Mind and brain: what is the connection? Clinical and philosophical aspects

The analytical review touches on clinical, neurobiological and philosophical problems of the relationship between brain and mind. With regard to the needs of clinical practice, the ontological aspects of consciousness and free will are considered, and some theoretical models of behavioral psychopathology are analyzed. A conclusion is made about the priority in psychiatry of the neurobiological paradigm while maintaining interest in modern forms of interactionist and property dualism.

Toy Models of Top Down Causation

Models in which causation arises from higher level structures as well as from microdynamics may be relevant to unifying quantum theory with classical physics or general relativity. They also give a way of defining a form of panprotopsychist property dualism, in which consciousness and material physics causally affect one another. I describe probabilistic toy models based on cellular automata that illustrate possibilities and difficulties with these ideas.

Powerful Qualities Beyond Identity Theory

Until recently, the powerful qualities view about properties has been effectively identified with the so-called identity theory. Yet, the difficulties that the latter faces (especially concerning the interpretation of its core claim that dispositionality and qualitativity are identical) have led some metaphysicians to propose (at least provisionally) new versions of the powerful qualities view. This paper discusses the prospects of three such versions: the compound view, the higher-order properties theory and the dual aspect account. It is argued that the compound view is in fact property dualism in disguise, while the higher-order properties theory does not by itself provide a metaphysically convincing solution to Armstrong’s dilemma concerning the modal status of the relation between dispositionality and categoricality. Finally, it is argued that it is not clear whether the dual aspect account is distinct from identity theory and pure powerism.

Against Hybridism: Why We Need to Distinguish between Nature and Society, Now More than Ever

It is fashionable to argue that nature and society are obsolete categories. The two, we are told, can no longer be distinguished from one another; continuing loyalty to the ‘binary’ of the natural and the social blinds us to the logic of current ecological crises. This article outlines an argument for the opposite position: now more than ever – particularly in our rapidly warming world – we need to sift out the social components from the natural, if we wish to understand the crises and retain the possibility of intervening in them. Tracing the current of hybridism to the writings of Bruno Latour, this article ends with a critique of the foremost proponent of a hybridism in Marxist garb: Jason W. Moore. Against his theories, it suggests that historical materialism is a form of property dualism that distinguishes between social and natural relations while considering them equally material in substance. That is also the analytical premise of ecological class hatred, the flames of which ecological Marxism seeks to fan.

The Mind-Body Problem in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy: A Review of the Main Approaches

В статье рассматривается современная постановка вопроса о взаимоотношении духовного и телесного начала в человеке и основные варианты его решения в аналитической философии. Прежде всего, субстанциальный дуализм, ведущий начало от Декарта, противопоставляется материалистическому редукционизму (теория тождества и функционализм). Далее обсуждаются более «компромиссные» направления: антиредукционизм и дуализм свойств, в том числе эпифеноменализм. Рассматривается вопрос, насколько мозг может быть уподоблен вычислительной машине (компьютерная метафора сознания). Для каждого решения приводятся ключевые аргументы и контраргументы, оценивается значимость философии сознания для христианской апологетики. Намечается связь современной проблематики с работами русских исследователей начала XX века (Г. И. Челпанов, В. В. Зеньковский). The objective of the article is to review modern approaches to interaction between the mental and the physical in the human person in the analytic philosophy. It starts with the critical comparison between the mind-body dualism, inaugurated by Descartes, and the materialistic reductionism including the identity theory and functionalism. The next step is to discuss some more “compromising” approaches as the antireductionism and the property dualism including the epiphenomenalism. The author discusses the question, to which extent the human brain may be compared to a computer (the computer metaphor). Each solution is supplemented with the key pro and contra arguments, while the mind philosophy is evaluated from the positions of its instrumentality for the Christian apologetics. The author shows the connections between modern approaches and works of the Russian researchers on the early 20th century (G. Chelpanov,V. Zenkovsky).

John Searle’s Naturalism as a Hybrid (Property-Substance) Version of Naturalistic Psychophysical Dualism

The article discusses the relationship between John Searle’s doctrine of naturalism and various forms of materialism and dualism. It is argued that despite Searle’s protestations, his doctrine is not substantially differ- ent from the epiphenomenalistic property dualism, except for the admis- sion, in his later works, of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self. In particular, his recognition that consciousness is unique in having an irreducible first-person ontology makes his disavowal of property du- alism purely verbalistic. As for epiphenomenalism, Searle’s explanation of how consciousness can be efficacious without violating the causal clo- sure of the physical, by analogy with the causal efficacy of the higher level properties of physical objects that are supervenient on the microphysical, confuses causality and constitution (causal and constitutive superve- nience). It is also argued that Searle’s recognition of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self that is responsible for decision-making sits badly both with his (property dualistic) view that conscious mental states are irreducibly first-personal states of the brain (rather than of the self) and with his (epiphenomenalistic) view that consciousness has no causal power in addition to that of the underlying neurobiology.

Dualism

Dualism is the view that mental phenomena are, in some respect, nonphysical. The best-known version is due to Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes argued that, because minds have no spatial properties and physical reality is essentially extended in space, minds are wholly nonphysical. Every human being is accordingly a composite of two objects: a physical body, and a nonphysical object that is that human being’s mind. On a weaker version of dualism, which contemporary thinkers find more acceptable, human beings are physical substances but have mental properties, and those properties are not physical. This view is known as property dualism, or the dual-aspect theory. Several considerations appear to support dualism. Mental phenomena are strikingly different from all others, and the idea that they are nonphysical may explain just how they are distinctive. Moreover, physical reality conforms to laws formulated in strictly mathematical terms. But, because mental phenomena such as thinking, desiring and sensing seem intractable to being described in mathematical terms, it is tempting to conclude that these phenomena are not physical. In addition, many mental states are conscious states – states that we are aware of in a way that seems to be wholly unmediated. And many would argue that, whatever the nature of mental phenomena that are not conscious, consciousness cannot be physical. There are also, however, reasons to resist dualism. People, and other creatures with mental endowments, presumably exist wholly within the natural order, and it is generally held that all natural phenomena are built up from basic physical constituents. Dualism, however, represents the mind as uniquely standing outside this unified physical picture. There is also a difficulty about causal relations between mind and body. Mental events often cause bodily events, as when a desire causes an action, and bodily events often cause mental events, for example in perceiving. But the causal interactions into which physical events enter are governed by laws that connect physical events. So if the mental is not physical, it would be hard to understand how mental events can interact causally with bodily events. For these reasons and others, dualism is, despite various reasons advanced in its support, a theoretically uncomfortable position.

Christian Materialism and the Quest for Human Personhood

This paper offers a critical exploration of philosopher Kevin Corcoran’s proposed Christian Materialism. Corcoran’s constitution view claimsthat we human persons are constituted by our bodies without being identical with the bodies that constitute us. I will critically evaluate this view and argue that Corcoran has not successfully managed to ground a first-person perspective and intentional states in materialism. Moreover, Corcoran’s property dualism about mental states and the idea of the causally efficacy of such states seem incompatible with materialism. Corcoran’s view ofimago Deiis also explored and evaluated. Towards the end of the paper I put forward a brief defense of dualism in light of Corcoran’s critique.