Abstract

The interaction problem – the problem of how mind and body interact – is typically taken to be the most severe problem for mind-body dualism. There are different types of interaction problems: the heterogeneity problem, the problem of the non-spatiality of the mind, the objection from conservation laws and the pairing problem. I review the responses to all of them and find that none of these so-called problems stand scrutiny. Recently, Derek Shiller has presented an intensified version of the pairing problem, the Neural Discernment Problem (NDP). The NDP is the problem how non-physical minds are paired with specific sets of neurons in the brain. I examine the epistemological reading he gives of the problem, which has interactive dualism come out as implausible. Shiller discusses four different responses to the NDP: pairing with spatial relations, pairing with union relations, pairing with intrinsic properties and brute mind- brain causation. Shiller argues that the last three suffer from a lack of parsimony. However, in the grand scheme of the debate around dualism, those parsimony-related worries seem somewhat out of proportion. Moreover, I argue that some of Shiller’s worries can be mended by J.P. Moreland’s recent dualistic account of the soul-body union. The conclusion is that there really is no interaction problem.