Section 2.5 The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

1. Section 2.5The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts Mind as Quality

2. Property Dualism • Property dualism is the doctrine that mental states have both physical and non-physical properties. • A non-physical property is one that cannot be reduced to or analyzed in terms of a physical property.

3. Primitive Intentionality • A primitive property is one that can’t be reduced to or analyzed in terms of any more basic property. • Mass and charge are primitive properties. • Similarly, qualitative content and intentionality may be primitive properties.

4. Thought Experiment:Jacquette’s Intentionality Test • “Try using the term ‘A’ to refer, first, to the book you are holding, then to the weight of the book in your hands, then to the space it occupies, then to its color.” • You can do this without doing anything else or having different qualia. • So intentionality seems to be a primitive property.

5. Mental Dependence • Some property dualists maintains that mental properties “supervene” on physical ones. • This means that nothing can have a mental property unless it has certain nonmental ones, and those nonmental properties give rise to the mental ones.

6. The Causal Exclusion Problem • The supervenience theory may be inconsistent. It is committed to three principles that seemingly cannot all be true: • The Irreducibility of the Mental • The Causal Efficacy of the Mental • The Causal Closure of the Physical • Which principle is it most plausible to reject?

7. Solving the Causal Exclusion Problem • To give up the irreducibility of the mental is to embrace a reductive theory of the mind like the identity theory or behaviorism. • To give up the causal efficacy of the mental is to embrace epiphenomenalism • To give up the causal closure of the physical is to embrace some sort of downward causation.

8. Emergentism • An emergent property is one that comes into being (emerges) when things which lack that property interact in certain ways. • For example, life is an emergent property that comes into being when certain things that are not alive, like organic molecules, interact in certain ways.

9. Downward Causation • Downward causation occurs when high-level or emergent properties affect low-level basic properties. • Some neurophysiologists believe that mental properties can have a downward causal affect on physical properties.