Jaegwon Kim's well known Pairing Problem is supposed to show that it is impossible both that immaterial souls cannot have causal efficacy in the physical world as well as to other immaterial souls. The problem, in brief (super-brief) is that for event A to cause event B, there must be some further factor X in virtue of which A causes B. There is no such further factor X in the case of the mental events (willings, actings, intendings) of souls and physical events. So, souls cannot be causally related to the physical world. This argument is supposed to apply to ALL souls.
I just finished (most of) Plantinga's really nice article "Materialism and Christian Belief" in Persons: Human and Divine, and he proposes that broadly logical necessity is that relation. He writes,
According to classical theism, it's a necessary truth that whatever God wills, takes place. It's a necessary truth that if God says, "Let there be light," then there is light. Necessarily, if God says, "Let Adam come into existence," Adam comes into existence. So what is it that makes it the case that God's intentions cause what they cause? To ask that question is like asking, "What is it that makes an equiangular triangle equilateral?" The answer is (broadly) logical necessity; it's necessary that whatever God wills comes to be just as it's necessary that every equiangular triangle be equilateral. Accordingly there isn't a problem about that factor X in the divine case... (p. 133)
So Kim's Pairing Problem that it is impossible that souls be causally related to the world fails. Plantinga goes on to show that once you have theism, there is no problem for human souls having causal interaction in the world as well.
This seems compelling to me. Anybody see any problems with it?
I don't understand what the response is. It's not "broad logical necessity" that connects my intentions to my limbs even if it is true as a matter of BLN that what God wills happens. It is broadly logically possible that there are creatures with mental lives just like mine that have no limbs to move at all. Disembodied spirits, for example, could have the same intentions that I do but wouldn't move any non-existent limbs. And, if it's possible for there non-spatial souls to will and move the limbs of one body, there's no reason why God couldn't arrange it so that they willed and moved the limbs of another body. And, there's nothing that prevents God from setting it up so that my intentions can raise some of my limbs and some of yours whilst your intentions raise some of your limbs and some of mine.
Clayton,
Kim's argument is that it is impossible for any immaterial soul to have causal efficacy in the physical world. Plantinga needs to give only one counterexample to prove this false; this is the case with God's actions in the physical world. I think you agree with that?
Suppose I say that I can't see how it's possible for a good person to allow a small child to drown. You say that God does that hundreds of times a year and God is the best person, so problem solved. That's not very satisfying.
Kim's claim is that entities that stand in no spatial relations to bodies don't enter into causal relations with bodies. I think he thinks this claim is motivated. The response that there just are entities that enter into causal relations whilst being both outside of space and time isn't very helpful. The argument for the crucial premise in Kim's argument would seem to call into question the thing you allege is possible in claiming that there's a counterexample to Kim's premise.
I also do not understand Plantinga's response. The problem does not seem to be answered by stating a composite between God's will and God's actions, since it is the "how" of this juxtaposition that is in question.
It seems also to me to be a question whose strength against substance dualism remains, regardless of what God does or how he does it: souls, not usually taken to have the strange kind of efficacy that God does, are yet taken to have the power to affect the limbs, say. It is not the sequence of these events that Kim calls into question, it is the "how."
Suppose I say that I can't see how it's possible for a good person to allow a small child to drown. You say that God does that hundreds of times a year and God is the best person...
Oy.
Kim's claim is that entities that stand in no spatial relations to bodies don't enter into causal relations with bodies. I think he thinks this claim is motivated. The response that there just are entities that enter into causal relations whilst being both outside of space and time isn't very helpful.
The fact that e and e' stand in a spatial relation does not make the causal relation any more clear. It is still opaque that e' follows e rather than e''. It just happens to be e' follows, and no one can give any good reason why it isn't e'' instead. Hume was right about that much at least.
So not a big surprise that, as it happens, a non-spatial event e' follows from the spatial event e. Does anyone have an argument that it's apriori true that any two objects that are not spatially related do not stand in causal relations? I don't know of any such argument. I don't know of any such apriori principles governing causation. What is required for the relation of causation is (at least, perhaps at most) the right sort of counterfactual dependence, and there is no apriori reason to believe that (that sort of) counterfactual dependence cannot obtain between events that are not spatially related. In any case, I know of no argument to that effect.
