Q&A: Critiques of Dualism
Critiques of Dualism
Question
Hello and blessings. I’m familiar with your dualist-interactionist position. There are a few objections to this approach that I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on. I’ll mention only 2:
- Violation of the law of conservation of energy — interactionist dualism may break the law of conservation of energy, since one could say that energy is added to a physical system (after all, my pain, for example, causes a certain particle to move, and that means that something spiritual raises the energy level in the physical system). Do you think the law is in fact preserved? I’ll just note that there are other possible forms of dualism that fit with the law of conservation of energy, such as the claim that pain only changes the energy balance (for example, raising the energy in one particle and lowering the energy in another particle, or alternatively raising the energy in one particle and that particle lowers the energy in another particle so that the overall balance is preserved), or the claim that there is “spiritual energy,” and then the law of conservation of energy is treated as a claim that speaks about all energy (including spiritual energy).
- Causality and the absence of location — our mental states are spiritual, meaning they have no spatial dimension. The question that comes up here is why my mental state, for example my sadness, causes things דווקא in my body, for example crying, and not in someone else’s body. In a materialist picture of the world, we could simply say that the connection between my mental states and my body is explained by the fact that they are both states in my body. That is, it is clear why one physical state in my body affects another physical state in my body (and not a physical state in another body): they are simply connected to one another by physical relations. Of course, a simple dualist answer is that there are some relations between my soul and my body that do not exist between my soul and another body. But that answer is circular, since the relations in question between my body and my soul are causal relations, and the question was why the causal relation exists only between my soul and my body.
Thank you!
Answer
- Obviously it’s broken. I didn’t understand why you singled out the law of conservation of energy. All the laws are broken, including Newton’s laws (a particle moves without any physical force acting on it). I discussed this at length in my book The Science of Freedom.
- I don’t understand the question. You assume that the interaction has to be at some spatial point. I don’t see any necessity for that. Maybe you have knowledge I don’t about how spiritual entities operate…
Discussion on Answer
1. In the book I explained that the overall conservation of energy is preserved. A person eats and sleeps and stores energy, and then uses it.
2. I wrote point-specific, not merely spatial. There is a connection between a soul and a particular body. I didn’t understand the question.
1. When you say overall, do you mean ordinary energy in the material world, right? That is, not including some kind of “spiritual” energy.
If so, it is preserved because, as I said, there is input of energy by mental-to-physical causation, and output of energy by physical-to-mental causation?
2. I’ll try to sharpen it — the connection between the soul and the body can be of various kinds. Interactionist dualism claims there is a causal connection between them. The question that comes up here is: how does the causal connection hold specifically between my body and my soul, and not between some other body and my soul? After all, my pain is like someone else’s pain; it’s not something different in kind. So what explains the fact that my pain causes things specifically in my body? As stated, in the physical dimension there is no problem — the explanation for why one neuron causally affects another neuron in my brain and not in another brain is that they are connected by spatial physical relations. In the spiritual dimension, there is no such connection, and therefore the question arises.
1. Correct. But there is no need to assume that the input of energy is by physical-mental causation (that may be true, but there is no need for it here). A person eats and that gives him energy (material energy). He then expends that energy as a result of an instruction from the will. That’s all.
2. You didn’t sharpen anything. That itself is exactly what I already explained. For some reason you assume there is no such connection. But there is.
I’ve exhausted this.
Thanks for the answers. Just one last thing regarding section 1 — you wrote that the total amount of energy in the material world is preserved, but then you brought an example involving food. Shouldn’t the give-and-take of energy be only between the spiritual and the physical, and not within the physical world? After all, if I eat, I’m not really “adding energy” if we look at the energy in the universe, since the material food enters a body that is material and doesn’t leave from there to the soul. As I understand it, energy output has to be from the physical to the mental (for example, neuron firing causes pain), and energy input has to be from the mental to the physical (for example, a desire causes an electron to move).
I don’t see any need for that assumption. Food that is broken down brings energy into the body. Now an instruction comes from the will to the body to run, for example. The energy for the running is taken from the food you ate. I see no reason to assume some transfer to “spiritual energy” or anything like that; quite the opposite. Conservation of energy is a property of the physical world, and there it can be preserved.
1. Yes, it’s clear to me that other laws are broken too. I’m asking about the law of conservation of energy in order to understand something specific about it — does this mean that energy (and thus in effect matter) in the world is constantly increasing? Or perhaps energy enters from the spiritual into the physical, and then it also exits in the transition from the physical to the spiritual (and thus the total amount of energy is relatively preserved)?
2. No, I didn’t assume that at all. On the contrary — since the connection is not spatial (that’s my assumption), I’m asking about its nature. Why do my mental states affect the matter that is my brain, and not the brain that belongs to someone else? Since the interaction is not spatial, how does my soul “choose” to affect specifically certain matter located in a certain place (my brain), and not other matter?