Q&A: Dualism and the Physico-Theological Argument
Dualism and the Physico-Theological Argument
Question
I’ll ask 2 questions here, just so I don’t have to open another thread:
1. In the series on free choice, you argued that one has to say physics is broken in order to believe in free choice (since the choice is not caused by anything, yet it causes human actions through the activation of neurons). My question is: doesn’t dualism require this as well? After all, interactionist dualism says that most (if not all) of our mental states have causal power that brings about physiological effects. So, ostensibly, it would seem that mental states like sadness, joy, pain, cold, and so on have causal powers, and thus the spirit affects matter, which conflicts with physics. Do you agree with that?
2. One could raise the claim that our universe confirms the claim that complex life on Earth arose by chance (against the physico-theological argument). After all, there are billions of stars where the laws of nature operate, and there they did not manage to create life (as far as we know), and here, once in however many billions upon billions, the laws did manage to lead to the development of complex life. Given billions of attempts, it is no longer surprising that it happened here.
How do you object to that argument?
Thank you
Answer
In the future, open a separate thread for each question. There’s no need to save on threads.
1. Completely. The motivation for the position of interactionist dualism is libertarianism.
2. Life does not arise by chance, not even with a tiny probability, unless there is a system of natural laws that makes it possible. Such a system of laws is very rare, so it is likely that there is someone who created it. I call this the argument from the laws, whereas the argument you are attacking is the argument within the laws.
Discussion on Answer
1. You took that too far. I didn’t say that there are deterministic laws in the spirit. Maybe yes and maybe no.
2. Because additional conditions are required, and they are almost never met anywhere.
That is exactly why I asked to split the questions up: so as not to mix the discussions of both of them.
Okay. So what is your view regarding the influence of the spirit on matter and vice versa? After all, if it isn’t deterministic, then it is necessarily random (since we have no choice over how our mental states are affected by and affect physical states). In other words, when I am sad, how does that affect the matter (my brain)? Do you think psychology has anything to say about these matters—that is, does the possibility of finding such laws even exist at all?
As I wrote, I have no idea, and it doesn’t seem important to me either.
1. Excellent. So if I understood correctly, there is determinism of the spirit over matter that breaks the laws of physics when we are talking about mental states like pain or sadness, but there is no such determinism in one single mental state, namely free will? In other words, there are psychophysical laws, perhaps ones that psychology discovers, and our choice can break those laws just as it can break physical laws, for example by casting a veto (which stops a physical chain somewhere in the middle).
2. So what you’re actually saying is that even if there were countless attempts, as long as the system of laws is not complex enough, life would not arise in any of those countless attempts?
And if that is so, then what is the explanation for the fact that in a system of laws that can create life, like our own system of laws, life arose only on Earth and not on other stars?