Materialism does have some very strong argument. Physically if there was a mental state, this would violate physical laws such as the conservation of energy. Biologically if we are evolved beings all determined from one event how did an external force cause a mental state and how would we have developed it? There are also interesting examples such as that of Phineas Gage, an American rail-road constructor who lost part of his brain in an accident. By the account of his doctor many mental qualities of Gage were affected. David Eagleman points to the example of a man who had paedophiliac tendencies but these tendencies were only present when he had a tumour growing in his brain. How does this affect the argument against dualism? Well how can a change in physical state affect mental state unless it was all physical matter (this particularly hinders the substance dualist). However perhaps most often used is the argument from simplicity using OccamÊs razor, philosophers have pointed out that there is no point creating dualism to explain brain states when it takes more assumptions than dualism. In short all materialists would argue that all experience have physical, and only physical aspects and that Mary seeing red is just photons entering the retina and causing a new neuronal pattern to happen. Nevertheless the crunch point between the two sides is the causal problem. A dualist must find some way of explaining that when Mary sees red the mental sensation causes her to say ÂwowÊ. It must explain how there is a causal link between the mental and physical. This from a philosophical point is very hard to do. The only way a dualist can get around this is by adhering to interactionism. Interactionism is a common sense way of linking the physical and mental. Take this example: a little boy hurts himself (physical) causing him pain (mental) and so he screams (physical) causing a parent to feel fear (mental) and so hug him (physical).
Parallelism is the odd idea that mental and physical properties have pre-established harmony, and when someone experiences a feeling e.g. being thirsty, the physical action to satisfy this e.g. drinking some water, is not determined by that mental state but by some sort of pre-established harmony. Make of that what you will. The other key idea is materialism. This is closely related to physicalism and states that every mental state is caused by a physical state e.g. the neurons in the hippocampus causing memory. Thus there is no mental matter or mental properties: simply physical matter and physical properties. *David Chalmers recently did a thought experiment based on the film ÂThe MatrixÊ. It started with the assertion that our brains were plugged into a computer which was simulating the world around us. Thus what could we be certain of? Well, in short only our mental capacity as we can doubt our existence. This can be a powerful argument for dualism as it states we can only be assured of our mental properties and not our physical properties. Thus how can our physical state affect our mental state? MaryÊs example poses a slightly more difficult question for materialists: that the experience of seeing red cannot be experienced until seeing red regardless of knowing all about seeing red. Materialists, such as Daniel Dennett, reply to this that there is a difference between experiencing ÂredÊ and Âseeing redÊ and that Âseeing redÊ is just a change in a certain cortex of the brain. They also upend MaryÊs example to reiterate the causal problem; that if she had the mental experience of seeing red, then how did that mental property cause her to react physically to that experience? This has been the main argument against dualism since inception (we will look at this in more detail later).
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