Antonella Corradini

The main aim of this essay is to try to clarify a central question concerning the coherence of emergent dualism. The question is approximately this: how should we articulate and defend emergent dualism, if emergence is mostly interpreted as a kind of supervenience, and supervenience is rejected by the supporters of dualism together with the dependence of the mental on the physical. What should an adequate conception of emergence look like? This essay will be part of an attempt to provide an answer to this question.

Until quite recently, mind-body dualism has been regarded with deep suspicion by both philosophers and scientists. This has largely been due to the widespread identification of dualism in general with one particular version of it: the interactionist substance dualism of Réné Descartes. This traditional form of dualism has, ever since its first formulation in the seventeenth century, attracted numerous philosophical objections and is now almost universally rejected in scientific circles as empirically inadequate. During the last few years, however, renewed attention has begun to be paid to the dualistic point of view, as a result of increasing discontent with the prevailing materialism and reductionism of contemporary scientific and philosophical thought. Awareness has grown that dualism need not be restricted to its traditional form and that other varieties of dualism are not subject to the difficulties commonly raised against Descartes' own version of it. Interest in these alternative versions of dualism is growing fast today, because it seems that they are capable of capturing deep-seated philosophical intuitions, while also being fully consistent with the methodological assumptions and empirical findings of modern scientific work on the human mind and brain. The object of this book is to provide philosophers, scientists, their students, and the wider general public with an up-to-date overview of current developments in dualistic conceptions of the mind in contemporary philosophy and science.

According to experimental philosophers, experiments conducted within the psychological sciences and the neurosciences can show that moral intuitions are incapable of thorough justification. Thus, as a substitute for reliable philosophical justifications, psychological or neuropsychological explanations should be taken into consideration to provide guidance about our conduct. - In my essay I shall argue against both claims. First, I will defend the justificatory capacity of moral philosophy and maintain that empirical evidence cannot undermine moral judgements. Secondly, I will point to some methodological difficulties in psychological and neuroscientific explanations of moral judgments. Finally I will show that Greene's (2008) argument from morally irrelevant factors fails to prove that moral implications can be drawn from scientific theories about moral psychology.