Mind Over Matter? (2)

Thankyou to TheSkeptic for his well-thought out round. I apologize beforehand if this round seems lackluster; I have very little time to type it up. I also want to keep my criticism short so Con has space to defend his arguments and attack mine. I have 2 points of attack: ========= Defining physicalism ========= My opponent subscribes to metaphysical physicalism where physcialism is the doctrine that whatever exists can be, in principle, described by the natural science of physics. There is a well-known problem with this method of defining physicalism - it is called Hempel's dilemma. [1] Boiled down, the dilemma states that defining physicalism this way in reference to physics is highly problematic because if you define physicalism in terms of modern physics then that comes to close to an outright refutation of physicalism. Can anyone in their right mind think that modern physics is complete and finished? We don't even know how to reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics yet! I think the answer is a resounding "no". That is the first horn of the dilemma. But the second horn of the dilemma is just as bad! It states that if the physcalist defines physicalism in terms of some future ideal, completed physics then no one knows what what might end up being included in science. For all we know in some ideal physics immaterial, mental things are included in the onotology. This would render physicalism so trivial one would wonder why one would want to a physicalist. One can't very well make an argument for physicalism if no one knows what exactly it is! ========== Non-reductive Physicalism --> Epiphenomenalism ========== Even accepting that a good definition of physicalism can be had there is a looming, difficult problem for Con's version of physicalism. Con's functionalist account of the mind entails non-reductive physicalism. That is the thesis that while mental states are physical they cannot be reduced to physical properties. [2] The issues with this position are numbered below: ----- Mental causation ----- Non-reductive physicalism seems to leave us in the position where, combined with the physicalist supposition of causal closure of the physical world, [3] our mental states never cause anything. This is radically counter-intuitive and some would say incoherent. Because, first of all, physicalism is usually adopted because of the supposed problems that substance dualism has with mental causation - how can a non-physical thing *cause* an action in a physical thing? But it turns out that physicalism has an even worse problem with mental causation. Here I drawn upon Jaegwon Kim's argument against all forms of non-reductive physicalisms. His main argument is this: "The problem of causal exclusion. Consider a case in which a mental event m of mental type M causes a physical event p. (Recall that lower-case letters represent events, upper-case letters represent types or properties.) 1. p has a complete physical cause c. (causal closure of the physical) 2. c causes its effect by virtue of its physical type C. 3. Even if m = c, M ≠ C. (This follows from nonreductionist physicalism, e.g. functionalism. For an identity theorist, of course, M = C.) Therefore, m does not cause p by virtue of its mental type M." [4] The reasoning behind this contention is like this. Some physical event has a physical cause and only a physical cause This physical cause only causes things because it is something physical and with respect to it's specific causal powers and physcial properites. EVEN IF we think that some particualr mental event is identical with some particular physical cause, non-reductive physicalism holds that mental properties are not reducible to physical properties. So then we realize that that particular mental event does not cause any physical event by virtue of it's content. What this means is that if we accept non-reductive physicalism then no mental properties ever causes physical events. Think about how radical that is - what it is saying is the fact that you are in pain from putting your hand on the stove doesn't CAUSE you to withdraw your hand from the stove. In fact it would mean that you couldn't even so much as talk about your mental states! For if your beliefs – including your belief that you are in pain – are physical states of your brain, and mental properties can have no effect whatsoever on anything physical, then whether or not you are really in pain has nothing to do with whether you you are in pain. That seems patently absurd! From this argument we can conclude that non-reductive physcialism leads us to epiphenomenalism. [5] This should be an unacceptable consequence for any philosophy of mind. I now turn it over to Con. I apologize in advance for any unclear things. I typed this in about 30 minutes. ========== Sources ========== [1] http://plato.stanford.edu... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://www.trinity.edu... [5] http://plato.stanford.edu...