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Can Ockham’s Razor Cut Through the Mind-Body Problem?

A Critical Examination of Churchland’s “Raze Dualism”
Argument for Materialism

Christopher J. Anderson†
University at Albany, SUNY

Abstract
The question of materialism’s adequacy as a solution to
the mind-body problem is important in psychology as
fields supported by eliminative materialism (e.g. neurop-
sychology and sociobiology) aim to “cannibalize” psy-
chology (Wilson, 1999). A common argument for
adopting a materialistic worldview, termed the “Raze
Dualism argument” in reference to Ockham’s razor, is
based on the principle of parsimony. It states that materi-
alism is to be considered the superior solution to the
mind-body problem because it is simpler than the dualist
alternative. In this paper, a prominent version of this
argument (Churchland, 1988) is critiqued via an analysis
of each of its premises. Illustrative in general of the limi-
tations of materialism, this argument is undermined by
assumptions which do not withstand scrutiny. First, Ock-
ham’s razor is shown to be a problematic principle. Sec-
ond, the question of empirical superiority or equality is
unresolved. Finally, there are other alternatives to mate-
rialism that are equally parsimonious, such as idealism.
The result of the argument is to reopen the case for ideal-
ism and dualism and to force the issue to be determined
on other grounds.
The debate over dualism, materialism, and idealism is ancient and is
unlikely to end with a clearly superior argument in the foreseeable
future. The apparently inescapable mind-body problem makes these
three philosophical positions an issue for psychology, although the dis-
cipline seems to have relegated the issue to the status of an insoluble
matter for others to debate. This is a mistake, because the position one
†
Please address all correspondence to Christopher Anderson at
ca4809@csc.albany.edu or by mail to Department of Psychology, SS
112; University at Albany, SUNY; Albany, NY 12222.
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Raze Dualism 47

takes regarding this problem affects a host of important issues such as

the dominant research paradigms, the research that is considered wor-
thy of funding, and the message psychology proclaims to the public.
As an example of the real relevance of philosophy, consider the debate
between different forms of materialism: non-reductive (which favors
mental explanation and thus cognitive science) and eliminative (pro-
neuropsychology, anti-mental). The ability of proponents of either
position to make their view appear relatively more reasonable has
played and continues to play a role in what strategies researchers find
most promising: no scientist wants to be an adherent of an illogical
paradigm, and no one wants to fund a program undergirded by flawed
logic.
The issue to be examined herein is more basic than which form of
materialism is most adequate for psychology. Dualism, the “other”
solution to the mind-body problem, is often portrayed by philosophers
and psychologists as the common man’s view, replete with glaring
inadequacies (although materialism also has logical and consequential
weaknesses that are rarely discussed). Neither of these views is clearly
the most adequate assumption for the study of the mind. However, in
some academic institutions, many presume the issue is settled with
materialism the victor. Others feel that materialism is simply a useful
“methodological” assumption for their work. A third group considers
the question to have no real relevance to their research. Each of these
views are in error, although the third position is perhaps the most
unfortunate. The philosophical perspective psychologists take affects
the direction and goals of research, and affects the way psychology is
situated in academia.
Currently, the predominant view among academic psychologists is
materialism in one of its several forms. This is due in part to the hope
psychologists have for their endeavor to be perceived as a natural sci-
ence. However, in one scenario, psychology will never be viewed as a
natural science, although some split-off disciplines may take on that
status (Rice, 1997). Accepting materialism unquestioningly or as a
“methodological” viewpoint (which amounts to stating “I do not find
this view to be true, but I will spend an entire career using this view as
a basic assumption”) is a form of conformity to disciplines that have
different purposes and needs than psychology, although they do cur-
rently enjoy more prestige in certain circles. Psychology can never
reach its full potential with this strategy, because of inherent disadvan-
tages in attempting to handle consciousness and subjective states with
purely material terms. From an alternative point of view, psychology is
more basic than physics, because the observations scientific theories
are predicated upon are subjective psychological states. Subjectivity
and data are inextricably bound up together; to attempt to separate
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48 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

them and consider one more basic than the other is problematic, to say
the least.
As an initial step towards a philosophy suited to psychology, one
must begin to examine some of the reasons materialism is widely
assumed to be true in today’s academic psychology community. This
paper examines one frequently employed argument for materialism
and critiques its assumptions.

