Dualism
The first account of the mental that we looked at was dualism.
Substance Dualism vs. Property Dualism
Dualism in general is the view that the mental is different than the physical.
This view can be divided into two forms:
-
Property dualism is the view that there
are two different kinds of properties: mental properties
and physical properties.
-
Substance dualism, in contrast, is
the view that there are two different kinds of substances:
mental substances and physical substances. (Substance dualism holds that
not only are there different properties, the stuff that bears these
properties are also different.)
(To help understand this, consider a different case. Mass and velocity
are different properties, but one and the same object can have both mass
and velocity. That is, while we might be property dualists about mass and
velocity, we aren't substance dualists about mass and velocity.)
Descartes' Dualism
Descartes was a substance dualist. (As such, we will be mainly discussing
substance dualism, and virtually ignoring property dualism.)
Ryle, whose view we will be looking at later, famously characterized
Descartes view as "The Ghost in the Machine". The mind is supposed to be
completely non-physical, like a ghost, which is connected in some way to
the physical body, the machine.
As we discussed in class, Descartes offered several arguments
for substance dualism.
However, it also leads to various problems
and worries, both epistemological and metaphysical.