A Simple Argument against Dualism - The Philosophy Forum
(1) If dualism is true, then mind is not spatio-temporal, and body is spatio-temporal.
(2) If mind is not spatio-temporal, and body is spatio-temporal, then mind and body cannot interact.
(3) Mind and body can interact.
Therefore, (4) dualism is not true.
Spiritual Dualism - Mental substances play a causal role on physical substances, physical substances cannot play a causal role on mental substances.
P1) If spiritual dualism is true, then physical substances cannot play a causal role on mental substances.
P2) Physical substances DO play a causal role on mental substances.
C) Spiritual dualism is false.
Metaphysics | Do we have agency, independence, choice, or responsibility | Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/529327040550143/posts/2354995251316637/
INTERLOCUTOR:
Do we have agency, independence, choice, or responsibility? If we deny that we have any of those things, then we can pretend to be naturalistic determinists (people who think that everything is just the environment and heredity). However, if we say that we do things, or we decide to do things, etc., then we must have free will (in addition to being part of the environment and having a genetic heredity). If there is just some degree of rationality in the world, then that is free will in action. The article seems to be arguing for a kind of pantheistic free will, where independence comes from the necessity of overall structured order, and that is cosmic free will, although, in a system of disembodied will. If in addition, we have personal identity—i.e.: a self—then that free will becomes our own possession, and we then use it to further our own individual rational development. Free will is not an illusion | Alexis Papazoglou » IAI TV
TP:
You can have agency, independence, choice and responsibility, but if you don't control the mechanisms behind the agency, independence, choice and responsibility, then it isn't free.
Argument for No Free Will | TranscendentPhilosop
INTERLOCUTOR:
The control is only ever partial, at best. The environment and heredity are never excluded from their influences as well. Free will means that we have some freedom, or independence, not total freedom, which would just be silly.
TP:
Do you control any of the laws of physics behind your behavior? If you control 0% of the laws of physics behind your behavior, then you have 0% freedom.
INTERLOCUTOR:
I don't need to control the laws of physics, because reality is not the laws of physics; not by themselves alone, anyway.
TP:
What are you controlling if not the laws of physics?
INTERLOCUTOR:
The laws of physics are only a tiny little bit of reality. Descartes' liberty of spontaneity means that we usually assent to reason, but we still have a choice to make.
TP:
What is the reality outside of the laws of physics that can be rationally appealed to as the evidence for free will?
INTERLOCUTOR:
Mental, or abstract reality, for example.
TP:
Mental reality is based on the laws of physics.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Absolute garbage. What is mental is extremely complex. It has nothing to do with what is physical (which is very simple). Get an education!!!
TP:
Evidence that mind is based on the physical structure of the brain and its accompanying laws of physics:
Split-brain experiments - different halves, different consciousness
Synesthesia - errors in DNA materials cause errors in senses
Blind sight - conscious mind damaged, unconscious mind functional
Brain tumor - personality alteration from materials
Brain damage - function of mind impaired by materials
Brain scanning tech - predict contents of the mind based on materials
Brain interface tech - control external devices based on the materials of the mind
Neuron stimulation experiments - electrifying a neuron (material) can activate the neuron's data or function in the mind
Drugs (analgesia) - drug materials alter the function and data processing of the mind
DNA evidence - genetic materials are causally linked to a variety of mental traits and mental diseases
The mere fact that we don't fully understand how the brain produces consciousness doesn't change the fact that we KNOW that the brain DOES produce consciousness.
Your condescending tone is unwarranted and unbecoming of a philosopher.
INTERLOCUTOR:
But the mind is not the brain. Ideas are not material things. They are qualitatively different things. One is physical, but the other is abstract. You cannot get direction, purpose, structure and meaning from just what is physical.
TP:
I never said the mind is equal to the brain. I said, mental reality is based on the laws of physics [which operate on the brain].
INTERLOCUTOR:
No, mental reality is based on mental laws, not physical laws. And in addition, there is social reality, which is based on the laws of people in human communities.
TP:
What are these mental laws? How are these mental laws unconstrained by (free from) physical laws?
INTERLOCUTOR:
Well, for example: the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle and the law of what identity is are fundamentally non-physical.
TP:
If these laws only exist within minds and minds are based on the physical, then these laws are based on the physical.