Dualism and its place in a philosophical structure for psychiatry.
Medicine, health care, and philosophy March 1, 2019 Hane Htut Maung
A common argument in psychiatry—that neuroscience undermines dualism—applies only to Descartes' version, not to Chalmers' modern dualism. The paper shows that critics conflate psychological and phenomenal concepts of mind and overlook different dualist varieties. While biological psychiatry's neuroscientific findings challenge Cartesian dualism, they pose no problem for Chalmers' dualism, which separates the "easy" problem of explaining psychological processes from the "hard" problem of consciousness. Psychiatrists can accept biological psychiatry's scientific claims while holding Chalmers' dualism true, meaning the mind-body problem in psychiatry need only address the easy problem.