The best argument for dualism within philosophy of psychology (and psychiatry) I’ve read is by Mijuskovic (2022), called Metaphysical Dualism, Subjective Idealism, and Existential Loneliness. It is so well written that it made me cry for weeks. But let’s start with O’Leary.
“O’Leary’s proposed distinction that mind problems are caused by brain states correlated with experience, while body problems are caused by brain states not correlated with experience….”
Apparently, O’Leary wants us to believe:
1). Brain states cause mind states in a one-way direction.
2). Brain states cause body states in a one-way direction, independent of phenomenal experience.
This sounds more like eliminativism, as it implicitly rejects mental causation.
If O’Leary were to accept mental causation, she would add that: Mind states can cause brain states (e.g. voluntarily swallowing a medication), or that mind states can cause bodily states (e.g. meditation downregulating the sympathetic nervous system), or atleast some qualifier that they’re reciprocally influential (and leave us the opportunity self-determination!).
When Thomas Fuchs – a monist enactivist – describes dementia, he wants us to believe it is a “whole body” disease. He reveals the forms of mind found in those patients incrementally transition to highly disorganized patterns, and this dis-organization temporally precedes local organ failure, paralysis, coma, and death. Mind stuff breaks down first, then body stuff breaks down secondarily. He concludes it is by virtue of mind losing it’s capacity to organize itself, by way of misguided mental habits (acts in the enactivist sense of the word) or the failure to suitably actualize one’s various mental faculties in a rich and interesting, active life-style in concert with the physical senses, that this in turn literally dis-organizes the organs of body (and brain), top-down. From the whole onto the parts.
Mijuskovic (2022) – a psychoanalytic dualist – also embraces mental causation. But if O’Leary is carefully reading, head my warning the dark and grim outcomes that follow from dualism. Starting with Descartes, he invokes the concept of reflexivity: the capacity for a conscious system, whether physical or not, to turn back onto itself at-will (actively rather than passively). E.g., metacognition, thoughts about thoughts, and transitioning from 1st to 3rd and back to 1st person perspectives in a cyclical loop such that this very act itself literally organizes one’s orientation toward oneself and others. He then argues endlessly for metaphysical dualism, only by later concluding the most basic fact or “principle” of the universe is existential loneliness. That the universe itself is forever lonely, and so, created biological matter in the false hope of finding intimacy with itself; that is by creating embodied beings and ensouled bodies to end this pre-reflective or default sense of loneliness.
The mediating power or “bridge” of this lonely mental universe, then, is reflexivity.
But im afraid he misses the fact that reflexivity itself is a habit, too. For excessive reflexivity can lead to hyper-reflexivity, whereby one becomes so de-personalized from their own body they no longer experience themselves as embodied at all. Much like how psychiatry has historically treated it’s own patients as inanimate physical objects. Hence, the title of his book. Meanwhile, various enactivists warn that hyper-reflexivitiy, which apparently stems from dualistic thinking, is actually the core feature of ipseity disturbance and schizophrenia. Eg, see Parnas, Sass, Maiese, or Stanghellini on this.
The point im trying to make is that dualistic thinking leads to self-alienation, and predicts hyper-reflexivity, a cognitive style that is excessively cognitive and so no longer organ-izes the physical senses themselves into a functioning body either. And if Fuchs' earlier analysis about dementia is correct and generalizable, then dualism apparently also causes premature death.
I find O Leary seems to have a misconception about psychiatric conditions and has a simplistic division of mind problems being related to experience. A basic knowledge of evolutionary biology would show that the brain evolved to adapt to experience so her mind dualism doesn’t fly in this regard
The best argument for dualism within philosophy of psychology (and psychiatry) I’ve read is by Mijuskovic (2022), called Metaphysical Dualism, Subjective Idealism, and Existential Loneliness. It is so well written that it made me cry for weeks. But let’s start with O’Leary.
“O’Leary’s proposed distinction that mind problems are caused by brain states correlated with experience, while body problems are caused by brain states not correlated with experience….”
Apparently, O’Leary wants us to believe:
1). Brain states cause mind states in a one-way direction.
2). Brain states cause body states in a one-way direction, independent of phenomenal experience.
This sounds more like eliminativism, as it implicitly rejects mental causation.
If O’Leary were to accept mental causation, she would add that: Mind states can cause brain states (e.g. voluntarily swallowing a medication), or that mind states can cause bodily states (e.g. meditation downregulating the sympathetic nervous system), or atleast some qualifier that they’re reciprocally influential (and leave us the opportunity self-determination!).
When Thomas Fuchs – a monist enactivist – describes dementia, he wants us to believe it is a “whole body” disease. He reveals the forms of mind found in those patients incrementally transition to highly disorganized patterns, and this dis-organization temporally precedes local organ failure, paralysis, coma, and death. Mind stuff breaks down first, then body stuff breaks down secondarily. He concludes it is by virtue of mind losing it’s capacity to organize itself, by way of misguided mental habits (acts in the enactivist sense of the word) or the failure to suitably actualize one’s various mental faculties in a rich and interesting, active life-style in concert with the physical senses, that this in turn literally dis-organizes the organs of body (and brain), top-down. From the whole onto the parts.
Mijuskovic (2022) – a psychoanalytic dualist – also embraces mental causation. But if O’Leary is carefully reading, head my warning the dark and grim outcomes that follow from dualism. Starting with Descartes, he invokes the concept of reflexivity: the capacity for a conscious system, whether physical or not, to turn back onto itself at-will (actively rather than passively). E.g., metacognition, thoughts about thoughts, and transitioning from 1st to 3rd and back to 1st person perspectives in a cyclical loop such that this very act itself literally organizes one’s orientation toward oneself and others. He then argues endlessly for metaphysical dualism, only by later concluding the most basic fact or “principle” of the universe is existential loneliness. That the universe itself is forever lonely, and so, created biological matter in the false hope of finding intimacy with itself; that is by creating embodied beings and ensouled bodies to end this pre-reflective or default sense of loneliness.
The mediating power or “bridge” of this lonely mental universe, then, is reflexivity.
But im afraid he misses the fact that reflexivity itself is a habit, too. For excessive reflexivity can lead to hyper-reflexivity, whereby one becomes so de-personalized from their own body they no longer experience themselves as embodied at all. Much like how psychiatry has historically treated it’s own patients as inanimate physical objects. Hence, the title of his book. Meanwhile, various enactivists warn that hyper-reflexivitiy, which apparently stems from dualistic thinking, is actually the core feature of ipseity disturbance and schizophrenia. Eg, see Parnas, Sass, Maiese, or Stanghellini on this.
The point im trying to make is that dualistic thinking leads to self-alienation, and predicts hyper-reflexivity, a cognitive style that is excessively cognitive and so no longer organ-izes the physical senses themselves into a functioning body either. And if Fuchs' earlier analysis about dementia is correct and generalizable, then dualism apparently also causes premature death.
I find O Leary seems to have a misconception about psychiatric conditions and has a simplistic division of mind problems being related to experience. A basic knowledge of evolutionary biology would show that the brain evolved to adapt to experience so her mind dualism doesn’t fly in this regard
I like your work, but I cannot understand those discussions to save my life.
Reminds me why I avoid phylosophy like plague. Glad others are doing it, because for me it's really a no-return time investment.