"Does anyone have an argument that it's apriori true that any two objects that are not spatially related do not stand in causal relations?"
I wish I had one because I don't know if anyone else does.
If I recall, Kim's point was something like this. If we have two potential causes and two potential effects, if it's true that C1 caused E1 rather than E2 and C2 caused E2 rather than E1, there's got to be something that's a difference maker such that C1 stands in a relation to E1 it doesn't to E2. Differences in causal relations depend upon further differences. A spatial relation is one thing that could play the role of difference maker. A temporal relation is another potential difference maker. Differences in properties could be difference makers. An intentional relation is another. The problem for Kim, I think, is that the dualist doesn't think it is an intentional relation that links our mental events to bodily events and doesn't think it is a spatial relation. (Notice here that _there's_ a difference between us and God on the dualist view. God doesn't need any intermediary medium to influence events in the material world but the events that link mental event to action are not events we have in mind when we act.) It's not that there's any apriori connection between causes and effects and it's not that spatial relatedness is itself apriori necessary for causal connectedness. In the case of mental event and non-mental event causation, it seems that intentional differences, spatial differences, temporal differences, property differences won't do work on the dualist view.
Maybe there's something in the Plantinga article that sets out the pairing problem and a careful response to it, but the response in the passage quoted looks just a tad quick. (Actually, it looks almost identical to his solution to the Benaceraf problem.) My initial example might be a bit oy-inducing (it wasn't entirely unintentionally so), but dialectically there's something unsatisfying with being basically told that an argument, if sound, would show that God couldn't do X but if you think God could do X the problem presented by the argument is solved.
Maybe this is a better example. Suppose I said that Mike was a property. Objections naturally arise. I say that these objections are no problem for me because they all in their own way assume that persons aren't properties. God's a property and cash incentives haven't led anyone to convincingly argue otherwise. I think I might stifle an objection this way, but it's not very satisfying.
Don't have time now for a longer response, but a quick response is that Plantinga does spend a few pages on Kim's argument, so what I quoted was just a very small portion in response to Kim.
Second, you (Clayton) write:
"Kim's claim is that entities that stand in no spatial relations to bodies don't enter into causal relations with bodies."
I think he goes farther in saying that it is impossible in the broadly logical sense that entities that stand in no spatial relations to bodies don't enter into causal relations with bodies. And his main motivation for this is because there is no relation X that could be whatever it is in virtue of which there is that causal relation. (In the case of physical events, it is easier: spatial relations.) But so long as it is possible that there is an omnipotent being, it seems that there could be such a relation: broadly logical necessity. (And I do think it is possible, in the broadly logical sense, for a good person to allow a little child to drown.)
Third, Mike writes,
"Does anyone have an argument that it's apriori true that any two objects that are not spatially related do not stand in causal relations? I don't know of any such argument."
I think that that's what Kim's pairing problem is supposed to be! Of course, I presented Kim's argument REALLY quickly (without a lot of the examples that are supposed to motivate it), although I hope I had all the main elements. Also, Plantinga does point out that on a counterfactual view of causation, as well as on a Humean constant conjunction view, the problem of how souls could be related to bodies isn't at all difficult. (127-129)
Chris,
You say, "It is not the sequence of these events that Kim calls into question, it is the "how.""
Is that what Kim's calling into question? I don't think so. Or where do you get that idea? Your question is an interesting question, but I'm not sure if that's Kim's question.
