Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
duffee: I was trying to think of some sort of easy way of arguing for the reducibility of beliefs, and while it seems imperfect, the simplest thing I could think of to ask you was: What do you think accounts for the efficacy of psychotropic drugs?
I say this question is imperfect since you may say that the content of beliefs is somehow distinct from the altered states of consciousness that occur on (for example) LSD, but even so the fact that certain simple physical substances cause profound changes in conscious experience and, I think arguably on beliefs, at least in the short term, does this not seem like reasonably strong evidence for matter and material interactions being intimately involved in the processes you mention?
Dualists aren’t saying otherwise. For the most part, dualists accept that the psychical requires the physiological. For them, altering the mental experience by messing around with the brain isn’t much different than the way our mental experience is altered by messing around with sensory perception, as with say looking through a kaleidoscope.
But none of that really matters. The argument against materialism concludes that whatever the mind is, it cannot in principle be material. So if the argument is successful, we’re forced to accept the immateriality of mind and consequently the insufficiency of materialism, despite whatever issues, problems or enigmas that arise.
