A Defense of Non-Reductive Mentality

 

Psycho-Interactional-Substance-Simulations of Eliminative Dualism ($\text{PISSED}$) 

The persistent philosophical conundrum regarding the nature of consciousness and its relation to the physical realm demands a rigorous examination of established frameworks. This essay defends a novel approach, Psycho-Interactional-Substance-Simulations of Eliminative Dualism ($\text{PISSED}$), advocating for a revised substance dualism that necessitates the elimination of purely physicalist accounts of mentality.

I. Defining the Core Conflict: Dualism vs. Monism

The debate concerning consciousness fundamentally involves two major theoretical camps:

A. Dualist Frameworks

Dualism posits that reality comprises two fundamental types of entities.

Substance Dualism (Revised Cartesian): One recognizes matter as a physical substance and the mind as a non-physical substance. One accesses the brain with an X-ray, but one cannot access thoughts themselves by the same means. This non-physicality indicates an ontological separation.

Property Dualism: Matter constitutes a composite with two distinct sets of properties: physical and non-physical. This view entails the challenge of epiphenomenalism (mental processes result from physical events, bearing no causal power) and interactionism (mental and physical substances exert mutual causal influence).

Elemental Property Dualism: This framework carefully distinguishes fundamental properties (e.g., measurements in time, space, mass, force) from irreducible mental properties (e.g., awareness, qualia). This approach maintains that mental properties resist reduction to physical laws and do not merely emerge from them; they possess a foundational, non-contingent status.

B. Materialist Frameworks

Materialism, or physicalism, insists that all that exists possesses a physical nature.

Reductive Materialism (Identity Theory): This view asserts that mental contents, events, and states equal physical matters, possessing numerical identity. Pain, for instance, amounts to a specific firing pattern of C-fibers.

Functionalism: Mental states function as a specific, definable causal role—a computational process realized by material substance. The mind operates as a functional machine.

Eliminative Materialism ($\text{EM}$): $\text{EM}$ rejects the influence of folk psychological concepts (e.g., belief, desire, mind) due to their explanatory failure. Proponents maintain that eliminating these primitive concepts will enable their replacement by a future, coherent neuro-scientific lexicon.

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II. The Incoherence of Materialist Reduction

A robust defense of dualism requires demonstrating the conceptual deficiencies within physicalism.

A. The Argument from Qualia (What-it-is-like)

The most potent challenge to physicalism involves qualia, the subjective, non-physical qualitative essence of experience.

The thought experiment involving Mary, the neuroscientist confined to a black-and-white room, illuminates this deficit:

Premise (I): Mary possesses all the empirical, physical truths ($\text{PT}$) regarding the color red.

Premise (II): Mary does not know what experiencing red involves until she leaves the room.

Conclusion (III): Some knowledge concerning lived-experience (Qualia Truths, $\text{QT}$) does not constitute physical truth or substance. Therefore, physicalism falters.

The relationship between $\text{PT}$ and $\text{QT}$ resists logical entailment:

If physical truths a priori entail qualia truths ($\text{PT}\to \text{QT}$), then Mary should have known red. She did not.

The relationship between $\text{PT}$ and $\text{QT}$ appears neither a priori sufficient nor necessary.

Thus, physicalism, which claims $\text{PT}$ covers all truths, stands as a false model of reality.

B. The Inconsistencies of Eliminative Materialism

$\text{EM}$ attempts to reject folk concepts like 'belief' as incoherent. However, the formulation of this rejection relies on a self-defeating structure:

The advocate of $\text{EM}$ vocalizes the belief that valid beliefs do not exist. This act performs the very mental state it purports to eliminate. The theory requires a prerequisite experience of a language system to explain and prove itself, yet denies the existence of the cognitive content (belief/intention) driving that explanation.

C. The Failure of Identity and Functionalism

Identity Theory ($\text{MT}1$) neglects the possibility of $\text{true}$ or $\text{false}$ propositional attitudes, which can conflict and cause contradictions. If Leibniz's Law holds (if $x=y$, they share all properties), mental events and brain states should possess identical properties. Yet, mental events possess properties (e.g., truth value, intentional content) that brain states lack.

Functionalism ($\text{MT}2$) cannot account for the Inverted Spectrum Argument (two people with identical functional states but inverted qualia) or the Chinese Room Argument, which refutes the claim that mere computation constitutes genuine understanding or consciousness.

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III. The $\text{PISSED}$ Alternative: An Interactionist Framework

The $\text{PISSED}$ framework, interpreted as a Psycho-interactional substance-simulation of emergent dualism, acknowledges the irreducibility of mental phenomena while allowing for a causal connection with the body.

A. Irreducibility and the Mental Reality System

The notion of irreducibility states that reality cannot reduce to fundamental physical matter because language, especially concerning emerging concepts, sometimes remains hidden from our comprehension. New terminology (e.g., a future neuro-scientific term) must first exist as a non-physical form or concept before circulating socially.

Consciousness manifests as an emergent non-physical substance that contains intrinsic qualitative properties (psycho-interactional substances). These properties—encoded visual, audio, tactile, and psycho-developmental memory—resist reduction to physical materials alone.

B. Intentionality and Psycho-Cognitive States

Intentionality, or the property of a mental state directed toward an object, provides the psycho-interactional structure of mental activity.

Intentionality equals having a desire or a belief.

Psycho-cognitive states equal an intention toward achieving or confirming the conditions that satisfy that desire or belief.

Intentional states constitute a simulation organized by a non-physical Mind (or a non-physical substance). This Mental Reality System ($\text{MRS}$), which operates outside the full comprehension of the material world, contains the non-physical proof for the mind's ontological separation.

The $\text{MRS}$ functions as the core of $\text{PISSED}$'s thesis. The dualist framework includes essential qualitative particulars and non-material realities that physicalists neglect.

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Conclusion

Materialism offers an incomplete and ultimately incoherent account of conscious experience, failing to accommodate the epistemic gap of qualia and the logical self-defeat of its eliminative tenets.

The evidence presented supports the necessity of a revised substance dualism. Our mind/consciousness appears non-physical but interacts with the substance constituting our physical bodies. Mental events result from non-physical processes based on substances and corresponding properties that operate within our inner mental reality systems ($\text{MRS}$).

The $\text{PISSED}$ framework thus stands as a viable alternative, maintaining that physicalism constitutes a false simulation that one should eliminate in favor of an explanatory system that accounts for the full spectrum of subjective experience.