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In metaphysics and philosophy, more specifically in ontology and the philosophy of mind, the natures and very existence of non-physical entities is a fundamental, and unanswered, question. Whether they can be held to exist at all is what divides the philosophical schools of physicalism and dualism, with the latter holding that they do and the former that they do not. If one posits that non-physical entities can exist, there exist further debates as to their inherent natures and their position relative to physical entities.[1] The concept is also trickier to define than it would first appear.

Definition: the problem with ghosts

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It is actually quite hard to pin down, in philosophical terms, what a non-physical entity actually is (or would be). A seemingly convenient example of what constitutes a non-physical entity is a ghost. Indeed, Gilbert Ryle once labelled Cartesian Dualism as positing the "ghost in the machine". (Ryle was making a strong challenge to dualism that actually questioned the existence of minds as entities at all, more of which can be seen in the linked article.)[2][3] However, it is tricky to pin down in philosophical terms what it is, precisely, about a ghost that makes it a specifically non-physical, rather than a physical entity. It is not the supposed ability of ghosts to penetrate solid matter. Neutrinos can do that. It is not that ghosts are supposed to have no mass. Photons have no mass, and yet are considered to be physical entities. Most tellingly, should the existence of ghosts ever be demonstrated beyond doubt, in terms of the physicalist/dualist philosophical debate (at least) that would actually place them in the category of physical entities.[3]

This problem of definition is a problem for the physicalist school of philosophy. Without any definition of non-physical entities, physicalism would be a trivially true philosophical position that everyone could subscribe to, but that would thereby lack much in the way of significance. So physicalist philosophers usually defer to physics, and the natural sciences, for a definition of what is physical and what is non-physical. However, there are still definitional problems that come from doing that. Physics does not (yet) provide a complete and coherent definition of the world; the physics of today encompasses concepts such as dark matter and dark energy that (currently) cross the lines between physicalism and (substance) dualism (or pluralism), positing as they do two (or more) fundamentally different kinds of "stuff" making up the universe that have only limited interactions; and a hypothetical "complete" physics/natural science of the future may well end up explaining mental entities as fundamental parts of physics, which would turn physicalism into dualism by definition.[4][5]

Relationships: non-physical entities acting upon physical ones

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As the physicalist school has its problems with non-physical entities, so too does the dualist school. The dualist school acknowledges the existence of non-physical entities, the most widely discussed one being the mind. But beyond that it runs into stumbling blocks.[6] Pierre Gassendi put one such problem directly to Descartes in 1641, in response to Descartes's Meditations:

[It] still remains to be explained how that union and apparent intermingling [of mind and body …] can be found in you, if you are incorporeal, unextended and indivisible […]. How, at least, can you be united with the brain, or some minute part in it, which (as has been said) must yet have some magnitude or extension, however small it be ? If you are wholly without parts how can you mix or appear to mix with its minute subdivisions ? For there is no mixture unless each of the things to be mixed has parts that can mix with one another.

— Gassendi 1641[6][7]

Descartes' response to Gassendi (and to Princess Elizabeth who asked him pretty much the same questions in 1643) is generally considered nowadays to be lacking, because it did not address what is known in the philosophy of mind as the interaction problem.[6][7] This is a problem for non-physical entities as posited by dualism: By what mechanism, exactly, do they interact with physical entities? Indeed, how can they do so? Interaction with physical systems requires physical entities, such as mass-energy, which a non-physical entity does not possess. (It it did, it would, by that fact, be a physical entity.)[8]

Dualists either, like Descartes, avoid the problem by considering it impossible for a non-physical mind to conceive the relationship that it has with the physical, and so impossible to explain philosophically; or assert that the questioner has made the fundamental mistake of thinking that the distinction between the physical and the non-physical is such that it prevents each from affecting the other. In other words: They assert that it is not the case that it is necessarily impossible, in the first place, for the non-physical to interact with the physical, and there is no part of the definition of non-physical that prevents this. This is, in particular, part of the position of substance dualists.[8]