1. AN APPARENT POINT FOR MATERIALISM: THE “RAZE

DUALISM” ARGUMENT
In his widely read book on the philosophy of mind, Churchland
(1988, chapter 2) attempts to address the issues central to the classic
and pervasive mind-body problem in an accessible manner. Often, this
problem is portrayed as a contest between dualism and materialism,
and Churchland follows this convention, although it is inaccurate.
Many will find this approach unsatisfying for reasons discussed in sec-
tion 2.3.
Churchland is well-known among those interested in contemporary
philosophy for his arguments in favor of eliminative materialism and
against other positions. When Churchland presents arguments against
dualism (leaving aside all other forms of mentalism), his initial move is
to invoke “Ockham’s razor.” This term is shorthand for a principle
common in rational methodology and science: when two theories have
equal merits in terms of their explanatory power, we are to prefer the
simpler of the two (Honderich, 1988, McCord Adams, 1987).1 Young
scientists are often taught this principle as one rule of good scientific
practice; in this context it is often known as parsimony.
Churchland’s application of Ockham’s razor amounts to the follow-
ing, which I call the “Raze Dualism” argument:

(1) If dualism and materialism appear to be able to explain the

same things, and one no better than the other, then we
should prefer the less complicated theory (Ockham’s razor).
(2) Dualism and materialism can explain all of the same things
and neither has an explanatory advantage over the other.
(3) Materialism is the simpler explanation because it posits only
one kind of “stuff.”
(4) We should prefer materialism (1, 2, 3).

1
Although some may differentiate this version of Ockham’s razor
from the concept of minimizing the number of entities postulated for
explaining phenomena, both are justified by the same reasoning. Fur-
thermore, Churchland uses both versions of the principle in his discus-
sion of dualism.
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Raze Dualism 49

As one can readily see, the argument is a straightforward use of

modus ponens. Ockham’s razor (1) is a classic and respected rule of
methodology. Premise (3) seems unexceptional. One may desire evi-
dence for (2), which Churchland appreciates and attempts to provide.
Some might argue that premise (2) is a misreading of Churchland’s
argument because he might argue that materialism has an explanatory
advantage. It is true that he writes “the advantage is just the other
way. . . [a] relative explanatory impotence of dualism (1988, p. 18).”
However, it doesn’t make sense to appeal to Ockham’s razor if there is
a clear data-driven advantage of one theory over another. If Church-
land could demonstrate a clear explanatory advantage of materialism,
then Ockham’s razor could be left, unblemished, in the metaphysical
war chest. Premise (2) may be false, or it may not belong in Church-
land’s intended argument.2 If the reader agrees with either of those
statements, he or she may stop here and dismiss Raze Dualism with
me, because the removal of this premise makes Raze Dualism an illogi-
cal argument.
Even though Churchland believes materialism has the advantage
here, he recognizes that it “is not a completely decisive point” for
materialism (1988, p. 19). The advantage he alludes to is more of a
promissory note (one might even be inclined to call it a statement of
faith) that materialism can deliver on its promise to devour all nonma-
terial explanation. We will touch on some potential justifications for
this belief in our discussion of the premises of Raze Dualism.
Assuming premise (2) constitutes a reasonable reading of the argu-
ment, I contend that not only can a flaw be found in this argument, but
that all but one of its premises are false, and the remaining premise is
potentially untrue.

2. ALL APPEARANCE AND NO REALITY

The argument is on surface logically acceptable, so it is the onus of
the dissenter to demonstrate why it is false. To this end, I will
endeavor to show how its premises are false. A deduction fails when
2
It is true that Churchland attempts to demonstrate an explanatory
advantage for materialism in a different section of the book. Thus, in
my criticism of this argument, premise (2) will essentially be defended
and Churchland’s statements bearing on the topic, which ironically
undermine Raze Dualism, will be criticized instead. While this could
likewise be seen as an ironic contradiction of my own goals, consider
that a higher-order goal of this paper is to question materialism in gen-
eral. Thus, it seems appropriate in this context to examine statements
concerning alleged explanatory advantages, since Churchland’s appar-
ently contradictory statements support other arguments for
materialism.
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50 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

any of its supporting premises are removed, so if there is sufficient

reason to accept just one of the arguments I present, the conclusion of
Raze Dualism cannot be accepted on the grounds given.
Without further ado, we shall proceed directly to a consideration of
the premises in the order they are given.

