Abstract

Appeal to faith is not uncommon in disputes about the mind-body problem. It is tempting to assume that dualists are more likely than physicalists to presuppose faith in supporting their conclusions, but in recent years physicalists have made claims of faith a standard practice. Of course, their version of faith is peculiar, a faith commitment that my colleague, Brendan Sweetman, has called "the scientific faith argument." This type of reasoning is typified by the remarks of J. J. C. Smart: "...the suggestion I wish to resist is... to say 'I have a yellowish-orange after-image' is to report something irreducibly psychical.... It seems to me that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as physico-chemical mechanisms; it seems that even the behavior of man himself will one day be explicable in mechanistic terms". Some physicalists assert their faith stridently and dogmatically. Take Paul M. Churchland, for instance: "The human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process.... If this is the correct account of our origins, then there seems neither need, nor room to fit any nonphysical substances or properties into our theoretical account of ourselves. We are creatures of matter. And we should learn to live with that fact". Of course, these views are mere assertions rather than arguments and they reflect a question-begging procedure. But since naturalism--the view that life and consciousness are nothing but the products of physics, matter in motion--is granted a priori by so many in philosophy today, the petitio principii has become the argument of choice.