9
Dualism and its
Problems
1

The Distinct Substances Problem
The fact that an individual is composed by two distinct
substances runs against all contemporary neuroscience
and cognitive sciences.
It is hard to accept the non-corporeality of the mind.
2

The Causality and Interaction Problem
How can a non-bodily substance cause bodily
movements?
How can our thoughts/desires/… (qua non-extended
substance) cause bodily movements?
Since the mind is space-less how can it influence the
body?
Descartes’ answer is that the soul is united with the
body. Hence the mind/body unison problem.
3
I think that I have clearly established that the part of the body in
which the soul directly exercises its functions is not the heart at
all, or the whole brain. It is rather the innermost part of the
brain, which is a certain very small gland in the middle of the
brain’s substance and above the passage through which the
spirits in the brain’s anterior cavities communicate with
those in its posterior cavities. (Passions 1; CSM I: 340)
A phantom limb shows, according to Descartes, that a
nerve is agitated and goes to the brain producing in the
soul residing in the brain a pain sensation.
4

The Mental-or-Physical Dilemma
Either we are dealing with purely physical (mechanical)
or purely mental events, i.e. the perception of an
incorporeal spirit.
What about psycho-neural phenomena such as vision
which seems to be neither purely physical nor purely
mental?
5

Imagination vs. Perception
They are special modes of thinking (as such they
differ from thinking, willing, doubting, …) insofar as
they requires physiological activity.
The difference between sense-perception and imagination is
really just this, that in sense-perception the images are
imprinted on the brain by external objects which are
actually present, while in the case of imagination the
images are imprinted by the mind without any external
object, and with the windows shut, as it were. (Descartes
Conversation with Burman: 27)
6

Problem:
Sensations such as imagination and perception cannot
be captured by Descartes’ dualism insofar as they are
neither purely physical nor mental.
They’re somewhat between the mental and the physical.
7

‘Trialism’
Descartes recognises tree primitive categories in terms
of what we think about the world: the res cogitans, the res
extensa and the psycho-physical interaction (e.g.
sensations and passions).
The latter is somewhat derivative of the former but it is
nonetheless primitive insofar as it cannot be classified
either as purely mental or purely physical
Cf. the analogy of the mule which derives from a horse
and a donkey and yet it cannot be classified as either
equine or asinine.
8

E.g. hunger has tree aspects:
1. the purely physical events such as the shortage of
nourishment (this would also appear in a zombie or
a comatose individual);
2. the purely mental events such as the qualia-less
judgement such as “my body needs food” and
3. the feeling of hunger (the qualia).

Sense-perception is the property of an embodied being:
thus a non-corporeal being (e.g.: God, angels) lacks it.
9

Even if physicalism is correct, it remains that there are
three distinct ways to characterise a human being:
1. There are his bodily/physical events which do not
require any form of consciousness;
2. There are the thinking events peculiar of languageuser beings (e.g. belief, desires, …).
3. There are the qualia which are conditions/
sensations of the body produced by effect of the
external world and cannot be fully described in
language.
10

Perception and Reality
While reason can tells us about ourselves and our
experiences, our experience does not teach us much
about reality. Sensory-experience does not teach us
what really exists in the things themselves. That is, the
sensory-qualities such as color, taste, etc. (the qualia)
are silent on what external bodies are like in themselves.
But in all these there need be no resemblance between the
idea which the soul conceives and the movement which
causes these ideas. (Optics; CSM 1: 167)
11

Descartes takes our ideas of sensory qualities to be like
internal sensations such as the sensation of pain.
While it makes sense to say that a sensation of pain is
not in the object causing it (e.g. is not in the bullet
hitting one’s leg), it is more difficult to claim that
redness or heat is not in the object causing it.
12

We attribute redness to roses and heat to real objects,
(e.g. roses and radiators).
Descartes rules out this view because of his conception
of causation (the Causal Similarity Principle) that there is
nothing in the effect that is not in the cause, i.e. the
cause is like the effect.
If this is the case a quality like redness (which is in a
rose) could not cause my sensation of redness since the
latter (the qualia) is so different from the former.
13
The creator, God, has chosen that some events are
“marked” in the mind in a specific way, but God could
have chose to mark them in a completely different way
(qualia are arbitrary).
Cases of color qualia-inversion could be invoked in
favour of this idea. It would be harder to think of painsensation as arbitrary, though, for natural selection
would not help one who does not feel pain the way we
actually do (e.g. if sex was painful, reproduction and
thus the survival of the species would be endangered).
14

