Property Dualism In Daniel Dennett's Where Am I

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Daniel Dennett’s essay “Where Am I?” tries to argue against dualism. In this essay, Dennett tackles the difference between mind, body, and a person’s identity. Dennett’s views seem to be of empirical monism. In his story, Dennett has his brain removed and preserved in a vat. His body stays alive, and radio transmitters make it so he can still function. Dennett starts to question who “he” is and where he is.
When Dennett first goes to look at his brain, his first thought is that he is outside of the vat, looking at his brain. This confuses him, because Dennett believes that he should think, instead, “Here I am, being suspended in fluids, being stared at by my own eyes.” Puzzled, Dennett starts naming things so it’s easier for him to make sense …show more content…

He then starts wondering about committing a crime in a different state. Where would he be tried? The state where his brain is? Or where he committed the crime? Coming to a third alternative, he suggests that Dennett is …show more content…

Property dualism is an attempt to solve the interaction problem. It suggests that there is one type of stuff, with different properties. Property dualism tries to address the interaction problem by saying that there’s only one type of stuff, with different properties. That doesn’t make sense, though. How could a soul and table be made of the same stuff? How can two things of the same kind act so different? This would also mean that the soul decays as the body does. However, I believe that the soul lives in and acts through the body- and continues to exist forever, can’t be physical because all physical things decay and souls last forever.
Dennett is saying you are where you want to be, which I believe is true. If the situation Dennett proposes were to occur, I believe what he tells us up to a point- that point being that he is where he thinks (or chooses) he is. But I also believe that once the body dies, the soul is done living. The soul can’t just jump around from human to human. Once the human body dies, the soul moves onto to something greater… something that lasts

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