With the rise of the field of cognitive neuroscience and the development of better brain imaging techniques, the idea of an immaterial mind, existing apart from the brain, appears to have been relegated to the dustbin of history. Dualism is now seen as an artifact of a bygone age when people found solace in the idea of an eternal self that persisted beyond death. Yet oddly enough, one can find plenty of serious proponents of dualism in the present day who contend that dualism is an intellectually reputable position that can be defended rationally, provided one employs the proper philosophical arguments. My intention, therefore, is not merely to demonstrate that dualism is irredundant, but to show that dualism is perhaps necessary to properly account for certain mental phenomena, particularly with regard to the issues of qualia, intentionality, and rationality. The focus for this essay, however, would exclusively be on the problem of qualia.
What counts as an Argument?
Now I should add a disclaimer: this discussion is going to be more philosophically orientated. Given that the idea of an immaterial mind does not fulfill the criteria of any kind of empirical proof, arguments for dualism rely on some sort of metaphysical reasoning. Metaphysical arguments attempt to arrive at conclusions about reality by arguing through a series of deductions from empirical premises. The validity of a metaphysical argument depends on its logical coherence, as well as the strength of the premises that it employs. If both factors are taken into consideration, then the argument is deemed valid insofar as the rules of formal logic are concerned.
The modern scientific community harbors significant prejudice against metaphysical claims, precisely because their validity cannot be verified through empirical evidence. However, this implicitly assumes that in order for a thing to exist, it must be empirical. If this were to be the case, then we would have to reject the validity of mathematical and logical claims as well because they too cannot be verified by evidence. Take for example the proposition 2 +2 = 4. Is there any scientific proof for this claim? Not at all. Yet no scientist would ever question the validity of mathematical or logical laws given that they are indispensable to the operation of science. Very few scientists would be ready to admit this, but the very discipline of scientific reasoning hinges on several metaphysical assumptions that are empirically unfalsifiable.
To see further criticisms and defenses of metaphysical proofs, please refer to the appendix located beneath the article.
Lastly, it is important to establish that arguments for dualism are not simply appeals to gaps within our current scientific understanding. This is quite like suggesting that God exists simply because we don't know the exact mechanics behind the Big Bang. Rather what this argument seeks to demonstrate is that the immateriality of the mind is a necessary precondition for the existence of qualia and that no amount of empirical evidence would be sufficient to refute this.
What are Qualia?
Before we get into the argument, let us familiarize ourselves with the subject at hand. Qualia are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. In other words, it is the qualitative experience of what a particular sensation feels like to a certain subject. Examples of qualia include feeling the pain of an injury, the redness of a flower, or the wetness of water. Although these feelings are dependent on the physical properties of the objects of sensation for their existence, they are not identical to them. The color red is distinct from the redness that we experience as qualia, for the latter refers to the property of the stimuli to emit a certain wavelength of light, while the former is a characteristic that is exclusive to the experience of the subject.
While it is plainly obvious that sensation is the cause of subjective experience, it is not so clear what experience is or where it is located. The seemingly unbridgeable gap between the contents of subjective experience and the physical mechanisms of the brain contributes to one of the contested issues in the field of cognitive science, namely, the hard problem of consciousness.
The Argument
The argument is as follows: If qualia are real and they are not properties of matter, then it follows that they subsist in some immaterial reality, namely the mind. If the mind is immaterial, then it does not depend on the brain for its existence, and therefore substance dualism is true.
Let us represent this argument in a syllogism that follows the modus tollens form:
Premise 1: If qualia cannot be reduced to physical properties, then the mind is immaterial.
Premise 2: Qualia cannot be reduced to physical properties.
Conclusion: Therefore, the mind is immaterial.
The materialist may counter premise 1 by pointing out that the distinction between material and immaterial presents a false dichotomy. One can simply deny the existence of qualia altogether and argue that qualia are illusory byproducts of neural activity. However, the materialist fails to account for why our subjective experience has the ability to influence our cognition. Given that our thoughts and feelings have the ability to produce observable changes in our behavior and physiology, it naturally follows that they bear some kind of causal power, which in turn, establishes their existence as real features of cognition.
But it's not surprising that the appeal to neuroscientific discovery has such persuasive power. Neuroscience has, of course, revealed so much about the neurological path that connects sensation to the brain, and with the invention of new technologies such as fMRI, we are now able to visualize, with tremendous clarity, the various parts of the brain which are active during a cognitive event. Our knowledge of neural correlates for different kinds of perception gives many a compelling reason to posit that the experience of sensation happens in the brain and not somewhere else. There appears to be no need to attribute the existence of a separate mind which is the seat of experience.
Dualism does not deny the influence of brain processes on the mind. While it is true that impulses traveling across nerves are the efficient causes of experience, they do not explain the contents of experience, which includes things like the qualia of taste, sight, smell, etc. Qualia is a kind of property, and all properties are in some kind of substrate. This is an irrefutable first principle of metaphysics. If these properties were material properties, then they would either be found in the brain or maybe somewhere else, perhaps in the physical stimulus that was the first cause of the sensation. Since these properties are not found in either the object of perception nor the brain itself (upon physical examination), we conclude that they must exist elsewhere, namely in the locus that we term consciousness. Given the absence of any viable alternative, the fallacy of false dichotomy is completely avoided.
The question therefore is not how experience occurs, but where it occurs- in the brain or in consciousness. When we set our eyes on a particular object, the light bouncing off the object passes through our iris and hits our retina. This causes the optic nerve to become depolarized allowing for an electrical impulse to travel to the various visual areas present in the occipital lobe. The information that is relayed is then processed, allowing for the perception of the object. Although such a chain of events sufficiently explains the causes of visual perception, it does not convey any information as to what the thought or experience of color is like. This is called the knowledge problem of qualia. A blind man can learn everything in the world about what the color red is like, yet not know what redness feels like when seen.
Qualia represents just one instance of mental phenomena that cannot be accounted for by our physicalist understanding of cognition. In the following posts, we will be discussing the issues of rationality and intentionality, which dualists insist are better explained by the immateriality of the mind. We will also be looking at the interactionist problem, which is probably one of the most powerful arguments against substance dualism.
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References
Alanen, L. (1989). Descartes's dualism and the philosophy of mind. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 391-413.
Duncan, G. (2000). Mind-body dualism and the biopsychosocial model of pain: what did Descartes really say?. The Journal of medicine and philosophy, 25(4), 485-513.
Feser, E. (2006). Philosophy of mind: A beginner's guide. Simon and Schuster.
Oderberg, D. S. (2005). Hylemorphic dualism. Social Philosophy and Policy, 22(2), 70-99.
APPENDIX: Objections to Metaphysical Arguments
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