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Mental causation between the material and the immaterial has been problematic for interactionist substance dualism ever since its first major proponent René Descartes. The contemporary philosopher Jaegwon Kim believes he has found an argument that shows exactly why an immaterial event cannot be said to cause a material event; he calls this the pairing problem argument. This thesis will argue that there is actually sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that Kim’s argument is unsuccessful due to one of its premises being false. Furthermore, this thesis will also argue that interactionist substance dualism is actually a philosophically viable alternative, and lastly ways are sketched of how one might go about constructing such a view responsibly.

abstract: Given the success of science, weak forms of mind-brain dependence are commonly treated as uncontroversial within contemporary philosophies of mind. More controversial are the different metaphysical claims inferred from this dependence, many ascribing ontological priority to the brain. Consider the following three propositions: (i) neurological events are essentially identified by their role in material systems, laws, and causes that are constitutively non-rational; (ii) at least some mental events are essentially identified in virtue of their role in the use of reason; (iii) all mental events are realized by, identical to, or composed out of, neurological events. (i) is uncontroversial. However, (iii) is strictly materialistic. (i), (ii) and (iii) taken together appear incoherent. A fruitful task for philosophy is to resolve this apparent incoherence. In his 1997 book The Last Word Thomas Nagel offers an explication of reason that conceptually transcends the nature of material substrate. In his 2010 article "Modest Dualism" Tyler Burge offers reasons to think of propositional thought as irreducible to the concepts of the material sciences. Both focus on rationality as a unique form of intentionality. Both philosophers also reject materialism (iii). On their accounts it's reasonable to take 'rational intentionality' as exhibiting a logical priority of the mind with respect to the brain in inquiries into the nature of mind. Granting this, the diminished conception of mind presupposed by prevailing contemporary theories is seen to be the result of a more general failure to recognize the logical priority and intricate nature of rationality. The robust views of rationality expressed by Nagel and Burge constitute grounds for argument against even the weakest form of materialism. I develop such an argument in this thesis, showing that the propositional attitudes exhibited in thought and speech preclude all materialistic notions of mind. Furthermore, I take the nature of propositional attitudes to suggest a perspective for exploring the fundamental nature of mind, one that focuses not on composition but on rational powers. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Philosophy 2011

Cette thèse vise à mener une étude détaillée sur la manière dont les penseurs du XIIIème siècle ont appréhendé et utilisé le fameux dictum d’Aristote du De anima II : « l’âme est l’acte premier du corps organique qui est potentiellement en vie » En effet, nous examinons les modalités philosophiques qui ont poussé Bonaventure et Thomas d’Aquin à proposer chacun une lecture originale de ce passage tout en admettant tous les deux que l’âme humaine et le corps ne sont pas à prendre comme deux substances distinctes, mais comme deux parties qui constituent l’essence d’une personne humaine. Nous tentons ainsi de décrire, dans leur processus d’élaboration et de mise en œuvre, ces théories qui visent à nous démontrer l’unité naturelle de l’être humain, ce qui constitue au final des solutions aux problèmes issus de la « two substances view », c'est-à-dire celui du dualisme des substances. / The objective of this thesis is to understand how 13th century thinkers have adopted the famous dictum of Aristotle's De anima II that “the soul is the first act of the organic body potentially having life”. In this perspective, this thesis examines the way in which Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, each with his own creativity, elaborated to establish the unity of human being that consist in their claim that the human soul and body are not two distinct substances, but two essential parts of the human nature or a human person. In so doing, this thesis analyses the concepts like “substance”, “hoc aliquid”, “intellective soul” “intellect” etc and their meaning in respective contexts where Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas give us relevant solutions that can deal with problems arising from the "two substances view", or substance dualism.