It's video time again! Yea!
Here's Peter van Inwagen on the (so-called) mind-body problem. We'll be reading van Inwagen soon enough, so to prepare it might be nice for you to hear him talk through this issue just a bit.
Note particularly his comments on dualism and (more specifically) his brief remarks on whether appealing to theism will help dualism.
So, your task: Talk through what you take to be some of his key claims. Does he make some good points? Can you think of any decent criticisms?
Here's the link: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Why-a-Mind-Body-Problem-Peter-van-Inwagen-/150
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I would have to agree with Van Inwagen that it is not clear, and may never be clear how a material or inmaterial conscience has forces that cause material bodies to act or move.
ReplyDeleteIf I am inmaterial and I, just by thinking can cause this material object that I posses to type this post, then it is probably possible that I can, just by thinking can scoot my chair in when my material object is sitting in it. However it is not happening....wait...nope, still not happening. However if I am material, and I can make these fingers type by acting on them with a material force, it still does not stand that I as a material conscience can scoot my chair in withouht acting on through the material object which I posses. As a material or inmaterial object, in order to scoot my chair in I have to force this material object I posses into action. In either instance it is not clear if I am material or inmaterial.
While looking into a theological viewpoint on this topic, one thing Inwagen did not mention, nor the interviewer was when God breathed life into Adam, and he became conscience. God breathed an inmaterial conscience (so to speak) into Adam. I think if this was brought up into the interview, it may have been more interesting. In contemplating this portion of the text, theism may help dualism.
One thing seemed to stand out to me was that van Inwagen seemed to enjoy the idea that believing in a material conscience was easier than believing in an inmaterial conscience. In other words, he was not wanting to think too deeply ont he subject. That's just my opinion.
Craig Farrell
Peter van Inwagen explains that he himself is a physicalist (aka a mind-body materialist). His primary arguments in favor of this view are more arguments against Cartesian Dualism. For one, he said that the physicalist view does not suffer from the problem of interactionism, as does substance dualism. Second, he says that substance dualism does not solve the problem of consciousness; it just hides the same problem better. He pushes the question – what do people mean by a non-physical property? I think Van Inwagen might have a strong point here. This appeal to an immaterial consciousness seems very vague and rather abstract. If we follow the principle of Ockham’s Razor, then it seems like substance dualists might just be postulating an extra unnecessary and unhelpful solution. I personally am uncomfortable with postulating a reality we can provide no description of: it seems unacceptably vague to simply say it is immaterial.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Van Inwagen, though, I think that a belief in an immaterial God, specifically the Christian God, seems to lend much more probability to a belief in a sort of dualism. Why? God exists. God is conscious. God is immaterial. Therefore, an immaterial thing CAN BE conscious. But, it seems that the sum total of physical parts cannot be conscious; therefore, a material object CAN NOT BE conscious. Therefore, if we assume Christian Theism, I find myself more compelled to accept substance dualism (Personally for me, though, I am not sure I appreciate this general appeal to Christianity, though… For me, if reason leads one way and Scripture leads the other, then this metaphysical point is NOT an intellectual mark in favor of Christianity. On the other hand, if reason leads to the suspension of judgment and scripture leads to a specific conclusion, I don’t find an intellectual difficulty accepting the biblical line. Any thoughts on this statement?)
Final Thought: It seems to me that neither physicalism nor substance dualism can explain what or how consciousness just is. Peter van Inwagen says that he just doesn’t know what/how consciousness is, but he doesn’t think an appeal to substance dualism really helps explain this at all.
---William Kelly---
Where I put conscience I meant conscious...thanks
ReplyDeleteCraig Farrell
I think that one of Peter van Inwage’s main claims is that the soul would violate the law of conservation of energy.
ReplyDeleteIt states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time). A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed from one state to another. The only thing that can happen to energy in a closed system is that it can change form, for instance chemical energy can become kinetic energy,: definition from Wikipedia.
I can think of two ways around this problem. The first is that the theory is just wrong. Those that came up with the theory failed to recognize the soul’s interaction with the body. This is somewhat weak because this theory was most likely discovered by a Christian and they would have believed in a soul. Also what reason do we have to throughout a theory that seems to work.
The second way around the problem is that the world is not a closed system. Soul affect the physical world and by doing so the expend energy, but the soul draw energy from God and God is infinite so he has limitless energy. This allows for the theory to remain and also allows for the soul.
Van Inwagen is a fabulous philosopher, and I've enjoyed him and his work for some time now. His work on the mind-body problem is, so far as I am concerned, par for the course.
ReplyDeleteIn the video, van Inwagen makes some interesting claims about the conservation of energy, as well as claims having to do with immaterial substances and Christian theism. I'm with van Inwagen when he notes that, although a Christian theist should most likely be committed to the possibility and existence of at least SOME immaterial substances, such as God, she need not be committed to thinking that humans are immaterial substances, as well.
