The Interaction problem for Dualism
The interaction problem is a problem for Dualism, the view of the mind that humans have two parts, an immaterial mind and the body
I will state it as it follows:
1-The mind and body are two separate substances, and have no shared properties
2-two substances need one shared property to interact
3-the mind and body cannot interact
However, the mind and body do clearly act. Whether you are a materialisti, Idealist or whatever, you most likely believe that your thoughts cause your actions. You need to drop either one or two.
Two can be supported by the fact it has wide confirmation: a hammer and a nail have the property of being physical, and ideas that interact with each other have the property of being ideas. So, one has to be dropped, the mind and the body are not two separate substances
I will state it as it follows:
1-The mind and body are two separate substances, and have no shared properties
2-two substances need one shared property to interact
3-the mind and body cannot interact
However, the mind and body do clearly act. Whether you are a materialisti, Idealist or whatever, you most likely believe that your thoughts cause your actions. You need to drop either one or two.
Two can be supported by the fact it has wide confirmation: a hammer and a nail have the property of being physical, and ideas that interact with each other have the property of being ideas. So, one has to be dropped, the mind and the body are not two separate substances
Comments (37)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11335/substance-dualism-versus-property-dualism-debate/p1
Welcome to TPF, Solaris!
(Btw, great name from a great novel (& 1972 film adaptation))
A Scandal in Bohemia (Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson).
Divine Fallacy!
In both versions it remained unclear what the mechanism was used by Solaris. Lem offered some half-baken, immature, almost childish means, but we can't really blame him. Neutrinos were new and still ghos-tlike. The second version offered a similar proposition, based on physically more recent fantasies. It was shown to us in the so-called objective context of the knowing scientist, but in the heart of the matter and in hindsight this was just a propagand move.
If you disagree, then point us to the material of the mind? :snicker:
The OP lays out the problem of substance dualism well enough. I agree that it is obvious that mind and matter interact.
The problem with property dualism is that it appears to me that there are much more than just two properties, and that asserting that mind is a property has just as many issues as asserting that matter is a property. There are properties of size, mass, location, time, dimension, color, shape, temperature, etc.
all of which exist in some form or another in the mind and in the world. For instance, temperature can be the property of internal energy within a physical system or the feeling of hot or cold in a mental system. One might point to this as the nature of property dualism but science seems to inform us that mind has only just recently come into existence in a universe that has been only physical for most of its existence. So mind is really just an outcome of complex physical interactions. For property dualism to be valid there must have been some aspect of mind that has existed since the beginning with the physical, but what would that even look like? Why do physicists only describe physical properties and interactions when explaining the Big Bang? What are the mental properties of the Big Bang?
It also seems to be, at least slightly, anthropomorphic to assert mind as being a fundamental property of the universe.
My view is that the universe is not physical or mental. It is a process. All physical states and mental states are processes. Objects are really the outcome of mental processes in how minds objectify external processes. Think of how a computer can translate an analog signal into a digital signal. In this view brains are the mental representations (representation is a process) of other minds (processes).
substances are the foundational or fundamental entities of reality.so if you believe that there are two fundamental entities of reality, mind and physical, then the argument is aimed at that.
Quoting Solaris
Is "fundamental" a property of all substances? Why or why not?
What is it about the property, "fundamental", that prevents two substances from interacting? If two substances (mind and physical) both share the property of being "fundamental" then why couldn't they interact?
A substance is fundamental if everything else is made up by it. So if you believe that everything that exists is made up of mind, and matter at the most fundemental layer, then mind is fundemental and matter is also fundemental.
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If you believe that they are both fundamental, then they cannot be made up of the same thing(s) otherwise that thing would be the fundemental thing, that grounds all of reality.
A medal can have two sides. One fundamental can have two properties. For example, an elementary particle can have charge (content).
As Hume said, the mind is a heap of perceptions.
That is the conclusion of the Enformationism thesis. The "stuff" or "substance" in this case is what Aristotle defined as the "form" or "essence" of a thing. On the leading edge of modern science, that essential something is now identified with Integrated (unified) Information (power to enform). In that case, there is no interaction problem, only an integration function. Just as Water & Ice are different forms of the same thing, Matter & Mind are functional forms of Energy. :nerd:
Substance :
Aristotle acknowledges that there are three candidates for being called substance, and that all three are substance in some sense or to some degree. First, there is matter, second, form and third, the composite of form and matter.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/
An integration of integrated information theory with fundamental physics :
IIT considers consciousness to be an intrinsic property of matter, as fundamental as mass, charge or energy.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00063/full
Is ‘Information’ Fundamental for a Scientific Theory of Consciousness? :
In his proposed conception of the world, information is truly fundamental and is comprised of dual aspects—corresponding to the physical and the phenomenal features of the world.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5777-9_21
Is Information Fundamental? :
Could information be the most basic building block of reality?
https://www.closertotruth.com/series/information-fundamental
Shape shifting Information :
Information is the power to enform, to create, to cause change, to convey meaning. It's the essence of human consciousness & awareness. Therefore, it plays various roles in different contexts.
