"Dualism, Causation and Supervenience”

Abstract

In this paper, I assume that the idea of a substantial soul is essential to many religions and defend against two recent critics a Cartesian dualist view that a soul can causally interact with its physical body. The two critics are Ernest Sosa and Jaegwon Kim. Both argue that the idea of causal interaction between a soul and its physical body is problematic, if not incoherent. Because it is, a noncausal account of the relationship between the psychological and the physical must be developed. These writers suggest that the concept of supervenience be employed to explain how psychological properties/ events are related to physical properties/ events. This is a property or event dualism. I argue that this form of dualism is less plausible than substance dualism.