Biological Naturalism

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  • Created by: A. Person
  • Created on: 04-03-15 18:03

Biological Naturalism

Advantages

  • Appears to provide a coherent account of mental causation - the mind, as a biological phenomenon which is causally reducible to brain processes, shares its causal powers with the brain.
  • It provides a synthesis of physicalism and dualism - Searle dismisses materialism because he recognises that you simply cannot reduce the ontologically subjective to the ontologically objective. However he also dismisses dualism because it cannot account for the causal efficacy of mental states.

Disadvantages

  • Can't have it both ways: to claim that the mind is an ordinary biological phenomenon is consistent with materialism. But to argue that it is ontologically irreducible leads to dualism. These views appear to conflict.
  • Property dualism: though Searle argues that consciousness is a systemic property, comparable with solidity or liquidity, the analogy fails. Consciousness will not reduce to the brain because it is ontologically subjective, while the brain is ontologically objective... This means that there is an essential difference between mind & brain, and this is consistent with the property dualist's argument for two distinct metaphysical categories.
  • Epiphenomenalism: If consciousness is irreducible, and therefore non-physical, then, according to the causal closure of the physical, it must be an epiphenomenon (no causal powers).

Evaluation

Unless we radically reassess our understanding of physical/nonphysical (which Searle does ask us to do), Searle's argument seems to fail, because it is indistinguishable from property dualism. Therefore, it seems that biological dualism leads to epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism is so counterintuitive that if it is entailed by biological naturalism, it is reasonable to argue that biological naturalism is false.

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