BothAnd Blog post 123
The systems of the body interwoven with the systems of the brain. I think the resolution is to refer to such a reality, as "mind-body" just like scientists refer to particles and waves as "wave-particles."
"The Cannon-Bard theory states that the lower part of the brain, also called the thalamus, controls your experience of emotion. At the same time, the higher part of the brain, also called the cortex, controls the expression of emotion. It is believed that these two parts of the brain react simultaneously." - Google: The Canon-Bard Theory.
Objects can cause events. Events are different in kind to objects. Thus clearly different kinds of existence - events and objects - can causally interact.
That example doesn't beg the question against anyone.
Regardless of your materialist or immaterialist commitments, you have to accept that objects cause events.
Thus we have independent evidence - proof, no less - that different kinds of existence can causally interact.
Thus there is no reason to suppose that minds would be unable causally to interact with material if they turn out to be radically different kinds of existence.
The monist can ask "what is gained in saying that there are multiple properties that are so different such that they are incompatible? Would we say that the "hearing capacity" is ontologically distinct from the "seeing capacity"? This isn't an ontological matter, but an epistemic one.
The pluralist can ask "what's the point in trying to categorize all these different properties under one heading, when so many properties are obviously different from each other?" The hearing capacity is radically different from the seeing capacity: there is an unexplainable interaction happening here.
However, to single out mind over, say, gravity or electromagnetism, is anthropomorphic. While it is true that without experience we wouldn't be able to discover anything about nature, the same would be true if the world lacked gravity: we would not exist.
Having said this, I prefer monism. We simply do not understand how experience and matter (and much else) could be compatible with one another, yet they are.
1. Interactions between different fundemental forces in physics. E.g. how do the strong force, electromagnetism/the weak force, and gravity give rise to unified systems despite their unique mechanisms of action? Do we assume they are all unified into one force at extreme levels of energy or are they truly separate things that have bridge relationships between them?
2. The interaction between the signal and the receiver in information theoretic descriptions of reality? We have a blurry line between the two. For example, in neuroscience a neuron that is the interpretant of a given signal is itself just part of an entire pattern of neuronal activation that acts as a signal for some other larger neuronal system to interpret. The process of sight alone involves seemingly endless cycles of interpentants becoming themselves just signals for an interpretant that exists at a higher level of organization, a system whose interpretation is itself a signal for some other system... and so on. We can mathematically model communications, but only with some form of this signal/signified/interpretant triad in place.
3. The past, present, and future. These seem like distinct types. How do we believe these interact? Or do they interact? Maybe that a bad way to think about it and all three have always existed?
4. How do weather systems, with their patterns and types, emerge from Earth's chemistry? Why is the weather so incredibly difficult to predict in comparison to the movements of objects with many times the mass of the Earth.
5. How does life emerge from chemistry?
6. Subjective and objective things. Why does it appear that the universe has two very different types of things, the things of first person subjective experience and the world of objective, "things as they are for themselves?" I put this last because it's a very similar question, but it doesn't presuppose a necessary difference or bifructation. Obviously this is an apparent difference, or else this wouldn't have become arguably the dominant question in philosophy. But if they both emerge from one thing, how do they interact to do so?
If we have an idea of how we think the first five work, or other similar examples, then maybe that helps us with thinking about how the sixth question can be answered.
We can just use the answer "emergence," for all of these, but I don't think that's a particularly good answer. I'm not sure if emergence, as the term is generally understood, even applies for the interactions listed in #1 - #3, which is why I am skeptical that it is actually a good explanation for #6 by itself.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Consider that in the very simplest life-forms, characteristics emerge which are not discernable in any inorganic process. In all life-forms, there is the ability to seek homeostasis, to maintain a state of equilibrium whilst exchanging both nutrients and information with the environment, and to heal, grow, reproduce and evolve. Living things, as I've learned from Apokrisis, embody a semiotic dimension at the most fundamental level - which is what differentiates them from anything in the inorganic domain (including crystals or other repeating inorganic structures; see this reference, which suggest, among other things, that the origin or source of whatever this is, is formally unknowable in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecideable.)
