Q&A: According to Your Dualistic Approach
According to Your Dualistic Approach
Question
A. According to your dualistic approach, consciousness “rides” on the brain; in other words, you’re adding complexity to the story. Doesn’t that contradict Occam’s razor?
B. What difference does it make, anyway, whether dualism or materialism is true, if at the end of the day human beings will go on behaving the same way? That’s unlike the debate over whether or not God exists, which could have an impact on religious practice.
Answer
A. See here on the site the column about Occam’s razor. That principle decides between two equivalent possibilities when both answer all the difficulties. I adopt a dualist position because, in my view, the materialist picture does not answer the difficulties. It’s roughly like saying: why assume there is both an electric field and a magnetic field? After all, a picture with only an electric field is simpler. It is simpler, but it isn’t correct (it doesn’t fit the facts).
B. There is no practical difference, as I discussed at length in the column devoted to the illusions of determinism. But it does matter for our attitude toward the human being, and for the extent to which we see a person as a different and unique creature who deserves a different moral treatment from other creatures. True, materialists also behave morally, but they are not consistent about it.