Essence vs. appearance
Descartes distinguishes between the world as it is (in
itself, i.e. as God does perceives it) and the world as it
appears to us.
This rests on the very idea that there is a subjectivity
involved in our perception of reality. Since God
implanted in us the seeds of truth about the universe,
in our abstract, mathematical concepts we can take
God’s viewpoint and perceive the universe as it is.
15
Chomsky on the Mind/Body
Problem

Chomsky vs. Descartes
Chomsky’s Cartesianism does not mean that he accepts
all the Cartesian views.
Chomsky rejects Descartes view concerning the
privilege access of our own mind. No scientific
study of the mind could accept this thesis (cf.
linguistics).
16

In rejecting Descartes’ mechanism Chomsky rejects the
idea that in order to act one upon each other, things
must be in contact (a dead horse since Newton’s law of
gravitation).
This parallels the rejection of Descartes’ view of matter
or substance.
This in turn entails the rejection of Descartes’
mind/body substance dualism.
17

Once forces such as gravitation (which Descartes
would have characterized as mysterious) enter the real
world there is no reason to exclude mental features
from the physical realm.
Hence there is also no reason to make a coherent
distinction between the physical and the mental.
The mind-body problem should no longer be taken
seriously.
18
The Cartesians observed that certain phenomena of nature
(notably, the normal use of language) did not seem to fall
within the mechanical philosophy, postulating a new principle
to account for them. Given their metaphysics, they
postulated a second substance (res cogitans, mind), for
other reasons as well. Implementation aside, the move was not
unreasonable, in fact, not unlike Newton’s reasoning when he
discovered the inadequacy of the mechanical philosophy.
Postulating of something that lies beyond the mechanical
philosophy gives rise to two tasks: to develop the theory
and to solve the unification problem; in the Cartesian case,
the “mind-body problem.” All of this is normal science; wrong,
but that is also the norm. (Chomsky 2000: 83-4)
The mind-body problem made sense in terms of the
mechanical philosophy that Newton undermined, and has not
been coherently posed since. (Chomsky 2000: 86)
19

Biological Rationalism
No place for a mechanism called “reason” doing
reasoning.
Unlike the syntactic process involved in language
production, reason is not a mechanism with fixed
operations.
As such reason cannot be the subject matter of science
and cannot have a place in a scientific rationalist study
of the mind.
20

Reason can be seen as a human attribute provided by
common sense understanding.
As such it can be seen as something guiding our
(scientific) enterprise; it cannot be the subject of
scientific inquiry.
Reason is a kind of social practice, hence quite
different from linguistics which is more closed to
chemistry and physics.
21

Reasoning
It is a normative process carried out by persons. It is
not confined to a dedicated part of one’s mind/brain.
Reason rests on the domain of human freedom, while
the language faculty does not. The former is normative,
the latter, like vision, is not.
Linguistic processes and vision, unlike reasoning, are
unconscious and cannot be modified by the community.
They are innately configured faculties which operate
automatically and blindly.
22

Philosophical challenge
No science can eliminate persons and their mental life.
No science can eliminate intentionality.
Any correct description and explanation of the human
species and what happens in their head must deal with
persons and their intentions.
23

Chomsky has a dismissive answer.
He does not deny that our understanding of persons
relies upon common sense concepts or that these
understanding can be dismissed.
E.g.: we learn more about people from arts and poetry
than from psychology or philosophy.
24

If the concept of person is found in the domain of
common sense it can be inquired trough arts and
history.
From the common sense viewpoint this inquiry is more
fruitful than an enterprise, such as linguistics or biology,
committed to a formal description.
Science is not suited to the way in which the concept of
a person is dealt with in common sense understanding.
25

Anti-Eliminationism/Reductionism
Common sense concepts have been useful for millennia
and there is no reason they should be eliminated by a
scientific study of the mind/brain.
We have different explanations serving different
purposes.
We cannot make science continuous with common
sense. They are different universes which do not
intrude each other.
26
Suppose I say, “the rock drop from the skies, rolled down the
hill, and hit the ground.” The statement cannot be translated
into the theories that have been developed to describe and
explain the world, nor is there any interesting weaker relation;
the terms belong to different intellectual universes. But no
one takes this to constitute a body-body problem. Nor do the
natural sciences aspire to distinguish this description from the
statement that the rock fell down a crevice, which could be the
same event viewed from a different perspective. (Chomsky 2000:
88)
27