You might be making the regular "complaint of mystery" about how immaterial substances could have causal consequences in the material world. Plantinga deals with this in the preceding section to the section devoted to the Pairing Problem (pp. 127-129), but he finds there to be little to the objection. I take it his argument is something like the following. (This is my quick off-the-cuff reconstruction without looking carefully at the text because of limited time; I may be wrong in my reconstruction.) Either causation is understood in terms of Humean constant conjunction or counterfactuals, or causation requires something more, in Plantinga's words, "it must involve something further, something in the neighborhood of production, making, a causal oomph or force, a necessary connection of some kind." (p. 129)
If the former, then it is quite easy to see how immaterial substances could be causally related to the world. If the latter, then, "True: we have little or no insight into how it is that an immaterial substance can cause changes in the physical world; but we have equally little insight in to how it is that a material substance can cause changes in the physical world. Causation as a non-Humean relation among finite substances is something of a mystery; but it is no more mysterious where one of the relata is material and the other is immaterial than where both are material or both immaterial." (p. 129)
I take the Pairing Problem (which Plantinga deals with in the following section) to be Kim's way of trying to formulate a way in which nonphysical-to-physical causation is somehow more problematic than physical-to-physical, but I think Plantinga responds successfully to that problem as well.
Andrew,
You've forced me to dig up my copy of _Physicalism, or something near enough_.
My initial complaints were these. Kim says that there are deep problems with physicalism and so he considers whether dualism provides a better framework. He thinks interactionist dualism faces a problem that doesn't arise for physicalism, the pairing problem. You endorsed Plantinga's response, which seemed to amount to the claim that it's possible for God to effect changes in the material world even though God isn't located in space. It's true that if this is possible Kim cannot argue from the premise that no object can have its effects on material objects without standing in spatial relations to it, but (i) it's controversial whether the thing you describe is a genuine possibility and (ii) even if it is a genuine possibility, it's not obvious that this helps with the pairing problem because what's possible for God tells us little about what's possible for us. (Hence, the oy-inducing drowning child example. I don't think anyone thinks that it's permissible for God to allow a child to drown iff it is permissible for one of us to allow a child to drown because the relations between God and that child are thought to differ significantly from the relations between us and that child. So, by way of analogy, if the relations between God and the material world differ radically from the relations between us and our immaterial souls and the material world, the problem could still remain. More on this in a second.)
I think it's worth reading the presentation Kim provides because he explicitly addresses the issue of Humean constant conjunction. If mental events were constantly conjoined with physical events, fine. Kim's worry has to do with how we 'pair' particular physical events with mental events so even if we opted for a Humean view, I think the worry still remains.
You focused on spatiality, so did I, and I guess so did Plantinga. But, this is somewhat misleading because Kim's argument doesn't assume that for c to cause e, c must stand in some spatial relation to e. Andrew wrote that Kim's problem is supposed to be an apriori argument that two objects must be spatially related to be causally related. Either Plantinga isn't reading Kim carefully or there's something in Plantinga's discussion that we're not seeing. Kim seems to be pretty clear to say that this _isn't_ the problem, it's a part of the problem.
Kim's argument assumes that if c1 rather than c2 is the cause of e, there's some difference between c1 and c2 beyond the causal difference. A spatial difference is one such difference, but it's not the only difference he considers. An intentional, cognitive difference could also be the difference maker. If c1 is a mental state that is about x but c2 is not a mental state that is about x and e is an event that is a change that occurs in x, that could be a difference maker that doesn't require that c1 or c2 stand in any spatial relations at all. The problem is that the dualist doesn't think that such mental differences play the role of difference maker when it comes to causing the changes in the body that are the precursors to behavior.
I think the pairing problem is a pretty interesting problem and it would be great if there were a satisfying response to it, but I don't think you're getting all the nuances of the problem from the short passage you've quoted above. I certainly recommend reading Chapter 3 from Kim's _Physicalism, or something near enough_.
Kim's argument assumes that if c1 rather than c2 is the cause of e, there's some difference between c1 and c2 beyond the causal difference. A spatial difference is one such difference, but it's not the only difference he considers. An intentional, cognitive difference could also be the difference maker.
This looks like the pairing problem is an epistemological problem. But I'm not sure why we should expect to be able to identify the cause of e, if there is one. Perhaps there are unidentifiable causes. Perhaps there are unknowable causes. Perhaps there are causes of e that are indiscernible from non-causes of e. There's nothing apriori amiss in these suggestions; I mean, that I can see.