Blake H.
van Inwagen sets up the discussion contrasting a Cartesian/Platonic dualism and a materialism or physicalism. He says of the dualistic view that immaterial things have causal relations to material organisms with which they are associated. However, this raises the question: how do they interact? Thus we have the interaction problem. He then points out that an advantage to a materialistic view is that it rids us of the interaction problem. This is quite true.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the question still remains: what of consciousness? The materialist view cannot answer this. His response was something like: it's a mystery, there's no answer. Studying the brain cannot answer this question. And, the posited immaterial substance of the dualist view does not help to answer the problem. To say that consciousness is that which is immaterial (that which is not material) does not help us in the least. As Will said above, using Ockham's razor, we end up with the materialist view.
Another point van Inwagen makes is that dualism faces problems with conservation laws. However, this seems to assume that the universe is a closed system. It seems to me that, well, yeah, maybe it is; but maybe it's not. It's an assumption that we have to make.
Also, van Inwagen said that if God exists and is real, then it follows that an infinite immaterial thinking substance is a possibility, but it does not follow that a finite immaterial thinking substance is a possibility. Is this accurate? It does seem that if God exists as an infinite immaterial thinking substance, that it is certainly possible that the possibility of finite immaterial substances is a possibility. In fact, it seems like it becomes more probable.
For me at this point, it seems like both dualism and materialism have problems. Dualism needs to explain the interaction between immaterial and material and it needs to explain consciousness better. Materialism needs to explain consciouness, period; and they need to do so without appealing to some sort of dualism.
For now, I still lean towards the dualistic view.
- Kaleb M.
Van Inwagen's Christian theism, as others have noted, commits him to the possibility (or the actual existence) of at least one immaterial, conscious being. One might assume that this leaves the dualist position more likely than the materialist, because we can see that there is an immaterial, thinking being - GOD. I don't think that this is necessarily the case, for a couple reasons.
ReplyDeleteVan Inwagen made the claim that he can no more see how immaterial things can have consciousness than how material things can have consciousness. Appealing to God does not help here. Seeing THAT there is a conscious, immaterial being is different than seeing HOW that being can exist. It seems like Van Inwagen can say that the existence of an immaterial, conscious being GOD may even help his argument, assuming the two sides are on par, because this thing GOD that that bears consciousness is just as inexplicable as a material, conscious being HUMAN the thing that he wishes to prove. So if this equally unlikely being GOD exists, an argument against the possibility of HUMAN existence due to the fact that we cannot understand how it could be the case falls flat because GOD exists. In other words, a failure to see how does not imply a failure to see that - and in the case of humans, there are good reasons for thinking that they are in fact purely material beings, not immaterial beings. If this all were the case, then goodbye Leibniz' argument, and with it, part of Plantinga's argument. Any thoughts? This just seems to be a way in which Van Inwagon COULD argue, whether it actually helps or not.
One reason Van Inwagen gave against the dualist position was that of interaction. Van Inwagen's acceptance of the Christian God also does not entail (or at least he doesn't take it to entail) that he then runs into a problem of interaction - how a non-material, conscious being can interact with a physical world. Van Inwagen's answer was that it doesn't! - at least in the manner that dualists would like to use to defend the plausibility of interaction between immaterial and material. So the problem of explaining interaction applies to dualists, but not necessarily even Christian materialists.
Tim.
As a materialist, Van Inwagen believes that human being is the living organism. As in, there is nothing immaterial (not even the mental) about us. While this line of thinking does get rid of the interaction problems often used to argue against dualism, the problem of how to define consciousness creeps in. Van Inwagen admits that the ability of an organism to have thoughts is a "great mystery". Translation: he has to idea how to explain mental properties other than to say they are real because we can distinguish between orange and green, we feel pain, etc. But, to the materialist, the conciousness can't necessarily be called an immaterial thing because there is no way for anyone to look inside the material thing and decide whether it can or cannot produce consciousness.
ReplyDeleteThis is all good and well....and is a convincing argument against dualism because it's true we can't define, in purely human terms, what immaterial is, what the consciousness is, or how the physical and immaterial/mental interact causally without our arguments being fallible.
But Van Inwagen also claims to believe in God. So, what is God but an immaterial thing? What is God's relation to the world? According to Van Inwagen, God does not interact with the world, nor is He part of the world. Rather, God underlies the physical world. What does that mean? What's the point of a God if He's not actively involved in His own creation? What about an afterlife? What happens to us after we die, according to Christian materialists? Another argument against dualism, says Van Inwagen, is that the conservation laws and laws of physics have to be compromised if it is the immaterial that causes the material to move. He says dualists have to believe in the miraculous to cause this kind of interaction. So what if we do? Is he saying God can't and/or doesn't work miracles? This materialist view presents a very limited God, and I'm just not comfortable putting God in this type of box.
Yes, I think both dualistic and monistic theories have their problems (dualism has a problem with interaction, materialism has a problem with defining consciousness), but it's Van Inwagen's view of God and lack of ability to comprehensively define some of the terms he uses that make me want to side with a more dualistic approach to humanity. He says there's no way for us to see inside of the material to decide whether our thoughts are the result of something immaterial or not....well, I say why can't they be? How do we know the consciousness isn't immaterial?
