this he means that the body, but not the mind, takes up physical space; it has spatial location. This also leads to dualism, by Leibniz’s Law.
(from Core Questions in Philosophy by Elliott Sober)
Argument #4: René Descartes’s Indubitability Argument for substance dualism
“Now let’s look at Descartes’s first argument for dualism. [Remember that] Descartes uses the method of doubt in his epistemology. He also uses the idea of doubt in his discussion of the mind/body problem.
“In the Second Meditation, Descartes claims you can’t doubt that you have a mind. If you try to doubt that you have a mind, you will find yourself entertaining a thought, and so you must grant that you have a mind after all. Descartes thought that the existence of the body has a quite different status. He thought that it is possible for you to doubt that you have a body. After all, you can entertain the thought that you are a disembodied spirit. Descartes concludes that your mind has a property that your body lacks. You can doubt the existence of the one, but not the existence of the other. Dualism follows, by Leibniz’s Law.”
(from Core Questions in Philosophy by Elliott Sober)
Argument #5: René Descartes’s Conceivability Argument for substance dualism:
“…it suffices that I am able to conceive one thing apart from another clearly and distinctly in order to be certain that the one is different from the other… .
“…yet because, on the one side, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other, I possess a distinct idea of body, inasmuch as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it. …”
(from Meditation Six by René Descartes)
