Two Kinds of Existences?

Where: online with Skype
When: 7:30 - 9:30 pm
Date: May 19, 2020

[The number of attendees will be limited to ten members. If there is enough demand, as measured by the length of the waitlist, a second meeting will be scheduled for May 22, 2020. There is no need to download the Skype application. You can join the meeting through your browser.]

The subject of the meeting is the question: Are there two kinds of existences? We will concentrate on what John Searle sees as the key insight of dualism. Dualism, he claims, recognizes a special kind of existence that materialism does not. The insight is this:

Our first-person experience of consciousness
is evidence of a special kind of existence.

This insight, Searle claims, is valid even if dualism as a whole is false. It is also one of the key differences between materialism and dualism. Dualism recognizes this kind of existence but materialism does not.

This special kind of existence is to be compared with the more conventional existence, like the existence of physical objects. The type of existence enjoyed by physical objects is often referred to as objective existence or a third-person kind of existence. Thus, there is a subjective, first-person existence and an objective, third-person existence.

In everyday life, we take it for granted that there are external physical objects and that they exist independently of our own existence. This, in fact, is one of the criteria for a physical object - existing independently. Physical objects have a third-person type of existence. On the other hand, each of us has our own individual experiences. If anything is real, these personal experiences are real. They are real in the sense that there is no doubt that they exist. This kind of existence is different from the existence of physical objects. Our personal experiences do not and cannot exist independently of our own existence.

Why does this matter? If there are two kinds of existences, as Searle maintains, then materialism is false. (This does not mean, however, that substance dualism is true.)

Searle agrees with materialists in asserting that there is a causal explanation for the conscious mind. For example, a person’s mind would not exist without the neurological processes that go on in the brain. However, materialists go further. They deny the reality of consciousness. They claim that conscious experiences do not exist.

There are very few references for our subject (two kinds of existences). The primary source is Searle’s paper on dualism [reference 1]. There is a reference to Locke’s view on the subject in an NDPR review paper on Locke [reference 2]. Both Locke and Descartes insisted on the reality of our first-person experiences. Locke, however, unlike Descartes, denied the existence of a mental substance. I have written two notes on Searle’s notion of existence. [references 3 and 4]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy addresses some of the traditional questions about existence in Reference 5. It suggests that in the twentieth century, most philosophers adopted Russell’s view of existence. If you read only one paper, it should probably be reference 4.

References:

1. “Dualism Revisited”
   John Searle
   Journal of Physiology (2007)
   http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dh25/seminarofthesoul/Searle%20-%20Dualism%20Revisited.pdf

2. Review of Locke and Cartesian Philosophy (2019)
   Notre Dame Philosophical Review
   https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/locke-and-cartesian-philosophy/
   Reviewed by Matthew A. Leisinger, Emmanuel College, Cambridge

3. Summary of “Dualism Revisited”
   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HhjtG09GogeCIql9xaNz4584MG2ueQA_/view?usp=sharing
   Ron Willig (April 2020)

4. “Searle’s Two Kinds of Existences”
   https://drive.google.com/file/d/19DaumZQfjPfN_TH7xkuGNMZhVhZ3UNIh/view?usp=sharing
   Ron Willig (May 2020)

5. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on ‘Existence’
   https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/