Common Sense Concept of the World
A scientific conception of the world cannot play a role
when we come to apprehend the real world.
A three year old apprehends the real world in much the
same way as a tree year old Greek apprehended it
thousands years ago.
28

The empiricists cannot rely on science (a recent
invention which is constantly changing) to explain how
we commonly apprehend the world.
The sole concept of the physical world that we can
possibly imagine to be unchangeable over time and/or
cultures is the one understood in common sense (folk
physics).
29

The rationalist explains our apprehension of the world
claiming that the basic concepts used to explain the
physical world are innately specified, they are part of a
fixed human nature.
The correct explanation of a fixed common sense
(including folk physics and folk psychology) does not
rely, pace the empiricist’s credo, on scientific
explanations, but in a fixed human nature.
The relevant concepts are provided at birth and need
only an experiential trigger to activate (see poverty of
the stimulus argument).
30

Folk Psychology
It must be convenient across people and time.
And for it to be so convenient we must posit a basic
human nature with fixed concepts and basic needs that
makes the use of these concepts convenient.
Cf. The evolutionary psychology enterprise.
31

This is not an explanation that the empiricist doctrine
welcomes, for according to the latter convenient
concepts can change across time and cultures. And they
must insofar as empiricists claim that they depend on
experience.
In short, how can one explain folk psychology stability
without appealing to stable and universal concepts?
To posit the stability of folk psychology on the fact that
there subsists a similarity across cultures would be a
circular explanation.
32

Chomsky’s Anti-Reductionism
There is no convincing reason to expect that the mental
can be reduced to the physical as currently conceived.
Physics keeps evolving and, thus any reduction the
current/contemporary physics could propose would be
unsatisfactory regarding the physics as it will be
developed in the future (see Lycan 2003. In Chomsky and
His Critics).
33
I have not been concerned with the question of “reduction of
mind to matter,” and do not even understand what the question
is. … I use the term “mind” with no ontological import:
rather, as an informal way of referring to the “study of the
body—specifically the brain—conducted at a certain level
of abstraction. … I also see no reason to question the general
conclusion reached long ago that thought is “a little agitation of
the brain” (Hume) or “a secretion of the brain” that should be
considered no “more wonderful than gravity, a property of
matter” (Darwin) … From this point of view, there is no place
for Lycan’s problem about “reduction of mind to matter.”
(Chomsky 2003. Reply to Lycan: 257-8)
34

Physical vs. Mental
The distinction between mental and physical or material
can have only a descriptive content. It cannot be
scientifically sustained and it has no metaphysical
import.
What does “merely physical” mean? Are “mental things”
the only things that are not “merely physical”? How about
magnets? Stable molecules? Insects? What is the import of
the word “things”? (Chomsky 2003. Reply to Lycan: 259)
35

There is an intrinsic error among materialists who
persist in talking about the difference between the
mental and the physical: they perpetrate a kind of
dualism they aim to reject (see Strawson 2003).
We should turn to experiential vs. non-experiential
terminology.
By “mind,” I mean the mental aspect of the world, with no
concern for defining the notion more closely and no expectation
that we will find some interesting kind of unity or boundaries,
any more than elsewhere; no one cares to sharpen the
boundaries of “the chemical.” (Chomsky 2000: 75)
36
Since the brain, or elements of it, are critically involved in
linguistic and other mental phenomena, we may use the term
“mind”—loosely but adequately—in speaking of the brain,
viewed from a particular perspective developed in the
course of inquiry into certain aspects of human nature and
its manifestation. (Chomsky 2000: 76)
37

Methodological Naturalism
[A] “naturalistic approach” to the mind investigates mental
aspects of the world … seeking to construct intelligible
explanatory theories, with the hope of eventual integration with
the “core” natural sciences. Such “methodological naturalism”
can be counterposed to what might be called “methodological
dualism,” the view that we must abandon scientific rationality
when we study humans “above the neck” (metaphorically
speaking), becoming mystic in this unique domain, imposing
arbitrary stipulations and a priori demands of a sort that would
never be contemplated in the sciences, or in other ways departing
from normal canons of inquiry. (Chomsky 2000: 76)
Naturalistic inquiries onto the mind yield theories about
the brain, its state and properties: UG, for example.
(Chomsky 2000: 103)
38

