Abstract
Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premises: Kim’s Dictum and the Nowhere Man principle. Kim’s Dictum says that causation requires a spatial relation. Nowhere Man says that souls can’t be in space. By our lights, both premises can be called into question. We’ll begin our evaluation of the argument by pointing out some consequences of Kim’s Dictum. For some, these will be costs. We will then present two defeaters for Kim’s Dictum and a critical analysis of Kim’s case for Nowhere Man. The upshot is that Kim’s argument against substance dualism fails.
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Notes
As Kim acknowledges, the Pairing Argument has its origin in Foster (1991). Kim first developed the argument in his (2001), but we set our sights on his most recent presentation in Kim (2005, pp. 70–92). For recent discussion of the Pairing Argument, see Witmer (2006), Sect. III of Bennett (2007), Plantinga (2007), and Wong (2007).
Ibid., p. 78.
Kim offers a couple reasons against thinking that a psychological relation (such as, thinking about M) could pair between A with M. First, it is difficult to see how the mental state of thinking about M could obtain without presupposing that there is a causal relation between A and M. So the pairing problem remains. Second, he doubts that A could pick out one mental substance from an exactly similar one (a scenario which Kim thinks should be possible if there could be Cartesian souls), unless A were to already bear a pairing relation to the one substance that she did not bear to the other. So, a psychological relation won’t account for pairing.
Kim also considers whether a system of ‘mental space’ analogous to physical space might account for the pairing relation between A and M. Kim finds this proposal to be mysterious. Furthermore, O’Connor (2000) points out that mental space apparently cannot account for why we continually have the same pairings of individual souls to bodies, despite constant relational changes on the physical space. So, without a pairing relation in sight, Kim concludes that it is metaphysically impossible for immaterial substances to be causally related to material bodies.
‘This argument shows that immaterial minds, if they existed, would be incapable of entering into any causal relations.’ Kim (2005, p. 3, emphasis added). See also: ‘The more we think about causation, the clearer becomes our realization that the possibility of causation between distinct objects depends on a shared space-like coordinate system in which these objects are located…’ Ibid., p. 91, emphasis added.
O’Connor (2000) disagrees. He proposes that Kim’s argument would not apply to God since God is supposed to be the unique creator and sustainer of the universe and necessarily so. Thus, there is no need to ask why God should be causally paired with our universe. But put the universe aside. There is still a problem with respect to the possibility that God create a change in a material object: by virtue of what is God, as opposed to some other non-spatial soul, the cause of that change? The Pairing Argument crucially relies on KD, which entails that an entity cannot be the cause of some effect if no spatial relation holds between the cause and effect. Thus, the Pairing Argument is incompatible with theism.
For this same point, see Moreland (2005, p. 468).
See, for example, a model proposed by Smith (2002).
See Baker (2000, Chaps. 2 and 7).
In this situation, C and E may be related by a singular causal relation—a relation that isn’t an instance of a law. But singular causation is not the only logical possibility. It’s logically consistent that they be related by an instance of a ‘haecceitous’ law applying just to C and E. For an explication and defense of singular causation, see Tooley (1997, pp. 89–92).
For example, let A, B, and C be intrinsically similar objects. If there is a .2% chance that A affects B in a certain way whenever B is 2 m from A, then there is also a .2% chance that A effect C in the same way whenever C is 2 m from A. See Wong (2007, pp. 180–181).
How does a soul continue to be related to a certain body? One possibility is that a law dictates that souls causally interact with the parts of whatever structure produced them. A more partisan option is to suppose that God continues to pair mental events with certain physical effects and vice versa. For an elaboration of this possibility, see Plantinga (2007, pp. 132–133).
See Tooley (1997, p. 200).
See Tooley (1990).
We owe this objection to Alvin Plantinga. See also Redhead (1988, pp. 9–23).
Kim (2005. p. 89).
Kim (2005, p. 90).
See Wilson (2006) for an extended defense of this idea, especially her discussion of the ‘No Fundamental Mentality Constraint.’
Kim (2005, p. 90).
Kim might be tempted to reply to this section that while Nowhere Man is, strictly speaking, false, it is a tenet of the sort of substance dualism he was attacking: a Cartesianism according to which souls mustn’t be located in space or extended. Still, note that in Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Kim employs the Pairing Argument to rule out substance dualism simpliciter. See Kim (2005, p. 3).
While the authors of this paper agree on the unsoundness of the Pairing Argument, we don’t agree on substance dualism; one of us is a physicalist (or something near enough). Another of us suspects that souls exist but are spatially extended. And another of us thinks that souls exist but are not spatially situated.
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Acknowledgement
Thanks to Alex Arnold, Tom Crisp, Jaegwon Kim, Rob Koons, Alvin Plantinga, Mike Rea, Alex Skiles and Fritz Warfield for helpful comments and discussion.
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Bailey, A.M., Rasmussen, J. & Van Horn, L. No pairing problem. Philos Stud 154, 349–360 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9555-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9555-7