Other questions about the non-physical which dualism has not answered include such questions as how many minds each person can have, which is not an issue for physicalism which can simply declare one-mind-per-person almost by definition; and whether non-physical entities such as minds and souls are simple or compound, and if the latter, what "stuff" the compounds are made from.[9]

Abstracts: the non-physical entities that are generally agreed to exist

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The realm of the mental, and the mind-body problem, does not exhaust the realm of the non-physical. Non-mental non-physical entities include things such as gods, angels, and ghosts. As aforementioned, a demonstration beyond doubt of their existence(s) would place them squarely in the realm of the physical, as far as physicalist/dualist metaphysics is concerned. Lacking such demonstrations, their existences and natures are widely debated, independently of the philosophy of mind.[10][11]

Philosophers generally do agree, however, on the existence of certain other non-physical entities, namely abstract objects. These include concepts such as numbers, mathematical sets and functions, relations, and properties. Such entities are not physical inasmuch as they exist outwith the universe of space and time. An abstract property such as redness has no location in space-time.[12][13] Whilst older Cartesian dualists held the existence of non-physical minds, more limited forms of dualism propounded by 20th and 21st century philosophers (such as property dualism) hold merely the existence of non-physical properties.[14]

References

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  1. ^ Campbell 2005, p. 9–10.
  2. ^ Brown 2001, p. 13.
  3. ^ a b Montero 2009, p. 110–111.
  4. ^ Montero 2009, p. 111–114.
  5. ^ Rosenberg & McShea 2008, p. 99.
  6. ^ a b c Bechtel 1988, p. 82.
  7. ^ a b Richardson 1982, p. 21.
  8. ^ a b Jaworski 2011, p. 79–80.
  9. ^ Smith & Jones 1986, p. 48–49.
  10. ^ Gracia 1996, p. 18.
  11. ^ Malikow 2009, p. 29–31.
  12. ^ Jubien 2003, p. 36–38.
  13. ^ Moreland & Craig 2003, p. 184–185.
  14. ^ Balog 2009, p. 293.

Reference bibliography

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  • Balog, Katalin (2009). "Phenomenal Concepts". In McLaughlin, Brian P.; Beckermann, Ansgar; Walter, Sven (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Handbooks. ISBN 9780199262618.
  • Bechtel, William (1988). Philosophy of Mind: An Overview for Cognitive Science. Tutorial Essays in Cognitive Science. Routledge. ISBN 9780805802344.
  • Brown, Stuart C. (2001). "Disembodied existence". Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction With Readings. Philosophy and the Human Situation Series. Routledge. ISBN 9780415212373.
  • Campbell, Neil (2005). A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Broadview Guides to Philosophy. Broadview Press. ISBN 9781551116174.
  • Gracia, Jorge J. E. (1996). Texts: Ontological Status, Identity, Author, Audience. Suny Series in Philosophy. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791429020.
  • Jaworski, William (2011). Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781444333688.
  • Jubien, Michael (2003). "Metaphysics". In Shand, John (ed.). Fundamentals of Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 9780415227100.
  • Malikow, Max (2009). Philosophy 101: A Primer for the Apathetic Or Struggling Student. University Press of America. ISBN 9780761844167.
  • Montero, Barbara (2009). "The 'body' side of the mind-body problem". On the Philosophy of Mind. Cengage Learning philosophical topics. Cengage Learning. ISBN 9780495005025.
  • Moreland, James Porter; Craig, William Lane (2003). "What is metaphysics?". Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 9780830826940.
  • Smith, Peter; Jones, O. R. (1986). "Dualism: For and Against". The Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521312509.
  • Richardson, R. C. (1982). "The 'Scandal' of Cartesian Interactionism". Mind. 91 (361). Oxford University Press: 20–37. doi:10.1093/mind/XCI.361.20. JSTOR 2253196. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Rosenberg, Alex; McShea, Daniel W. (2008). Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge. ISBN 9781134375387.
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