The modal arguments for substance dualism in the philosophy of mind require a possibility premise, for example, 'It is possible that a person exist disembodied,' or 'Possibly, a person becomes disembodied.' One question concerns the support for such a premise. Does conceivability entail possibility? Does imaginability entail possibility? And if neither entail<\/em> possibility, do they provide sufficient evidence for it? I'm not done with these questions, but there is another vexing question that I want to add to the mix. This concerns the validity of the inference from <\/font><\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n to 2. Some actual person can exist disembodied. Roger Bannister<\/font><\/a> broke the four-minute mile on 6 May 1954. Before his birth it was surely possible that someone run a mile in under four minutes. But it does not follow that before Bannister's birth there was a runner for whom breaking the four minute barrier was a possibility. The possibility that there exist an F that is G does not logically guarantee that there exists an F that is possibly G. For it might be that every existing F is necessarily not G.<\/font><\/p>\n Another example. I cannot imagine a chiliagon (a regular polygon having 1,000 sides) but I can conceive one. Suppose conceivability entails possibility. Then it is possible that there be a chiliagon. But it doesn't follow that there is anything that actually exists anywhere in the universe that could assume the shape of a chiliagon.<\/font><\/p>\n So how can I get to the conclusion that some actual person, such as dear old me, can survive his physical dissolution and exist disembodied? Well, can't I imagine my<\/em> existing disembodied as opposed to some person in general's existing disembodied? Isn't there such a thing as de re<\/em> imagination? But how do I know that when I seem to be imagining my<\/em> existing disembodied, I am really doing so as opposed to imagining some person's existing disembodied? How do I know that I am not imagining merely the instantiation of disembodied personhood as opposed to some definite actual person's disembodied existence?<\/font><\/p>\n Here we enter waters as murky as the Charles. I can imagine myself taking a walk through Boston's North End in search of an old haunt of mine, Piccola Venezia<\/em><\/font>. The imaginability of this state of affairs is pretty good evidence of its possibility. But is this a de re<\/em> possibility involving me or a de dicto<\/em> possibility concerning some possible person?<\/font><\/p>\n Since no one will claim that I am incapable of revisiting the North End, there is no reason to doubt that when I imagine myself walking its streets, the possibility for which this imagining provides evidence is a de re<\/em> possibility involving me, not some possible person in general. I<\/em> am such that it is possible that I revisit the North End. So what reason could there be for denying that I am such that I possibly exist disembodied? Apparently, the only reason is a question-begging one: All actually existing persons are necessarily embodied.<\/font><\/p>\n My interim conclusion is the de dicto<\/em> objection is nothing to worry about. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The modal arguments for substance dualism in the philosophy of mind require a possibility premise, for example, 'It is possible that a person exist disembodied,' or 'Possibly, a person becomes disembodied.' One question concerns the support for such a premise. Does conceivability entail possibility? Does imaginability entail possibility? And if neither entail possibility, do they … Continue reading “The De Dicto<\/i> Objection to Substance Dualism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind","category-modal-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n(1) is de dicto<\/em>: it says of a dictum<\/em> or proposition that it is possibly true. (2) is de re<\/em>: it says of a res<\/em> or thing that disembodiment is one of its possibilities. To see the difference, consider that (1) can be true even if every actual person is a purely material being, and thus a being for whom disembodied existence is not a possibility. On that supposition, (2) is false. So the truth of (2) does not follow from the truth of (1).<\/p>\n