So, isn't it feasible to consider that the 'interaction problem' manifests in at least a rudimentary form right at the origin of life itself? And further, that this is another aspect of the problem of comprehending the nature of subjective experience from an external perspective (referred to as 'the hard problem of consciousness'?)
I maintain the problem of understanding the nature of mind is that we're never outside of it - it's never something that appears to us as an object, whereas that is precisely what all of the objects of the natural sciences do. To bring something within the domain of natural science is to objectify it. The problem with Descartes' model of res cogitans is that it lead to the conception of the mind as a potential object of analysis, as some existent thing (after all, 'res' means 'thing'). But no such 'thing' can ever be demonstrated to objectively exist - hence the ridicule heaped on dualism and the 'interaction problem', derided as the ghost in the machine by analytical philosophy, all of which grows out of a grotesquely mistaken caricature of the nature of life and mind in the first place.
To understand this approach requires a different perspective - not a different conceptual framework but a different stance or attitude towards it, which we see emerging in enactivism and 'embodied cognition'.
Can't we be Kantian about it and say that what we're observing is the mechanics of the mind?
If so, I would point to the Zodiac (don't throw anything at me, please), not for reading horoscopes, but to analyze the geometry.
For instance, there are cardinal signs that form a square. There are other groups called trines, which form triangles. Opposing signs are interesting because they're entirely separated. The only mingling is through the trines and squares. And it goes on and on, sort of endlessly.
Do you think that this semiotic dimension that all living things possess emerged from nothing, or was it enfolded somehow into the fabric of the Universe?
It seems to me a problem very specific to post-Enlightenment culture, in some ways, because of the way that science has ostensibly replaced religion. There's a tendency to try and identify an origin which is commensurable with the idea of a creating God, but which can be understood naturalistically. I'm sceptical about that, but I'm not advocating for any form of intelligent design, either. But I do think that as a matter of definition it is something outside the domain of natural science.
Quoting Wayfarer
Regarding the semiosis/matter interface. A new distinction is being introduced to quantum theory: superradiance vs. subradiance. The external regions of complex macromolecules are superradiant, meaning they reemit more light energy upon absorption, while internal regions are subradiant, meaning they store absorbed energy more readily in a sort of endothermic coherence (as I understand it). Most of a molecule's functional components are located in the superradiant region or around the boundary.
In a purely photonic field (assessed with computer simulations, probably an idealized model derived from statistical compiling of experimental data), energy is dissipated by emission at an accelerating rate, with energy swirling around the subradiant domain while a sort of emission inertia happens, until the subradiant field rapidly shrinks to multiple small domains and then a single point.
In a macromolecule, I'm thinking that rate of emission vs. rate of absorption might be equilibrated by structure of the superradiant/subradiant divide, causing cooccurring emission and absorption to avoid reaching the tipping point where dissipation accelerates rapidly enough to dissolve the atomic energy field's cohesion, making biomolecules such as proteins a sort of perpetual motion entropy/enthalpy machine akin to an ecosystem.
I don't really know much about it yet, but your posts reminded me that what you're calling semiosis might soon be proven intrinsic to matter at very basic levels of emergence, simply by way of discerning inanimate mechanisms involved. So the issue could turn out to be decidable. Perhaps this equilibrium even emerges fractally, at a wide range of scales, so that the entire universe obeys the same energy flow distribution principles as an organism and might be living in a sense that we could aptly define as biological. If you want to research this and tell me what you find, I'd be interested.
Anyhow, a monistic dualism as stable equilibrium in superradiant vs. subradiant energy flow might be fundamental to life and render the universe a kind of organism.
A materialist proof for the existence of God would be wild.
Ghosts don't exist. Yet, when all alone in an empty house on a dark, stormy night we experience fear, cold sweats, palpitations, dry mouths, a lump in the throat, trembling, weak knees, and even pant-wetting. Is this causation? How can something that doesn't exist cause anything? Perhaps we assume ghosts exist, but then an assumption is many steps removed from truth/reality/fact!
Wouldn't a materialist proof for the existence of God would equate to panpsychism?
I think Aristotle's proof is amenable to materialism. I don't think materialism as we understand it existed back then.
I suppose materialism would then be closer to panpsychism than physicalism, which works for me. Subtleties might exist that mean atoms aren't perceiving, only emergent structures, though at very basic levels of emergence. That's the view I subscribe to, called panprotopsychism.