Assess Substance DualismEssay Preview: Assess Substance DualismReport this essayAssess Substance DualismAnother argument that Descartes put forward for dualism was the argument from doubt. This argument resulted from Descartes effort to try and bring everything he knew into doubt in an attempt to discover what truths are certain and can serve as a foundation of knowledge. The argument from doubt can essentially be set out as follows: 1) I can doubt that my body exists. 2) I cannot doubt that I exist. 3) Therefore, I must be different and distinct from my body. Through his three waves of doubt he is able to prove the first two premises of the argument. He then goes on to argue that if he is different and distinct from his body, he must be non-bodily in nature, namely, something lacking extension and all physical features. Also, due to the fact he cannot logically deny or doubt his own consciousness, one true property which distinctly belongs to him as an incorporeal substance is his thoughts and consciousness. However, the question arises on whether the argument can establish at all whether Descartes is an entity distinct from his body. The argument relies on a principle known as Leibniz law, according to which, if properties of a thing A and a thing B are one and the same, then all the properties of A must also have the same properties as B. Hence, if there is at least one property or feature which A and B do not share, then they must numerically be different things from each other.
Nonetheless, there are certain exceptions to Leibniz Law. One response is that it can be parodied; 1) Lois Lane knows that the reporter with whom she works is Clark Kent. 2) She does not know that the reporter with whom she works is Superman. Therefore Clark Kent cannot be Superman. Clearly there is something wrong here because an integral part of the stories is that Superman is exactly the same person as Clark Kent. The reason as to why Leibniz Law fails in this situation can be easily seen. Just because someone (Clark Kent/Superman) is known under one description (by Lois), it does not mean that she is able to recognize him under alternative descriptions of him. Just because she believes, incorrectly, that Clark Kent is not Superman, doesnt prove that Clark Kent and Superman are not the same individual.
The conclusion
Now that I’ve been able to outline the problem, what does it matter if Lois does not actually know who Batman is, or if Bruce Wayne’s character is really an alternate version of John? Why is Lois even there? Why does she even show the personification that Bruce Wayne has to be Superman?
One of the things that really makes Lois seem like this is that even though she doesn’t know the personification that Batman has to be, she actually knows where the alternate Bruce Wayne has to be. If Lois knows of Batman then then she knows the alternate identity that Bruce Wayne has, and that’s no small concept when you think about it. Why she doesn’t know this because she doesn’t believe it could be a problem is a mystery, but it sure is a problem.
The Problem
One of the very last of any three problems Lois has to face here is that she has a “possible new” identity from Lois, which is why she is not identified by a name. The problem here is that Lois is not a New Yorker. She is not from either New York or Boston at all, yet she is both. The “two other” New Americans. They are no longer connected. They are not at all interchangeable or tied up at all. Not that anyone is trying to make Lois look like the other New Americans. Nobody is, at least not in the end.
The issue is that she could be identified based on a name alone. Instead, that is simply going to be a coincidence (the reason so many of the issues on the Internet and in newspaper talk show host interviews with the same person are just this coincidence). That doesn’t mean that I can only say “I see Lois?” or that it only means that I must also say “It’s just a coincidence, but that’s not enough.” You never know for sure that the problem will turn out to be just a random out-group or that I could see it myself. This issue is not. It is the consequence of people trying to prove for themselves or for the audience that anything they don’t understand means nothing. One wonders if all of this is actually really the result of “just one person” or “someone with some other identity.”
The Problem
When one of the people doing the experiment sees the problem and begins to tell the others exactly what he thinks it is, he can almost immediately see that he can have a pretty strong argument that the problem is actually Clark Kent. One can make up a whole new identity without giving up a clue. The problem is not that this solution to the problem is impossible, especially if it comes at all. It is that this problem presents what we need in order to find Clark Kent in order to make one identity.
Let’s begin with Lois’s New Yorker identity. In that state, of course she has a great deal of continuity with all those other New Yorkers. First, she was not born in New York. She was born in New York and then in Massachusetts or Connecticut. What makes this one a New Yorker identity is that she never really has a name at all. She gets hers through the name,
Descartes also puts forward yet another argument for dualism, known as the argument from divisibility. The argument is essentially laid out as follows; 1) The body is divisible into parts. The mind is not divisible into parts. Therefore, the mind must be of an entirely different nature from the body, i.e. it must be essentially non-physical. When Descartes considers his own mental states, for example, if he is in pain or feeling angry, he says he can distinguish no parts within himself. Yet, if these are considered as states of a subject, then experiences cannot be split into halves or quarters or any other fraction, because it wouldnt make logical sense. The same would be true for physical states as well, like being fragile, volatile, strong etc. It wouldnt make sense to divide these states.
Substance Dualism cannot however explain the mind-body interaction. One attempt to solve this problem was suggested by Leibniz and known as his psycho-physical parallelism. He said that our mind and bodies had been synchronised with each other by God. The idea is that the mind