Of the 166 students on the class roll, 132 submitted papers, and 108 qualified for enhanced grading. I was very lenient in deciding which papers qualified the authors for enhanced grading. 84 students took the first option ("Why I Am Still a Dualist"), and 48 students took the second option ("Why I Am Still Not a Dualist"). This was a higher percentage than usual for the second option.
For the first time in recorded history, no one was casual about "causal."
For the papers that qualified the authors for enhanced grading, the mean was 57. As you can see from the chart above, however, the distribution was not a "bell curve," but had a peak in the 20-30 and 30-40 range.
(Less than half of those who submitted papers included their e-mail addresses at the beginning of the paper and supplied file names as requested. I would never take off points for such omissions, but it did slow processing.)
Overall, the majority of points were lost because the author
(i) wrote as if mediated causation had no significant role in the No Interaction Argument; or
(ii) gave the very bad, question-begging argument (and its immediate relatives) as a reply to the No Interaction Argument; or
(iii) gave a precisely similar, very bad, question-begging argument as a reply to the Problem of Other Minds; or
(iv) offered no alternative to a dualistic meaning rule for "opposites" sentences; or
(v) observed that both the mind and the body were fallible about some of their states and claimed that this similarity ruined Descartes's Argument for Distinctness of Mind and Body.
where many papers offered unfortunate combinations of (i), (ii) and (iii); or (iv) and (v).
If I knew how to do more than I have already done to prevent these five errors, I would have done it.
If, after carefully reviewing "Dualism and Thinking Things," the paper rules and dualist or non-dualist checklist, students are still not able to determine why they lost points where they did, they are welcome to request further clarification from me. I can't promise to reply immediately, but I will reply to questions about paper-grading.
Many who chose either paper option might find study of these books instructive since they offer clear, well-informed guidance on what's involved in constructing non-blind, faith-based responses to a number of important questions:
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Del Ratzsch, Nature, Design and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science (State University of New York Press, 2001)
Both are available in paperback and will be available in DH Hill Library.
Here are some selections from the 132 dualism papers submitted by students in the Spring 2001 PHI 340 Philosophy of Science at NCSU.
I believe that the selections speak for themselves.
Not being a philosophy scholar, this is a bit difficult, so kindly bare with me.
My world is not a delusion and I know that others are also thinking because of simple interactions with others. Unless life is all a hallucination there are many other thinking things other than me. I know this because I am a stable person with no mental illnesses and have lived and interacted with other thinking things since conception.
People believe in Dualism for all sorts of reasons - because it jives with their religion, ...
Bodies have many complex parts and because of this they are acceptable to complications.
I originally accepted dualism out of early environment and blind faith.
If Cartesian Dualism is right about what it means to be a person, which is a body with a soul, then one would not know that there was some-what another "person" inside of them.
I felt that these arguments were well thought out and provided detailed information, but still lacked an essence of irrefutability.
Classically self-evident statements are restricted to the vicinity of your mind.
Since this is important belief against Dualism, we must take it very seriously, and make sure it holds up to every situation/altercation.
I have a (non-physical) soul in addition to having a body. This statement is definitely true and can be proved using objections to this statement.
A related phenomenon is meditated causation. This explains how you could physically move something with out contact with it.
Suppose you blow on your hands and you feel air move over hand. This is the same sensation that you felt every time you have performed this act since you were a baby. Now that you're older and wiser you can explain this sensation more scientifically: the force exerted by you diaphragm moves air out of your mouth and the domiono effect moves all the air molecules around your hand. These molecules push ever so slightly on the sensitive nerves on the surface of your skin and BAM!, you feel air moving over your skin. So in your head you think, as you have for all your existence, "this sensation I feel is the cause of blowing air over my hand."
... if it is possible that minds can exist just anywhere, as it appears to be, then it couldn't help you searching for a mind outside a body. But it would be a good start in wedding out pretenders.
Since there is no interaction in the mind, Cartesian Dualism cannot possibly exist, although, unlike the brain there are several collisions through receptors and electrons.
Granted, ample evidence has been provided to suggest that Cartesian Dualism has lost all its legs to stand on. I shall try my hardest to give it mine.
As you can say that without sufficient evidence I have no reason to believe anything, you can say that without sufficient evidence I have no reason to disbelieve anything. Therefore, I am still a dualist.
The mind acknowledges self-awareness by realizing the basic fact that "I know my mind exists because I am forming these thoughts right now." This is called sophism.
The weakness in this argument comes from its' overall apathy.