Incidentally, shouldn't it be oy-evoking rather than oy-inducing?
The evoking/inducing distinction is difficult to wield in practice. Causation is complicated.
Kim's worry strikes me as being quasi-epistemological, having more to do with the problem of understanding than with possibility. He says at one point that even if God were invoked to link souls to bodies (prescient!), the notion of a "union" between mind and body wouldn't be made intelligible:
The metaphysical principle he seems to assume is that no causal differences between token events that are brute (difference in event types would be a suitable difference maker, mental, temporal, or spatial differences could be difference makers), but his worry seems to be that of understanding: what in the world could the difference maker be? It seems obvious on a materialist view what it would be.
The metaphysical principle he seems to assume is that no causal differences between token events that are brute (difference in event types would be a suitable difference maker, mental, temporal, or spatial differences could be difference makers), but his worry seems to be that of understanding: what in the world could the difference maker be? It seems obvious on a materialist view what it would be.
I'm lost here. We've got several issues running at the same time. One is what is it that makes c1 the cause of e rather than c2. There must be some "difference maker". Another is how a soul might be united to a body. A third is how God might cause some material event to occur. A fourth is how we, if we are souls, might cause something to occur. I'm not sure which issue you're addressing in this passage.
I take it that the main issue under the heading of the pairing problem has to do with what's available to a substance dualist to unite changes that take place in a soul with changes that take place in some body, so it's the difference maker issue. This, I take it, is connected to what connects souls to bodies. I think the passage helps us see that Kim's concern here is with understanding and I think as he sees it, the question as to whether there's a God outside of space and time that could cause changes in the material world is neither here nor there. Even if we assume that it's possible, it doesn't tell us how our souls and bodies are related and doesn't begin to tell us how events in Andrew's mind influence his body rather than some similar body.
Clayton,
"I don't think you're getting all the nuances of the problem from the short passage you've quoted above." Yep, that is true.
"(i) it's controversial whether the thing you describe is a genuine possibility and (ii) even if it is a genuine possibility, it's not obvious that this helps with the pairing problem because what's possible for God tells us little about what's possible for us."
I took (i) and (ii) to be your main contentions with what I wrote. In the context of Plantinga's discussion, Plantinga was wondering whether there were any reasons for a Christian theist to reject dualism. Given that one is already a theist (like me), (i) should not be a problem. Plantinga's response to the pairing problem more broadly (how immaterial human souls are causally connected to physical events) is given separate treatment in the sections cited. I didn't have the time or energy to focus on those responses (although I may post on those in the near future). So I was wondering more specifically if there was a problem with Plantinga's response to an argument by Kim which is supposed to have the conclusion that it is impossible for an immaterial soul to be causally related to physical events. I think Plantinga's right that this 'problem' is no real problem for someone who's already a theist.
(So, I am a bit self-focused here; I am focusing on whether I, the theist, should keep being a dualist. I see Plantinga's response to inform me that I should not accept Kim's argument that it is impossible for immaterial souls to interact causally with the physical world. I am currently considering whether Plantinga's response as applied to human persons is successful.)
And yep, reading that book is something I'd like to get to. Thanks for writing up on sections of it; it's helpful.
Hey Andrew,
I suppose you can remain a dualist, but I don't think Kim is going quite so far as arguing for the impossibility of spiritual/material causal interaction. There are passages where he seems willing to concede the possibility (e.g., God's willing certain changes come about), but thinks that there's still a deficit in understanding how it is possible to match particular events to particular events once you do away with all of the obvious conceptual materials for making sense of this. Imagine Descartes had said that minds/souls were not just non-spatial but also atemporal. Would that version of the pairing problem bother you (i.e., the version that says that there's some fact of the matter as to whether atemporal soul A rather than B that willed some change in the material world in spite of there being no spatial, no temporal, and no mental relation between the mental and the material)?
There are passages where he seems willing to concede the possibility (e.g., God's willing certain changes come about), but thinks that there's still a deficit in understanding how it is possible to match particular events to particular events once you do away with all of the obvious conceptual materials for making sense of this.
