Essay On Dualism

The first three perspectives of philosophy of mind are of dualism. They are Cartesian dualism, substance dualism, and property dualism. Cartesian dualism is the view “That mind and body are completely independent of one another and interact causally,” (Vaughn 198). The major flaw of Cartesian dualism is that it is incompatible with science (Vaughn 206). It violates the causal closure of the physical, which affirms a physical cause for every physical effect and that nonphysical or mental causes are excessive (Vaughn 206-207). Substance dualism is the idea “That mind and body consist of two fundamentally different kinds of stuff, or substances,” (Vaughn 198). The major flaw of substance dualism is that it conflicts with the basic law of the conservation

Property dualism is the view “That mental properties are nonphysical properties arising from, but not reducible to, physical properties,” (Vaughn 224). Essentially, the major flaw with property dualism is similar to substance dualism, that is there is no way of creating nonphysical properties that interact with physical properties (Vaugh 220). All three of these perspectives best mesh with the epistemological view of skepticism, that is “The view that we lack knowledge in some fundamental way,” (Vaughn 317). This is because the three dualism perspectives view the mental and physical as distinct, and skepticism accounts for the lack of knowledge in some areas, like the mental in the three

Materialism is the “Doctrine that every object and event in the world is physical,” (Vaughn 198). Materialism has many theories of mind, two of which are logical behaviorism and the identity theory. Logical behaviorism is the “Idea that mental states are dispositions to behave in particular ways in certain circumstances,” (Vaughn 199). A flaw with behaviorism is it believes that mental states have nothing to do with our feelings, in reality mental states have a feel to them. Additionally, it is at odds with our commonsense intuition that mental states often cause behavior (Vaughn 199). The identity theory is the view “That mental states are identical to physical brain states,” (Vaughn 199). The main claim is that mental states are nothing more than brain states, in other words, the mind is the brain (Vaughn 199). The major flaw with the identity theory is that if it is true, then knowing a person’s brain states would allow for knowledge of their mental states, but it is impossible to explain mental states with brain states (Vaughn 200). The other flaw is the thought that a mind could exist in an alien without it having a brain, then there is no connection between mental states and brain states as there is no brain. (Vaughn 200). Both behaviorism and the identity theory mesh together with the epistemological view of rationalism, that is “Through unaided reason we can come to know what the world is like,”