Energy comes from biological processes where the body takes in nutrients and uses each particular nutrient for a purpose. If the inflicted eats and their bodies receive all the energy from nutrients the body needs to be active, why is it still highly probable that this person will remain non-active without medication? In cases of severe trauma the mind causes the body to react in numerous ways. The body can freeze up or fall out.
This planet revolves off theories and assumptions.
Descartes himself infused the fifth principle into the theory after realizing that the first four left an incomplete definition of dualism. The first four tenets did not allow for explanation how the non-physical mind and physical body influenced each other in this symbiotic relationship. Anthropology would be nothing more than a pipe dream without this issue being addressed - why does Janet want to slug Sheila, and what would the most appropriate manner to accomplish this task? No one can say Descartes was a fool; ...
... how can the intangible mind interact with the tangible body? This profound question is the precursor to a more unified structure of linear rationality - the No Interaction Argument against Cartesian Dualism: ...
This would seem counterproductive as it retrocedes to the point of ambiguity provided before the implementation of the fifth premise of Cartesian Dualism.
The lump sum of this evidence is contained in a branch of inquiry known as parapsychology.
I know that many women do not eat when their mind tells their body that they are hungry, because they are in fear of their weight.
Even light is photon particles that come into contact with other things to heat them up or to bounce off maybe to an eye to promote vision.
The argument puts out the question 'where are minds located?'
In conclusion, I do not think that Cartesian Dualism is defiantly true.
... don't we control our particles so to speak. I have a certain amount of control over my body. It is not as if my body is simply a object of complex particle causations based on physical properties. I control these causations. And this implies odd as it sounds that the particles act without physical cause. But not without cause altogether. There are other thinking things. I think that we can prove there are other minds.
But irregardless of popular belief, this dual existence, appropriately termed dualism, isn't a simply issue and isn't easily validified.
The first premise simply states the product of Cartesian Dualism in the case where Descartes's theory is correct.
My fear of dying is where I will attempt to refute the No Interaction Argument.
This proves nothing, yet it does prove that I don't know the answer ....
The line of reason I use to refute The Problem of Other Minds can be summarized in this way: If Cartesian Dualism is true, then, for all I know, I am the only thinking thing in the world. To know that I am the only thinking thing in the world I must be crazy, Crazy people, can believe, behave, or think in an absurd way. I believe that I am Infallible, however sometimes I may be mistaken. Therefore, Cartesian Dualism must be true because I want it to be. This line of reasoning however absurd does prove a valuable point. That I know that I am crazy, because I am never wrong in my own mind. This is a cheap excuse for a reason to contradict the Problem of Other Minds. Since I am crazy then I do know that I am the only thinking thing in the world. I am Infallible and therefore not to be held responsible for anything my behavior does wrong.
Many have attacked Descartes' reasoning because of the word "nonphysical."
Finally, we come to the third reply, which is the desperate mystery response, which is indecisive to the point where it does not invoke us to come to a reasonable decision whether this response is true or false.
... causal interaction takes place when particles move around due to an action of one thing and bump into another thing causing the next action. For example, when you have to use the restroom. The urge to go begins in the non-physical, thinking mind telling your body to get up and find a restroom, quickly. Luckily, as humans we were taught at a young age to control our bladders so that we don't wet ourselves, say in the middle of the grocery store. In order to "hold it" there must be an interaction, causal mind you, between the mind and the body. Without this interaction, our bodies would immediately relieve themselves, and that would not be good.
There are three replies often used to refuse this argument.
... what does it matter if we are unable to detect who is thinking or not. Why is it important to know whether I am thinking or not? Is this answer going to change anything? I think that, although we may have no idea, the fact that humans have thinking minds is considered foundational, and therefore, I am not the only thinking thing out there.
My reasoning is this, since, we only know what is physical maybe we cannot observe or even know if a non-causal interaction took place. And if we cannot know that a non-causal interaction did not take place then we cannot say that there are no non-causal interactions.
... what you believe is on your mind, _is_ on your mind, you cannot be wrong about this.
Phrases that we can find an origin for, tell us that they are birthed from a variety of events. These include, but are not limited to, foreign countries, prejudices, superstitions, tales, scientific evidence, and stereotypes.
Consider again the example of me contemplating killing another person. In my mind, I know that this is a wrong thing to do. I think it is safe to say that there are many many other thinking people who also feel the same way. This is evident by the fact that while murder is definitely a problem in the world, it is not an epidemic with people killing each other left and right. This shows that there are many other thinking people in the world, and since those people are not killing each other because their mind tells them it is wrong, this shows that these people indeed have a mind separate from their body that directly affects the actions of their body.
Simply saying "influence" is too indistinguishable.
