Abstract
This paper argues that a certain kind of substance dualism can adopt the ‘Compatibilist’ solution to the problem of causal exclusion. After sketching a non-Cartesian substance dualism akin to E.J. Lowe’s account (e.g. Lowe in Erkenntnis, 65(1), 5-23, 2006, 2008) and considering its shortcomings with respect to mental causation in section one, section two outlines an alternative account of mental causation and argues that this account solves the exclusion problem. Finally, section three considers a challenge to the proposed solution. With the exception of Lowe’s efforts (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 70, 263–76, 1992, 2003, 2006, 2008), very little in defense of substance dualist mental causation is to be found in the recent philosophical literature.
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Notes
The view is articulated further, given additional motivation, applied to other discussions, and compared to competitor theories (e.g. reductive and non-reductive physicalism) in Engelhardt 2015b.
This way of characterizing Cartesian Dualism follows Lowe (Lowe, 2006: 6–7) so as to make perspicuous where Lowe deviates from the Cartesian view.
While the cautious language on the matter of separability throughout Lowe 2006 suggests he wants to leave open the possibility that a self is inseparable from its body, I take his settled view to be represented in the later book Personal Agency (2008). There, he is explicit in accepting self-body distinctness. See, e.g., Lowe 2008: 93 “…the substance dualist additionally holds that the bearers of [mental and physical] properties are distinct…” And, he is explicit in accepting the possibility that a self could exist with a different body than that which embodies it at a time. See, e.g., Ibid 21 “…granted that I need a brain in order to be able to think, I don’t need to have the particular brain that I do have.”
See, for instance, Pereboom (2002).
See Engelhardt 2015a for discussion of how two substances may share a single property or property instance. There, I conclude that if the dualist accepts a states of affairs ontology, as in Armstrong 1997, there is no more difficulty in a single property instance being shared by two substances than in a single substance’s having two properties. The difficulty in understanding how two substances could possibly share a single property instance comes from presupposing an ontology according to which every property instance is metaphysically determined by an instantiating substance. With such an ontology, were two substances to share a single property instance, there would be two things determining the one property instance, each with a claim to fully determining the one instance’s nature. This would be problematic, but where the order of metaphysical explanation between substance and property is different, the problem doesn’t arise. If the property instances associated with an object fully metaphysically determine its nature, as on a bundle theory, then there is nothing confounding about saying that one property instance partly determines the nature of two different substances—just as there is no problem on the more familiar view of saying that one substance determines two properties. Similarly, where states of affairs join property instances and substances and are metaphysically prior to both, there is no reason why one property instance can’t be joined to two different substances in two different states of affairs, just as one substance can be joined to two different properties in two different states of affairs.
Since Bennett (2008) argues that the dualist cannot solve the exclusion problem, I have followed her formulation.
I’d like to thank an anonymous referee for this journal for pointing out to me that my criticism plausibly takes root in the obscurity of the distinction.
I say that the effect isn’t overdetermined, but some may prefer to say that the effect is overdetermined—it just isn’t problematically overdetermined. The difference is merely terminological, and the reasoning here may easily be translated from its present “isn’t overdetermined” idiom into an “isn’t problematically overdetermined” sibling without loss of argumentative force.
Why might it be that self and body share these properties? Insofar as I’m focusing on how dualists might solve the exclusion problem in this paper, I would like to leave it open for different dualists to secure this claim in different ways. One way to do it is to accept that self and body share all physical properties. This is plausibly the position that’s most easily defended. Other ways may turn on the nature of selves or of the embodiment relation, but there isn’t room here to survey the relevant possibilities.
As such, it won’t satisfy Lowe’s commitment that “in order to qualify as a genuine substance in its own right, a self or person must…possess some distinctive and independent causal powers…” (Lowe, 2008: 99) The causal powers here given to minds will not be distinctive or independent. As I see it, mental substance is still deserving of the name because it may be the bearer of other sorts of distinctive and independent properties, e.g. phenomenal properties. (Cf. Zimmerman 2010) That is, this view isn’t reductive because it doesn’t reduce all mental properties to physical properties. Moreover, the reductivist view is incompatible with Lowe’s claim that the self is simple; the present view is compatible with it. For an extended comparison of the present view and reductive physicalism, see Engelhardt 2015b, section 3.
Thanks are due to an anonymous referee for this journal for pushing me to be clear here about how this view is dualist.
Bennett plausibly has property dualism in mind, but prima facie, her concerns generalize to substance dualism—they certainly apply to Cartesian substance dualism.
But not necessarily if—this is a necessary condition; Bennett doesn’t commit to its sufficiency.
Bennett is clear that in endorsing this test, she is not endorsing a counterfactual account of causation—only a counterfactual necessary condition for overdetermination.
One might respond that relation-breaking readings do test the proposed relations—they test whether the relations hold by metaphysical necessity. But this reply wouldn’t carry much force since it wouldn’t give anyone except mereological essentialists reason to think that a baseball and its parts don’t overdetermine their effects. We shouldn’t be forced to choose between the claim that the baseball does overdetermine the window breaking and the claim that the baseball found in the house isn’t the same as the ball that broke the window (since they’re not made of all the same particles).
Again, see Engelhardt 2015a.
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Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank an anonymous referee from this journal for many helpful comments on two drafts of this paper. While writing, I benefitted from extensive conversations with Madeleine Engelhardt, Eleanor Stanford, Amber Engelhardt, Berlynn Engelhardt, Ava Illi, Sage Engelhardt, Amelia Illi, and Winner Engelhardt.
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Engelhardt, J. Interactive, Inclusive Substance Dualism. Philosophia 45, 1149–1165 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9852-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9852-x