Property Dualism - John Stuart Mill
Property Dualism - John Stuart Mill
- John Stuart Mill was a proponent of a form of dualism known as property dualism. This philosophy suggests there is just one substance with two types of properties: physical and mental.
- Mill framed his stance within the larger context of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge is only or primarily gained through sensory experience.
- In his “Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind” (from 1829), he argued against the idea of a separate, immaterial mind or soul.
- Mill believed that our conscious experiences, thoughts, and feelings – what we might call our ‘mental properties’ – are nothing more than the organisation of simpler elements of sensation.
- He suggested that when certain physical conditions are present, mental events occur. Mill saw mental life as a set of complex organisations of simple ideas, derived from experienced sensations.
- While Mill did not see a ‘mental substance’ separate from the body, he did see mind as having ‘higher order’ properties that are not reducible to physical ones. He highlighted that we cannot explain acts of will, intentionality or consciousness by physical laws alone.
- This led him, and other property dualists, to reject both the materialist view that everything is physical and the traditional dualist view that the mind and body are two totally different and separate substances.
- From Mill’s perspective, mental phenomena are not separate ‘things’ but properties or aspects of the human organism. Mental attributes are not independent entities but are properties of complex physical systems.
- For Mill, the mind is a series of feelings linked by laws of association. It is not something separate and ethereal but a function or property of a physical body, in specific the brain.
- Knowing about Mill’s property dualism can help understand differing perspectives on the nature of the mind and body, moving beyond the traditional dualist and materialist views.