That the mind is a purely physical substance.

In this round, I will defend my arguments for substance dualism against Pro's rebuttals. Then, if I have room, I'll give some kind of conclusion.I. Continuity of identity through changePro essentially agrees with the conclusion of my syllogism, that we are more than the sum of our physical parts. But he denies that the "more" must be a soul. Instead, it is merely consciousness.In his analogy of the marvel characters switching bodies, he says it is the consciousness that determines personal identity. But notice that he makes the parenthetical comment that "characters in the Marvel universe do have souls." These body switchings make no sense otherwise, so his analogy presupposes that their souls are being switched.Mere consciousness is not a sufficient criteria for personal identity for two reasons:1. Under physicalism, all of our mental states are the product of the physical state of our brains. If there were two brains with the exact same physical structure, then they would have the exact same mental states. Yet they would not actually be the same person. For example, if God created an exact duplicate of you, complete with memories and all, the duplicate would not actually be you.2. Not only are our bodies in a constant state of change, but our minds are as well. We forget old things and remember new things, we go from thinking about one thing to thinking about another. We go from sleep to being awake, to being asleep again. And, in the case of people who go into comas and come back out, there are gaps in their conscious life. Yet we maintain our personal identity throughout these changes. So we are not our consciousness. Rather, we are souls who have consciousness. An immaterial soul is the only way to maintain personal continuity through both physical and mental change.II. The indiscernibility of identicalsPro's first premise begs the question against substance dualism. He admits that the premise follows from physicalism.I agree with his second premise, that there are different levels of explanation. But I don't think that is sufficient to account for the different properties had by the mind and the brain.I gave five examples of properties that the mind and the brain do not have in common, showing that they are not the same thing.1. He thinks that exhaustive knowledge of the brain would give us first person access to the mind, but he doesn't substantiate that claim. One need only understand the meaning of "first person" to know that that's impossible. No third person observation of anything can give you first person access to it. If you had first person access to somebody else's thoughts and feelings, they'd be your thoughts and feelings.2. Pro think the ability of thoughts to have intention, which chemicals don't have, is a mere linguistic difference. A thought can be about tomorrow, but it doesn't even make sense to say that chemicals and neurons are about tomorrow. There is no mere linguistic difference.3. Pro claims that the mental image of a green sweater is "processed through the brain as a mental image." If there were an image of a green sweater in the brain, it would be observable to a third person, but it is not. The image exist solely in the mind, so the mind has a property (greeness) that the brain doesn't have.4. Pro merely asserts that emotion has mass and chemical composition. He is probably confusing the cause of emotion with the emotion itself. To attribute mass and chemical composition to emotions is just to misunderstand what emotions are.5. Pro ignores this point and refers the reader to a poll in which philosophical zombies are "Conceivable, but not metaphysically possible". Well truth is not arrived at by counting noses. Besides, what I'm arguing is the exact opposite of philosophical zombies. A philosophical zombie is a thought experiment in which there is a body that behaves exactly like a real person except without a mind. What I'm arguing for is the possibility of a mind existing without a body. If it's even possible, then there is something true about you that is not true about your body.III. Argument from intentional actionPro again begs the question against substance dualism by assuming in his response that mental states are identical to brain states. He also contradicts what he said in his opening, that "Mental events cause physical events" which only makes sense if they are not the same thing. By arguing that mental events are emergent properties, he is committed at least to property dualism. But he contradicts himself here by making mental events and brain events identical. If they are identical, then…B1-->B2…means the same thing as…M1-->M2.But if his supervenient argument is sound, then it would look more like this:B1-->M1-->B2--M2But as I argued in the last round, this scenario is not even possible because under physicalism, there is a closed causal connection between each brain state. The mind just rides on top of it and doesn't cause anything.IV. The argument from reasonPro responds with more unsubstantiated assertions. If our beliefs are to be rational, they must be the product of prior beliefs. For example, my belief that Socrates is a mortal is rational as long as it is the result of my beliefs that all men are moral and that Socrates is a man. But if physicalism is true, then none of my beliefs are the result of other beliefs. Rather, each belief is directly caused by my physical brain state.B1-->the belief that all men are mortal.B2-->the belief that Socrates is a man.B3-->the belief that Socrates is mortal.Since B1-->B2-->B3, there is no room for these mental states to be connected with each other. The sense we have of reasoning through an argument to arrive at a conclusion is just an illusion under physicalism. Physicalism is self-refuting because it undermines the necessary preconditions for rational thought, which means that even the belief in physicalism is not rational.ConclusionI don't think any of Pro's responses to my arguments were adequate to undermine them. Most of his responses begged the question against substance dualism by merely assuming physicalism and asserting that it must be possible to overcome these difficulties. E.g. mental properties MUST be physical properties, because physicalism is true. Pro failed to really grapple with my arguments, and simply negated them with assertions.Thank you for coming to tonight's debate. And thanks again to Pro. It has been interesting.