Dualism: Mental and Physical

Chapter 7 Dualism: Mental and Physical

In an article published in Information Philosophie,1 Tetens asks whether naturalism is “the metaphysical bias of our time.” He emphasizes a “widely dissemi- nated, hegemonic, worldview bias to naturalism” that is hardly questioned anymore. In his radical formulation, it states that everything that exists is fundamentally describable and explainable in the categories of the natural sciences. It is, however, a “stagnating and degenerative research program”; for this reason, it is appropriate to investigate the metaphysical rivals in earnest once again, namely dualism and idealism. This book has from the very beginning worked on the elaboration and jus- tification of such a “metaphysical rival”—a dualism on the basis of transcendental idealism. I explained which Kantian theses should be employed in a number of problems. A central difference to Kantian theory—confining the form of intuition to inner sense, and there to temporal A-determinations— was already mentioned at the beginning of this book. In Kant, the dualism of phenomena and noumena is an implication of his conception of the forms of intuition; the dualism presented here likewise results from what is now valid as form of intuition. It concerns primarily a dualism of process types—there are processes in which temporal becoming is essentially integrated and others that are independent of it. Since it concerns an intuition form of inner sense or self-consciousness, which relates to the mental event in its totality, the processes of the former kind are mental ones. One of the main theses of Kantian transcendental idealism, that the form of intuition of inner sense is an “immediate formal condition a priori of our souls,”2 remains valid. Resulting from this basic dualism is a dualism of concepts; there are concepts that are dependent on this form of intuition due to their content and others that are only formally so because all concepts are a product of mental processes— A-formed and A-free concepts (Chapter 3). This then establishes a dualism of causality types. Mental causation concerns processes of the former kind, since A-formed concepts are essential for explanations. Natural causality, in contrast, concerns processes that are possible independent of temporal becoming (hence already in the block universe). In explanations according to its schema, A-free concepts must be used exclusively. Finally, it is also valid that

1 2013, 3. 2 KrV B 50.

© mentis Verlag, 2020 | doi:10.30965/9783957437396_008 98 7 Dualism: Mental and Physical mental processes can have only the status of appearances. For Kant, due to his conception of the forms of intuition, the physical and the psychical are only appearances. Based on the modification of this conception, this is only valid for mental processes. A dualism of entities could only be assumed insofar as there can also be intuitive references to singular items in the mental domain. There is no ground for a dualism of independent substances, which is already the case in Kantian theory. In the following chapters, these theses are to be further elaborated in the context of current discussions about the mind-body problem. I hope to be able to show that transcendental idealism in the form proposed here is in agree- ment with well-founded empirical research results yet is a good candidate as “metaphysical rival” to the stagnating and degenerative research program of a dogmatic, unrestricted naturalism that is empirically ungrounded. A non-naturalistic metaphysics is concerned with three tasks. First, the irreducibility of the concepts for the mental must be demonstrated, thus it must be shown that these concepts cannot be traced back to natural science concepts in analytical form. Second, it is to show that the mental is not an ineffective component of reality. The possibility of mental causation is not yet given with the irreducibility of the mental, since it is only a matter of a conceptual relation. A naturalistic position is also the so-called non-reductive materialism. Its advocates grant the irreducibility of the mental but maintain the causal closure of the physical. The mental is, according to this conception, not reducible to the physical—wherein lies the non-reductive side of this materialism. Despite this, we are dealing with a naturalistic position, since there is to be no effect of the mental on physical processes. A simultaneously non- reductive and non-naturalistic metaphysics thus also has to prove that mental processes can be causally relevant for physical ones. This problem will be elaborated in the context of the discussion of the problem of freedom in the next chapter. Third, it must also be shown that such a dualism is compatible with a Darwinistic evolution theory. A critic of naturalism like Thomas Nagel would like to show in his book Mind and Cosmos (2012) “why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false” (according to the book’s subtitle). The question arises, though, whether a rational critique of naturalism must have this consequence. Darwinism and transcendental idealism should be able to be rendered as compatible. In Chapter 9, I would like to show that this is the case in the version proposed here. First is the demonstration of the irreducibility of concepts to the mental. The decisive thesis of transcendental idealism to address this question is that the mental has the status of an appearance. It is the result, as stated, of the form of intuition of inner sense being an immediate formal condition a priori