After Physicalism

Chapter 6: Is Materialism Equivalent to Dualism?

180 Is Materialism Equivalent to Dualism? William Hasker Is materialism equivalent to dualism? Clearly not, if the question is taken in its most natural sense, as referring to the entire families of philosophical views known respectively as dualism and materialism. These two are rightly regarded as rival explanations, or types of explanations , of the nature and status of mind and its relationship to the human organism. This does not, however, preclude the possibility that some particular version of materialism should prove to be equivalent, or nearly equivalent, to a particular version of dualism. The burden of this paper is to point out a version of materialism, or quasi-materialism, and a version of dualism for which this is indeed the case. I believe, though I shall not be able fully to argue this here, that the versions in question represent the best versions of their families —that the kind of dualism and the kind of materialism presented here are the best and most credible versions of dualism and materialism respectively. If this is so, the range of plausible choices for a solution to the mind-body problem is narrowed in an interesting way. But even apart from this more ambitious claim, the near-equivalence of the two views should be of considerable interest. 6 Is Materialism Equivalent to Dualism?   181 My procedure will be as follows: I begin by setting out briefly the version of dualism and the version of materialism that are under consideration, with some indication of why each may be deemed superior to its intrafamilial rivals. I will then discuss the objections proponents of each of these views have offered to the other. This will lead in turn to a further development of one of the views, a development which will enable the similarities between them to be displayed. 1. Emergent Dualism The dualistic view to be considered is emergent dualism, a conception I have expounded in Hasker 1999 and other writings.1 (The clearest historical precursor for the view is Karl Popper.)2 According to emergent dualism, the human person originates from a chunk of organized physical stuff; emergence then functions at two different levels. First there are emergent causal powers of the physical stuff: powers that, latent in every grain of sand and drop of water, nevertheless manifest themselves only when the matter is taken up in certain of the extremely complex functional configurations characteristic of animate beings. It is these powers that enable the manifestation of the typical psychic properties of consciousness, sensation, thought, desire and aversion, active choice, and the like. But second, what emerges is not merely powers and activities, but a new substance, one that is not composed of the particles of microphysics. It is this new substance, which is generated and sustained by the biological organism and continually interacts with the organism, which is the subject of conscious awareness and of cognitive and affective states, and is the agent-cause of our free actions. A suggestive analogy to the emergence of the self (it can be no more than that) is found in the generation by a magnet of a magnetic field. The chief competitors of emergent dualism from the dualist family are those views which posit the direct creation of the soul by God: mainly Cartesian-type dualism and some versions of Thomistic dualism. Broadly speaking, views of these sorts have difficulty in giving plausible accounts of the kinds of relationships between the mind/soul and the world of nature that are indicated by the empirical evidence. Cartesian dualism has great difficulty in accounting for the 182  William Hasker souls of nonhuman animals, unless one is content (like Descartes himself) to deny them souls, and thereby any sort of conscious existence at all. Cartesian dualism also has difficulty in accounting for the extremely close dependence of our mental lives on the integrity and functioning of various parts of the brain; certainly this sort of dependence is unexpected given the nature of the “thinking thing” as described by Descartes. Thomistic dualism is arguably better off in this respect, but in making the soul the principle of biological life it is committed to a vitalism which is emphatically rejected by contemporary biology. Neither Cartesian dualism nor Thomistic dualism fits at all comfortably with evolution and the common ancestry of life on earth. But these and related difficulties can only be gestured at here; their full development must be found elsewhere.3 2. Emergentist Materialism The version of materialism to be considered...