Jaegwon Kim argues that the “pairing problem” is a serious issue for substance dualism. He thinks that dualism is unintelligible and aims to show that the “pairing problem” explicates this. The conclusion that Kim is presenting is that the mind as an immaterial substance cannot causally interact with physical objects and furthermore, not with anything at all; this renders minds futile thus leaving us the conclusion that substance dualism is also useless. I will be explicating what casual relations are, and the pairing problem to clarify that the pairing problem does render dualism unintelligible. I will further contemplate a possible objection to this position and a possible reply. In conclusion, I agree with Kim’s approach, the pairing problem succeeds in making dualism unintelligible by showing that minds have no way of interacting with physical objects due to the fact that they cannot be rightly paired by cause and effect.
Before attacking what the pairing problem is and what it does to dualism I’d like to comment on what Kim says about casual relations in general. He begins by presenting an argument for physical causation. In this argument two guns are fired A and B and both kill a person X and Y respectively. The question posed is what makes A cause the death of X and B cause the death of Y and not vice versa? This is the notion of pairing, what pairs with what and why? So, Kim thinks that if there is a casual relationship present between two relational properties or events then there is some way of comprehending that we can couple those two properties or events together. He believes that there are two different ways that we can explicate these casual relations between two incidents. The first possible way is to track a ...
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...rect pairing; whether it is the use of direct spatial coordinates or a list of conjoining events these seem to be the only two plausible options. Therefore, we can conclude that to obtain the correct pairing between two events, both objects in such events must be physical in order to have spatial relations. Mind and body do not occupy the same spatial realm and cannot be properly paired so consequently, substance dualism is unintelligible.
Works Cited
Vaught, J. R. (2008). Kim's pairing problem and the viability of substance dualism. (Master's thesis, Georgia State University)Retrieved from http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=philosophy_theses
Oxford University Press. (2014). The oxford dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
Kim, J. (2011). Philosophy of mind. (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Westview Press.
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