Alyson
Agreed, Tim, on the point that if van Inwagen is right, Leibniz's argument is crap. His point is actually very good: there is nothing about an immaterial substance that necessarily entails consciousness. It seems to me that we tend to attach the idea of consciousness to immaterial substances simply because there is no way for us (as material beings) to interact with such immaterial substances in such a way as to discover their properties. Science extends only to the physical.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew more about physics, so as to be able to better interact with this "conservation of energy argument." A lot of people seem to be claiming that interactionism violates the law of conservation of energy. This violation doesn't seem to be a necessary outcome of interactionism to me, but that's most likely because of my ignorance of science rather than because the argument is shabby.
I did enjoy how van Inwagen insisted that we mustn't draw a bunch of extra implications from accepting just one claim, i.e. "God exists" in no way entails that "human souls exist." Christian dualists (and I think Christians generally) should be called out on this kind of logical leap. If we cannot craft legitimate arguments to defend our traditional viewpoints, but rather rely on logical fallacies, perhaps it's time to reconsider some of those viewpoints. (note, I only said "if"...don't call the doctrine gestapo yet!)
--Faith
Van Inwagen begins by describing and contrasting dualism and physicalism. He claims that physicalism might be the more reasonable way to go as it dodges some of the problems dualists encounter(like how the immaterial interacts and relates to the material). He also says that this would dodge any violation of the Laws of Conservation. Following Kaleb’s lead, this law of physic assumes the universe is a closed system. First though, it is confusing as to why dualism would necessarily violate this law. I’m not sure why the immaterial would necessarily have to ADD or SUBTRACT the amount of energy in the universe. We seem to be assuming a lot there. Or as Kaleb stated, we might think that the universe isn’t a closed system. Although…that leads me to think this would cause problems for the conception that the universe is finite, created. I would think an infinite universe, in which there was no beginning or first mover (such as God), an open system could be possible. But the physics of an open system in a finite world…hmmm…what do you guys think?
ReplyDeleteOne claim(rather gutsy) that Inwagen made was that he doesn’t see why the conscious has to be material. Bravo Van Inwagen! This isn’t to say that he doesn’t believe the existence of immaterial substances is impossible. He seems to make the claim that something immaterial such as God could exist because he is an underlying part of the world rather than a component of the world. That part was kind of weird….
Van Inwagen argues as a materialist. He argues that the unknown factors often labeled as immaterial-consciousness and qualia- are not solved by labeling them immaterial (although they aren’t solved for a materialist). He seems to come to conclusion in an Ockhamistically: we can’t explain all these mysteries, we are finite; it makes more sense to just believe we are material. Believing we are material does not have to deal with interactionism.
ReplyDeleteI guess this video is a bit harder to respond to because it doesn't sign-post it's arguments like the other videos did. I agree with Faith: I wish the terms would have been more defined. But I do think it's an interesting and good point to say that we are finite whereas God is not...I wish I knew what VanInwagen says about the afterlife. uhhhhhh
Van Inwagen’s argument draws on the fact that dualism of mind and body seems incomplete. He relies on materialism because he believes that claiming mental consciousness as an immaterial substance does not help enlighten the mystery of thought. Instead it seems to tack on extra questions. A dualist, according to Van Inwagen, must A: claim that consciousness is immaterial (bringing on the question of what is an immaterial thing?) and B: argue for some sort of causal interrelation between the immaterial mind and the material body. Inwagen shows that this does not seem to be a helpful solution to the problems materialists must face. (Like how do neurons carry emotions and thoughts?)
ReplyDeleteI think his argument is strong in this regard, but I think the interview moved in the proper direction when it asked, “Well, where do we go from here?” It seems as though it is difficult for anyone to properly imagine how the infrastructure of our thoughts relate to the body.
I also want to note that I believe Van Inwagen’s response to whether or not dualism is what is necessary for there to be a God was brilliant and poignant. He shows that all it says is that there is a possibility of an infinite to be immaterial.
- joseph paige
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ReplyDelete>>>>>>>0000
At one point, I feel like Van Inwagen might have misinterpreted something the interviewer asked. It was right after he said something about an immaterial thing being conscious. Van Inwagen basically asks how it is any less problematic to say that an immaterial thing is conscious as opposed to a material thing being conscious. The interviewer responds by saying well, that’s kind of the definition of it; Van Inwagen says no, an immaterial thing by definition is immaterial, not conscious. I feel like what the interviewer was saying was actually that a quality of consciousness is that it is immaterial, not that immaterial things are all necessarily conscious. Anyway, it would have been nice to have him clarify on that. I know that later he mentioned how the idea that consciousness is immaterial only brings more questions into play, such as how the relations work between something which is immaterial and something material. Are our souls simply performing miracles when they supernaturally cause a physical effect?
ReplyDeleteAlso, Van Inwagen makes the point that the generally accepted fact that God is immaterial does not help out a whole lot when justifying dualism, because most dualists are not saying that a soul can exist in a disembodied state, whereas it seems God can.
Olivia