It is hard to try and recruit people to take this reply because people like to have answers for things. In a world where the bottom line is what is looked at on a financial sheet, and where only the final score is looked at, not the grey area, people want to be sure of things. To tell one that they cannot prove this mystery one way or the other is an insultment to some.
There is a symbiotic relationship between many animals and parasites. A termite has a parasite that lives in its stomach called a Trypanosome. The parasite digests the wood in the stomach of the termite. Both are fed and benefit from the relationship. However, without the parasite to aid digestion the termite would die. One sustains the other, each benefit from the arrangement. Similarly mind and body are separate.
An example of this type of causation would be if you were to blow a piece of paper.
It is the opinion of many due to a lack of knowledge of studies and tests thought of and carried out by philosophers.
Things like drinking and drugs effect how your mind processes the information gathered and it misinterprets it and sends the wrong conclusions back. Simple ideas like what color things are and simple knowledgeable ideas like knowing that you cannot fly are just tossed aside and anything goes.
Simply put, anything that knows about itself and knows what it feels and thinks, and is never wrong about it, cannot be tangible or simple. Since this is difficult to prove, we have to go around it just a bit, and lets say take a computer for example.
I have seen far too much evidence to show how complex our physical brains are, like science shows and such. When we transplant organs, sometimes the person that gets the organ has some memories that the original owner of the organ had.
Classical Self-Evidence (CSE) relates to absolute truth, which is not to be confused with is he telling the truth or is he telling a lie.
Can you prove that right now you are reading these words instead of lying in a comma in some hospital bed dreaming that you are reading these words?
If I believe that my mind sees a blue dog right now, then that is a fact. My mind is seeing a blue dog right now. There is no way that my mind is not seeing a blue dog right now if I think I see a blue dog right now. It impossible for me not to think what I think right now. I can't be wrong about that. Whether or not the blue dog exists is irrelevant to this truth.
If the dualist were to ask me "what (physically) is the mind which you said was a function for the brain's working which you said was a function of the brain which is physical?" I'm not sure I could give an honest response.
The response is vague. It deals with a deep conceptual issue and does not float.
My job is to question everything, even my own beliefs, and these arguments are not invincible to these questions, and my beliefs are not invincible to the frails of common usage.
Many of my fellow classmates try to assume that they are, indeed, true "heartfelt" emotions that are not tied physically to the body whatsoever. This can be further from the truth.
The estut observations brought up are more than valid, and it leaves itself begging for more explanation. By that definition of Cartesian Dualism, it would be a terrible model of the body and mind therfor we need further input.
Imagine walking down a street and a stranger was to come up to you and say the letter "G" and nothing else. How would you grasp that input? Is it a question or a statement? Normally you would not receive the understanding the other individual was trying to convey, without prior knowledge. Supppose the individual was not to speak. Suppose he simplies extends his index finger towards the air while the rest of the fingers were embraced, and he continues to look at you. His arm parrallel to the ground, and his finger perpendicular he is obviously trying to communicate. It would seem rational that you would think to yourself the number one.
You can't leave the number seven home one day but you can write it on a piece of paper. You can't eat the number seven yet you can have seven edible things. The point trying to get across here is that massless things like letters, numbers, and minds can and do exist.
The way in which input is gathered is also effected by the mind considering the emotions at the time. A student trying to study may not gather input as well if they desire going to Florida at the same time.
Descartes emphasized the difference between mind and body with his "Argument for the Distinctiveness of Mind and Body."
The mind gets in touch with the brain by a sort of extrasensory effect, but when the brain needs to contact the mind it is done by interacting causally. This works sort of like the spikes at a parking garage. You can go over them in one direction but you cannot go over them in the other direction. Like riding on a one-way street.
Cartesian Dualism allocates space for other human minds.
The third premise states that it is impossible for a mind to come into conact with a body. Lets talk about amputated limbs. A body part of a person may have been seperated from their entire body because of an accident, or operation. If Jane's left arm was amputated, no longer apart of her body, but in her mind her arm was itching, would illustrate this premise. Jane's mind lead her to believe that her arm is itching but it cannot itch, because it is not there. Illustrating that the mind can not come into contact with the body.
... could mental processes take place in something that simulates mental function but is constructed of potato chips ...? If so, then our idea of mind is not just our brain.
"I think I will pick up that sock." This becomes somewhat of a familiarity that exists between the mind and the body.
Accepting an I don't know for one area of human behavior trickles into other areas of human behavior and soon an I don't know might turn into an I don't even want to know.
For example, a person might say to their self (so nobody else can hear them) "I feel like I am going to kill somebody." It does not matter to anybody that the person thought about killing someone until he kills someone. That is when his non-physical comes into contact with his physical.