The Damning Interaction Problem – Response to Joe Schmid

The Damning Interaction Problem – Response to Joe Schmid

Introduction

Joe Schmid runs the YouTube channel ‘Majesty of Reason’ and a blog titled with the same name. Here, I will be responding to a blog post (https://majestyofreason.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/theories-of-mind-part-4-the-interaction-problem/ ) he made regarding the interaction problem against substance dualism. I will only be responding to the second section of the blog post since I agree with Joe’s characterisation of the interaction problem, where in the second half Joe tries to remove some mystery from the interaction problem.

1 – Commentary

In the beginning, Joe says the following…

To see why the interaction problem is not as mysterious as we might initially think, consider physical causation. What is physical causation? I aver that there is a deep mystery here, a mystery that parallels dualism’s interaction problem.

Just think about it. What is this mysterious relation of “production” whereby one object (event) causes another object (event) to exist (happen)? How does that even occur? We can specify the shapes of the objects, their spatial contiguity, their colour, their relative velocities, their kinetic and potential energy, and so on, but where is causality in this specification? In which of these facts does causation consist? To which of these facts could we point?

Joe then goes on to lay out the exact problem of describing physical causation through analogies to billiard balls. However, the first issue here is that Joe claims that the problem of physical causation “parallels” the interaction problem from dualism. This claim is false. I agree that there is a huge problem with trying to give a wholly inclusive definition of causation, which has led many to claim that causation is primitive or that belief in physical causation can be basic. It is already hard enough to explain how one physical and material item can interact with another physical and material item, but going from to a non-physical and non-material item interacting with a physical and material item makes the problem ten times worse. The force behind the interaction problem is that we are going from one ontological category to a wholly distinct ontological category. Descartes’ categories of soul and matter have no common properties to use to interact with in the firs place. This is why I dispute the claim that there is a parallel between the hardness of defining physical causation and the question of how a non-physical and non-material entity interacts with a physical and material item where they have no common properties. His objection is almost tu quoque where he is saying that he acknowledges that there is an interaction problem but that its not so bad because materialism has it too.

Next, Joe says the following…

So, it seems we have some reason to be primitivists about causation. But if that is true, then physical-physical causation seems to be every bit as “mysterious” as non-physical-physical causation. Under such an account, both are equally primitive, irreducible, and basic.

My issue here is that just because the interaction of causation would be equally primitive on both accounts, it doesn’t follow that there are both equally mysterious. As said before, going from physical to physical is one issue, but going from non-physical to physical only amplifies the problem. At least with physical to physical, the items have common properties and are of the same ontological category. With non-physical to physical, the items have no common properties and are of distinct ontological categories. I am failing to see how there is such a symmetry of the mysteriousness here.

Joe concludes his blog post by saying…

A final note in relation to the interaction problem concerns the very nature of how questions. Usually, when we pose a how question, we seek a mechanistic explanation of how one phenomenon gives rise to or interacts with another phenomenon. But, by definition, the immaterial mind is not some mechanistic thing with parts arranged and operating in mechanical ways. But if that is true, then demanding a how explanation in relation to the mind’s activity is (one may argue) a category error.

Joe says that when we ask how questions we usually seek some mechanistic explanation of how phenomena interact. However if we cannot seek this sort of explanation for how a soul interacts with the body then we are left with no explanation, not even an in principle explanation, for how the soul could interact with the body. Asking how a non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material, non-physical soul can interact with a physical body is like asking how does the absolute nothing create something. Substance dualism here has NO explanatory power or descriptive resources at all. Material causality may be primitive and hard to define but it is no where into the depth of despair as the substance dualist’s position.

2 – Conclusion

My main disagreement with Joe here is that the problem of describing material causation is not symmetrical or parallel with the interaction problem because with the interaction problem we are (1) crossing ontological categories and (2) trying to explain how items with no common properties can interact. These two lines offer ways to break the symmetry and show how damning the interaction problem really is.