Abstract
This chapter contains a discussion of two frameworks within which the problem of the explanatory gap can be situated: dualism and materialism. The first section shows that these positions are unsatisfactory, both in themselves, and (in particular) with regard to the explanatory gap. This section also shows that many of those who profess to be materialists actually betray their closet dualism when they commit the logical fallacy of vicious reification. The second section illustrates the point with reference to four twentieth-century views in the philosophy of mind. These views—primarily in virtue of the fact that they commit vicious reification—do not contribute towards producing a coherent account of the explanatory gap. In fact, it is not possible to produce such an account.
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Notes
- 1.
“Descartes had enough common sense to acknowledge the two-way interrelationships between mental and physiological functions, and enough intellectual honesty to recognize that he had a problem on his hands” (Wiredu 2004: 202).
- 2.
The only metaphysical relation that can obtain between a thing and itself is identity: other relations, for example, ‘linguistic’ relations, can obtain between a thing and itself (for example, a thing can ‘resemble’ itself, be ‘situated in the same office as’ itself et cetera) only in virtue of how those things are described, by a linguistic agent.
- 3.
Wiredu claims that dualism shares with materialism “the fundamental assumption … that the mind is a substance or [at least] an entity of some kind,” which is “a conceptual inconsistency dear to much Western metaphysics” (2004: 204, my emphasis). This seems to be much the same as the claim that I am making here.
- 4.
This is a fairly ‘shallow’ point: I do not intend to make any deep metaphysical claim about dualism/materialism, but rather to extend Papineau’s point about ‘closet’ dualism. My claim is that it is in virtue of the vicious reification of ‘mind’ that one is able to diagnose ‘closet dualism’: if somebody commits vicious reification with regard to ‘the mind’ (which is to say, if she conceptualizes ‘the mind’ as if it were a ‘thing,’ comparable to material things), that is fairly conclusive evidence that the person must be a (closet) dualist.
- 5.
- 6.
Corcoran agrees: “Searle’s biological naturalism is, despite Searle’s protests to the contrary, a form of dualism” (2001: 307).
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Anderson, J. (2022). The Explanatory Gap. In: Biological Naturalism and the Mind-Body Problem. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99684-0_2
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