2.1. Ockham and Anti-Ockham

Before we analyze a particular use of Ockham’s razor, we should ask
whether this is a desirable principle to use at all. In doing so, we are
questioning the truth value of premise (1) of Churchland’s “Raze
Dualism” argument, which is an application of the principle of parsi-
mony. This premise states that if two metaphysical theories explain the
evidence equally well, we should prefer the simpler one.
The principle of parsimony as stated above is an assertion, so one
must inspect what underlies its status as a widely acknowledged princi-
ple of science and rational thinking. First, note that the razor can be
discussed as an inductive bias; it gives a basis for decision when the
explanatory power of competing predictive hypotheses are equal.
These hypotheses are established on the grounds of limited data and
claim to accurately predict the phenomena of interest in other times
and places. We could just as easily argue in such a situation: accept the
most complex hypothesis, and call this Anti-Ockham’s Razor. What is
there to recommend Ockham over Anti-Ockham?
In many cases of scientific and rational inquiry, there are many com-
plex, overly specific theories that fit the available evidence. The most
basic form of Ockham’s razor is that sufficient reason must be given
for the assumption of more entities. In other words, the complex the-
ory should be discarded when faced with simpler and equally accurate
theories. This is done because most of these complex hypotheses con-
flict with each other due to their specificity, and chances are that, as
more information is gained, most of these intricate theories will be
ruled out. By way of contrast, the simpler and more general hypothe-
ses that fit the data are less likely to do so by coincidence; after all,
there are fewer possible simple hypotheses than complex ones in any
given case.
Some might question whether simpler hypotheses really fit the data
better or whether they just seem to because we prefer simpler explana-
tions and tend to gather data in such a way that confirms our preferred
hypotheses. Without question, there is compelling evidence that
laypersons as well as experts tend to search for and retain information
in a variety of biased ways. However, this version of Ockham’s razor
has a (flawed) logical basis: if there is only one correct theory, the
probability that any given complex theory will lead to correct predic-
tions is lower than the probability that a simpler hypothesis will. This
is established as true with probability theory due to the exponentially
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Raze Dualism 51

increasing number of potential hypotheses as we add assumptions to

the hypothesis. This however, does not conflict with the proposition
that it may be the case that for any given phenomenon, the most accu-
rate inductive hypothesis is relatively complex. This doesn’t change
the fact that the majority of complex, evidentially consistent hypothe-
ses for the phenomenon were less likely to be accurate than the simple
ones.
All of this makes some intuitive sense and is also occasionally useful
in practice. However, there are at least two good reasons for being
careful in applying the principle of parsimony. The force of the follow-
ing two objections should be enough to demonstrate that Ockham’s
razor is not a perfect decision rule that we can accept as true a priori,
as useful in all situations. Note that I do not intend to defend Anti-
Ockham’s razor. Ultimately these initial arguments are aimed at rais-
ing appreciable doubt about Ockham’s razor, not at affirming its oppo-
site. I proceed with two major difficulties for the principle.