I, for one, am still not seeing it. What exactly is the problem? Here's one possibility. There are lots of events c1, c2, . . .,cn in the mind of a person P that are candidates for THE event which caused e = P's arm raising. Which among these candidates is the cause of e? If that's the problem, then its no big problem at all. Compare: which among all the the candidates for causing P to die is THE cause? Was it the wound to the heart? Was it Smith shooting him? Was it the lack of oxygen to P's brain? Was it the blood thinner that caused excessive bleeding? Had any one of these not occurred, he would not be dead. So take your pick, since they are all legitimately called the cause of his dying. You can't pick THE cause here, either.
Imagine Descartes had said that minds/souls were not just non-spatial but also atemporal. Would that version of the pairing problem bother you. . .
If minds are not spatial, then they're not in time either. Space and time are not two things, they are one thing, at least if contemporary physics has the right story. So we already have this problem.
"If minds are not spatial, then they're not in time either. Space and time are not two things, they are one thing, at least if contemporary physics has the right story. So we already have this problem."
Fair enough. I would have thought that the interactionist dualists inspired by Descartes would want to say that there's no spatial relation between my act of will and my bodily movement but there's a temporal relation between the act of will and bodily movement. The thought that deliberations stand in no temporal relation to the actions they are supposed to rationalize seems pretty bad.
Here's one way to state the pairing problem. There's a mental event that is Adam's deciding to kick the can. There's a mental event that is Ben's deciding to kick the can. Adam and Ben are in the same mental states at the same time from cradle to grave. Adam's leg is moved. Ben's leg is moved. The interactionist dualist doesn't just want to say that there are causal connections between willings and bodily movements, they want to say that it's Adam's will that moves one leg rather than another and Ben's will that moves one leg rather than another. I can't appeal to differences in type of mental event, temporal differences, spatial differences, or differences in the cognitive/intentional relations between Adam's mental states and events in Adam's brain that distinguish them from relations between Adam's mental states and events in Ben's brain, so what explains why it is Ben's act of will that moves one limb rather than another and Adam's act of will that moves one limb rather than the one Ben's will moved? Kim doesn't see anything that could provide the contrastive explanation here but thinks that while there are problems for materialism, at the very least the materialist can exploit spatial differences to help.
We think that if you subtract Ben's mental events that will change what happens in one body rather than another and if you subtract Adam's mental events that will change what happens in a different body, so it's not just the problem of saying what _the_ cause is.
Clayton,
Thanks for clarifying this problem. I was really struggling to get it.
It appears to me that "spatial relations," as used by Kim in this connection, are just ways of individuating physical items. That is, they perform the role of "matter" in hylomorphic explanations--they turn types into tokens. The problem with "mental events," in this connection, is that they seem to be pure types, without anything to individuate them. Thus if we have two identical mental events, it's hard to say which one is having which effect.
But putting things this way makes the answer to the problem relatively easy: what makes it the case that Adam's intention moves Adam's leg, not Ben's, is the relationship between Adam's leg and whatever Adam's mental states inhere in. You could call this, to be maximally obscure, a spiritual substance. Then the dualist just says that Adam's spiritual substance stands in a relation to Adam's leg that it does not stand in to Ben's leg, and that provides the needed factor X.
Now, granted, this relation, and one relatum, is not empirically observable, and there are epistemological issues, but I don't see that there is a fundamentally metaphysical problem here.
But to be somewhat less obscure, I think mental states are properties of persons. (No matter what your mind/body view.) So what makes Adam's intention move his leg, not Ben's, is that both are Adam's. And I think this point goes equally well, whether you are a materialist or a dualist.
I can't appeal to differences in type of mental event, temporal differences, spatial differences, or differences in the cognitive/intentional relations between Adam's mental states and events in Adam's brain that distinguish them from relations between Adam's mental states and events in Ben's brain, so what explains why it is Ben's act of will that moves one limb rather than another and Adam's act of will that moves one limb rather than the one Ben's will moved?
