Why I am not a dualist

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 1:208-231 (2021)
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Abstract

I argue that dualism does not help assuage the perceived explanatory failure of physicalism. I begin with the claim that a minimally plausible dualism should only postulate a small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and fundamental psychophysical laws: it should systematize the teeming mess of phenomenal properties and psychophysical correlations. I then argue that it is dialectically odd to think that empirical investigation could not possibly reveal a physicalist explanation of consciousness, and yet can reveal this small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and psychophysical laws. I go on to consider a couple of different forms the dualist's laws could take, and argue that one version makes no progress on the hard problem of consciousness, and the other replaces the hard problem with a different problem that is just as hard.

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Karen Bennett
Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

Metaphysics.Peter Van Inwagen, Meghan Sullivan & Sara Bernstein - 2023 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Replies to Daniel Stoljar, Robert Adams, and Lynne Baker.Derk Pereboom - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3):753-764.
A Defense of Nonreductive Mental Causation.Andrew Russo - 2013 - Dissertation, The University of Oklahoma

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