Physics
Epistemological characterisation:
The domain of the physical is what we come more or
less to understand and hope to assimilate to the core
natural sciences.
Yet we distinguish between physical things that
represent the world from physical things that do not.
We thus seem to rely to some distinctions between the
mental and the physical.
39
For naturalistic inquiry, there is no interest in taking
“mental types” to be non-biological … The computer
analogy can be useful as a stimulus to the imagination, much as
mechanical automata were for seventeenth and eighteenthcentury scientists. (Chomsky; Reply to Lycan: 261)
40

Physicalism
The term “physical” has no definite content.
Thus physicalist thesis turn out to be meaningless, they
lack a definite content (and thus truth-value).
They are not empirical hypothesis and cannot play a
serious role in enquiry.
41
This rests on the fact that there is no a priori conception
of the physical grounded in natural language, folk
science or metaphysics, which provides the required
content.
Given the character of scientific inquiry (in particular in
physics) physicalists cannot hope to identify a definite
meaning for the term “physical” from a consideration
of physical theory.
42

Problems vs. Mysteries
Problems are questions that can be formulates in such a
way that they allows us to proceed with serious inquiry.
Mysteries are problems which cannot be (scientifically)
inquired, because they escape our capacities, i.e. because
we are ill equipped to solve them (e.g.: as a mouse is ill
equipped to deal with prime numbers).
This rests on the limits and power of the human
intellect/mind.
43
Descartes’s dualism was not abandoned because he could
not solve “the interaction problem,” but because his
problem could not be posed; Functionalism did not repair a
meaningful flaw in the Identity Theory… Computational
theories of language, insect navigation, etc., require no Identity
Theory. They are theories about the nature of the organism
(mostly its brain) that have to be judged on their merits as
explanatory theories, like others. Prior to unification with core
physics, chemistry needed no Identity Theory, surely not one
that linked it to the physics of the day, which had to be radically
revised to be unified with chemistry … these lesson apply to the
study of the mental aspects of the world. (Chomsky; Reply to
Lycan: 260-1)
44
[I]t is unknown whether aspects of the theory of mind—
say, questions about consciousness—are problems or
mysteries for humans, though in principle we could
discover the answer, even discover that they are mysteries.
(Chomsky 2000: 83)
45

Dualism
Many problems linked to philosophy of mind/language
are driven by a dualist conception. It is often claimed
that the mental must be characterized in terms of
access to consciousness, awareness, and the like.
Thus faculties like LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
or UG posited by the Chomskian school cannot be
characterized as mental or psychological (see Nagel)
insofar as they escape a subject awareness. They do not
differ from physical properties.
46
Some also claims (see Quine) that one cannot follow
these rules; at best one’s action fits these rules, for we
can talk of rules guiding actions only insofar as they are
consciously applied to cause behaviour.
All these “philosophical” worries rest on an implicit
dualism at work. That is, on the distinction between the
mind and the body and the view that a naturalistic
account remains silent on the nature of the former.
Thus while some philosophers engage themselves in
some form of reductionism and/or eliminativism,
others accept a form of behaviourism.
47
Quine’s behaviorism is a variant of this form of dualism.
He argues that “the behaviorist approach is mandatory” (Quine
1990: 37) for the study of language because, in acquiring
language, “we depend strictly on overt behavior in observable
situations (p. 38). By similar argument, the nutritionist approach
is mandatory in embryology because, in the passage from
embryo to mature state, the organism depends strictly on
nutrition provided from outside; just as linguists must be
behaviorists, so biologist must be nutritionists, restricting
themselves to observation of nutritional inputs. The fallacy in
the latter argument is apparent; the same fallacy undermines the
former. Only radical dualist assumptions allow the matter
even to be discussed. (Chomsky 2000: 101)
48

Cartesian Dualism and its Collapse
[T]he reasons for the collapse of Cartesian dualism are
somewhat misconstrued: as noted, it was the theory of body
that was refuted, leaving no intelligible mind-body
problem, no notion of “physical,” etc. In this realm, we have
only the naturalistic approach: to construct explanatory theory in
whatever terms are appropriate, and to face the unification
problem. Second, it is, for the moment, only a hope that
“neurological terms” are relevant for the unification problem.
Finally, there is no reason to try to define the “mental
vocabulary” of ordinary discourse in a naturalistic
framework, just as no one contemplates that for “physical
vocabulary,” at least in the modern period. (Chomsky 2000:
103)
49