There are three answers, I think. Here's one. We know that what really exists is something called space-time, so anything in space is in time and vice versa. Just as we can say, if the mental event is not in space, then it's not in time, we can persuasively reason that since mental events are clearly in time, they are also in space.
Here's two. I appeal to luminosity. The events in Ben's mind are just those that are luminous to Ben, similarly for Adam. How do I know that the events in Ben's mind are not really events in Adam's mind, since those events are indiscernable? I am distinguishing what is in whose mind by appeal to luminosity. So, those events, whatever they are, that are luminous to Ben are the events in Ben's mind.
Here's three. The events in Ben's mind are those Ben names as follows. The event E that I am currently experiencing. The definite description, 'the event E that I am currently experiencing' uttered by Ben picks out an event in Ben's mind, and not in Adam's. Similarly for Adam.
Doesn't Kim's worry fall prey to the Tooley-style arguments for causal particularism, which make it plausible that it is possible to have cases of causation where there is no relevant difference-maker besides what in fact causes what?
Suppose that with probability 1/2, independent of everything else in the story, an A-type event causes an E-type event. And with probability 1/2, independent of everything else in the story, a B-type event causes an E-type event. Both A and B occur. Thus, there is a probability 3/4 that E occurs. The event does occur. Now we have three options: A caused E and B didn't; B caused E and A didn't; A and B both (overdeterminingly) caused E. We can't take the third option each time, because A-type events cause E-type events only half of the time. So sometimes A causes E and sometimes B causes E, and there is no deeper difference between A and B marking this difference.
And even if one accepts the difference-maker principle, why not simply suppose that the souls differ in some intentional or non-intentional respect. Intentional: maybe each soul has a certain unconscious representation of the body it's associated with (maybe it grasps a haecceity of this body); this requires that qualitatively identical brains are impossible, which is a cost, but only a small one. Non-intentional: Materialists think minds have non-intentional properties, so why can't dualists, too? And then we have some law correlating these.
"We know that what really exists is something called space-time, so anything in space is in time and vice versa. Just as we can say, if the mental event is not in space, then it's not in time, we can persuasively reason that since mental events are clearly in time, they are also in space."
Just to follow up from earlier, I think this is really interesting. It seems we can generate an epistemological problem as well as a kind of metaphysical argument against dualism.
(1) Suppose there's an apriori argument for either substance dualism (or, more carefully, immaterialism about minds).
(2) We know apriori that such an argument would establish that minds stand in no spatial relations.
(3) We know apriori (well, from the armchair) that minds stand in temporal relations.
(C) We know apriori (or from the armchair) that things can stand in temporal relations without standing in any spatial relations.
That seems to be the sort of thing we cannot know apriori, and not (just) because it seems false. There might be possible worlds where there are things in time that aren't spatial (things that are in space but stand in no temporal relations? That's harder) but apriori reflections on minds shouldn't force our hands on matters having to do with space, time, and space-time.
There's also the straightforward metaphysical argument:
(1) If substance dualism were true, minds would stand in no spatial relations.
(2) If minds stood in no spatial relations, it would stand in no temporal relations.
(3) Minds do, however, stand in temporal relations.
(C) Dualism is false.
I suppose the Cartesian _could_ say that the arguments don't rule out the idea that minds have spatial location but no spatial dimensions, but I don't know if that's very satisfying.
Surely there's a discussion of this kind of problem somewhere (other than a blog).
(1) If substance dualism were true, minds would stand in no spatial relations
On the contrary, why not cocnlude that it would be an otherwise occluded metaphysical fact that minds stand in spatial relations. Or, in any case that minds are spatial. Perhaps, as you seem to suggest, as unextended objects or simples or points.
Right. If the dualist could defend a version of the view on which souls had locations but no extensions, that would take care of the time problem and pairing problem. It's hard to know whether the view that souls have locations without extensions is an option, but the arguments for dualism that come to mind don't rule that out in any obvious way. Not this early in the morning, at any rate.
Clayton:
Suppose we have the concept of space.
