Philosophia Christi

Volume 15, Issue 1, 2013

Neuroscience and the Soul: Philosophical Issues

From Biological Naturalism to Emergent Subject Dualism

I argue (1) that Searle’s causal reductive stance about mental causation is unwarranted on evolutionary, logical, and neuroscientific grounds; and (2) that his theory of weak emergence, called biological naturalism, fails to provide a satisfactory account of objectual unity and subject unity. Finally I propose a stronger variety of emergence called emergent subject dualism (ESD) to fill the gaps in Searle’s account, and support ESD on grounds of recent evidence in neuroscience. Hence I show how it is possible, if not also theoretically preferable, to go from Searle’s biological naturalism to emergent subject dualism.