Perhaps, minds and brains are separate substances or properties {dualism}.
property
Perhaps, physical objects have non-physical or mental properties, like essence or sense qualities. Perhaps, objects and events have this property in different amounts, levels, or qualities. Perhaps, minds or brains are primary and other secondary. Perhaps, brains are special organs for mind or soul knowledge. Perhaps, brains have reached complex forms that can generate mental states. Perhaps, mind influences brain [Descartes, 1641] [Eccles, 1965] [Eccles, 1977] [Eccles, 1986] [Eccles, 1989] [Eccles, 1994] [Libet, 1993] [Popper and Eccles, 1977].
problems
Dualism has no method to show how mental and physiological substances affect each other deterministically, which all observations require. Dualism does not state why substances have two different property types, or only two property types.
Perhaps, individual mental processes succeed each other and are non-physical, but physical world exists {bundle dualism}.
Perhaps, bodies are extended material substance, and minds are unextended spiritual substance {Cartesian dualism} [Descartes, 1641].
Perhaps, mental ideas and images are copies of physical sense data or objects {epistemological dualism}.
Objective, physical objects and events cannot explain subjective, non-physical states and events {explanatory gap}. Perhaps, subjective, non-physical qualities are irreducible. Concepts used for one cannot be concepts used for the other [Levine, 1983] [Levine, 2001].
explanatory-gap analysis
Perhaps, some physical qualities are subjective and irreducible {explanatory gap analysis}. Perhaps, more knowledge will allow physical connections. Perhaps, more knowledge allows physical connections, but people cannot know them. Perhaps, no connection exists, but reason is only phenomenal concepts. For example, phenomenal concepts are only indexes or are special in another way. However, both physical objects and events and non-physical states and events have states and events, so objective and subjective certainly overlap.
Perhaps, mind and brain are two separate and distinct substances {substance dualism}.
Perhaps, psychological properties depend on physical properties but are not material {non-reductive materialism, dualism}.
Perhaps, mind and body are two aspects of one basic reality, and neither is derivable from the other {double aspect} {property dualism}. Conscious properties are pains, emotions, and sense qualities. Consciousness is not a different substance.
Experiences have perceivable properties or events {experience events} {adverbial theory} {adverbial analysis}. There are no mental objects. Experience only happens in special ways, such as bluely. Appearances present real objects to mind, but they have no qualities.
Brain processes have physical and non-physical properties {attribute theory} {dual-attribute theory}. The non-physical properties make mental processes.
Perhaps, mind and brain are two separate substances, or properties expressed at different levels, which can affect each other, directly or indirectly {interactionism}.
effects
Effects can be one-way or two-way.
levels
Levels have different laws. Organization levels have cause types, which act at that level and control lower-level component motions.
interaction
Components influence whole, or whole influences components. Mind can move brain matter and cause and control neural and chemical events by high-level patterns and processes but not interact with matter at lower levels, just as organisms controls atoms by overall movements, not direct interactions.
problems
Interactionism is untrue, because it has no method for deterministically describing mental functions in terms of physiological functions, or physical functions in terms of mental functions, because only physical things can affect physical things.
Perhaps, neural objects and events and psychophysical objects and events do not have same structures and functions but are necessary and sufficient to each other {logical equivalence, mind theory}.
Perhaps, mind and brain are separate and do not interact but synchronize and work in parallel, because they closely coordinate {parallelism, mind theory}. Laws of God or nature keep them parallel. However, what keeps them parallel can be a third substance.
Perhaps, mind and brain interact through some third object, substance, or function {pluralism, mind theory}, such as God.
How do physical combinations and interactions make unified high-level consciousness {combination problem} [Seager, 1999].
No units of reality have been detected to have mentality or consciousness {no sign problem} [Seager, 1999].
Perhaps, mental and consciousness properties are new physical property types, rather than non-physical properties {not-mental problem} [Seager, 1999].
How do unconscious mental units make consciousness {unconscious mentality problem}, unless units are conscious [Seager, 1999].
Mental and conscious events have no physical or mental effects, because the physical world can have no outside causes {causal closure} {causal completeness}. Mental events that seem to cause have physical causes.
If mental states are not just physical states and can have physical effects, physical changes happen without physical laws. However, physical laws account for all observable physical changes [Seager, 1999]. Therefore, non-physical mental states have no physical effects {causal impotence}. In the pre-established harmony (Leibniz), mind and matter do not affect each other but always synchronize, localize to same place, and correlate in intensity, through God. In epiphenomenalism, matter causes mind {mental smoke}, but mind cannot affect matter. In philosophical zombies, all behavior about conscious experience can happen without consciousness.
The physical world seems to have causal closure, with no cause or effect left for mental or conscious forces or events {completeness problem} {causal completeness problem} {causally complete}. Brain physiology seems able to account for all brain functions and all behavior, so mental states, causes, and effects are unnecessary. Human brain examinations never show evidence of mental forces or states. Mental forces or states never have causes or effects.
Newtonian gravity has action at a distance. Perhaps, complex human-brain structures and functions can make new forces {configurational force} (Broad). However, all physical forces involve contact through exchanged particles, and only properties inherent in matter can cause forces. Mental forces cannot be the right type to influence matter. Quantum-mechanical action-at-a-distance phenomena are not like mental forces or states.
Structural properties can only cause physiological properties {epiphobia} that actually cause physical behavior.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225