It seems to me that we can be quite confident a priori that at least for any finite non-negative integer n, there is a world that contains a spacetime of spatial dimension n and temporal dimension 1. Moreover, it is reasonable to suppose a priori that a world could contain more than one spacetime. Physicists are willing to posit this on very little empirical data.
But if so, then a world could contain a 3+1 spacetime together with a 0+1 spacetime, or, better, N of the 0+1 spacetimes, one per soul. Moreover, there could be an appropriate correlation between the times of a 0+1 spacetime and a foliation of the 3+1 spacetime by spacelike hypersurfaces. The appropriate correlation might be the unique function f from the times of the 0+1 spacetime and the foliations of the 3+1 spacetime with the property that f is strictly monotonic (if t1 < t2, then f(t1) < f(t2)) and that respects causal ordering: if u1 = f(t1) and u2 = f(t2), then if either something at u1 causes something at t2 or something at t1 causes something at u2, we have t1 <= t2 and u1 <= u2 ("<=" being less-than-or-equal).
One can think all this in the armchair. Now, maybe, one can't be too confident of all this when one limits oneself simply to thinking in the abstract. But there seems to be nothing absurd about the idea that when one adds reflection on minds, one becomes more confident of these possibilities.
(I am not endorsing this view, because I am not a substance dualist.)
All that said, I don't know if one can have the concept of space a priori, though once one has it, one gets the above pretty plausibly. If one can't, then (2) needs to be modified with the qualifier: "a priori, given the concept of space".
Clayton:
A minor point. I don't think we know a priori that minds stand in temporal relations (like one mind being earlier than another, in the way that Bonaparte is earlier than Castro?). We do know a priori that mental happenings stand in temporal relations. I don't think this affects your argument.
Hey Alex,
I think that's probably right about having the concept of space apriori, but I'm assuming that we can use experience to give us the concepts we need to entertain a thought and still know that the thought is true apriori. (That the concepts that figure in a thought are derived from experience does not entail the justification for the thought depends positively upon experience. Many of the concepts I've acquired via testimonial exchanges, but I don't think that means that the justification I have for believing propositions involving these concepts depends upon testimony.)
You're right about the temporal order of substances, I was thinking about the temporal relations a substance would be in if modes of that substance or events involving that substance could stand in temporal relations. It wasn't the most careful presentation.
I think that's right--so we need to distinguish whether we have the concept a priori (maybe we have no concepts a priori) and what we can derive from it a priori. One thing that blurs the line, though, is that it may be that whenever we acquire the concept in experience, experience brings along with the concept some entailments.
I think it is worth pointing out (here on the phil religion blog) that Cartesian substance dualism is not the old-time theistic view of the mind/body relation. Aquinas, for instance, borrows from Aristotle the idea that the soul is the form of the body. That gives some sense to the idea that the soul is in space as well as time. I will grant that it is hard to see how such a soul could survive death, but that's a different problem.
My point is that the theist should not be defending substance dualism too hard, at least not without examining some alternatives.
It seems to me that we can be quite confident a priori that at least for any finite non-negative integer n, there is a world that contains a spacetime of spatial dimension n and temporal dimension 1.
Really? Even supposing we can be quite confident of that, it obviously tells us nothing about the genuine possibility of such worlds. That aside, I have no idea why we can be quite confident to begin with. Just as many metaphysical possibilities are apriori possible, so many apriori impossibilities look for all the world like they are apriori possible. Apriori impossibilities are not coextensive with self-contradictories.
Heath:
Well, substance dualism is false, but it may, nonetheless, be important for the Christian to defend the possibility of causation between the non-physical and physical. Probably, angels are non-physical, for instance.
I do think that hylomorphism is the way to go. (As for life after death, since the soul is what explains the functioning of the body, it has a certain priority to the body, which makes it possible for it to survive death.)
For the record, Lycan seems to think the best dualist view is interactionism with souls located. I believe he'd say they should not be extended as well. I don't remember which argument he was responding to when he arrived at this, but I don't think it was Kim's. But I haven't gone back to look at the paper.