2.1.1. Preferring Small Sets

Let us tackle this issue using the example of an artificial intelligence
(AI) trying to find the correct hypothesis to describe and predict
instances of a target concept. ID3 (Quinlan, 1986) is a prototypical
algorithm in decision tree learning. Both objections to pure parsimony
derive from this algorithm and the discussion presented by Mitchell
(1997), although they are equally relevant outside of the field of
machine learning. The particulars of ID3 and its successors aren’t
important; all we need to know about AI is that all machine learning
algorithms have an inductive bias (a method for choosing what hypoth-
esis to use in generalizing beyond the data), and that ID3’s bias is
essentially Ockham’s razor. In ID3 and all decision tree learning,
hypotheses are represented as trees of attributes related to the target
concept, which terminate in binary or higher-order classifications (see
Figure 1 for a fairly parsimonious example). ID3 prefers the smallest
tree that fits the data, that is, the fewest nodes and branches possible.
One can think of each level of branches as representing a variable, the
individual branches as levels of the variable, and the bottom-most
nodes as predictions for instances which are defined by the branches
leading directly to it.
Recall that Ockham’s razor, this inductive bias, is defended on the
grounds that there are fewer simple hypotheses that will fit the data,
and thus any given one is less likely to be wrong. However, using this
basic logical argument for Ockham’s razor, we could just as easily
defend preferring any small set of hypotheses, not just simple hypothe-
ses that use the minimal number of attributes to define the target con-
cept. Restricted to any small set (not necessarily the relatively small
set of simple hypotheses), the chance of finding a hypothesis within
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52 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

FIGURE 1

Example of a decision tree, in this case programmed by the author to predict dat-
ing behavior. The tree can be considered a set of four hypotheses about future
situations, in which the terminal nodes (rectangles) are its predictions given the
state of affairs described by the branches (analogous to levels of the variable; each
circle is a variable).

that set consistent with the data is a priori smaller than the probability
of finding an adequate hypothesis in a larger set. Thus, consistency
with the data is given greater weight for a simple hypothesis. How-
ever, what is lacking is any reason to believe the set of simple hypothe-
ses is more relevant than the other possible small sets that could be
defined. Ockham’s razor already appears rather dubious.

2.1.2. How does one determine the “simplicity” of a hypothesis?

Another major problem for the principle of parsimony concerns just
how we define simplicity in order to decide which hypotheses fit this
criterion better. In some cases this might seem obvious: one fellow
supposes that the set of N natural phenomena are carried out by a
large set of deities, D. His friend, the monotheist, disagrees and claims
that the same natural phenomena are carried out by one deity, dx.
Supposing they both have some semi-plausible stories to tell about
how this works, Ockham’s razor tells us to side with the monotheist,
whose explanation uses one single attribute for explanation. But the
polytheist objects: his theory uses one attribute, deities, to explain N.
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Raze Dualism 53

Sure, different deities do different things, but you can always explain
everything by saying “some deity did it,” a parsimonious variant of his
theory. He also charges that the monotheist is being sneaky, because
even though she has one deity doing all of the work, that one deity has
various intermediaries who carry out all the hard work of delivering
messages to humans, diverting rivers, and so on through N, making her
theory less parsimonious than it seems.
Their disagreement highlights an important point. If one needs to
decide who has the simpler hypothesis, one would have to arrive at a
mutually agreeable way of representing hypotheses, and also a method
for quantifying the simplicity of those hypotheses. This is not impossi-
ble; for example, ID3 represents hypotheses and provides a method for
quantifying simplicity. One may build a decision tree for classifying
the data (when one is working with phenomena that are tractable via
this approach), and then simply count the nodes.
Although this method appears to be objective, it has a serious prob-
lem. The size of the any decision tree hypothesis entirely depends
upon the internal representation being used by the AI “learner.” To
see why this is so, it would be optimal to spend more time discussing
decision trees, as Mitchell (1997) provides a clear case of exactly this
point. For the present purpose, though, simply imagine two AI learn-
ers attempting to predict work absenteeism, who have different repre-
sentations of their basic concepts. Among other variables, one learner
treats a conjunction of features as one binary feature (“a good day for
fishing [Y/N]?”), whereas the other represents virtually the same varia-
ble with two binary branches (“Warm [Y/N]?” and “Clear sky [Y/
N]?”). These two learners will likely arrive at quite different decision
trees, mutually defending their incompatible hypotheses about work
absenteeism with Ockham’s razor. Furthermore, given that there are
other variables represented in the data given to the learners, it is possi-
ble that the decision trees constructed will be exactly the same size. At
this point, one suspects something is seriously awry. The simplicity of a
hypothesis can be an ambiguous issue, which leads to difficulties in
applying parsimony.

2.1.3. Razor-Edge Apologetics

Some may hope to shore up the application of Ockham’s razor in
this domain by claiming that there are actually two versions of the
maxim, and that the preceding arguments only undercut the less rele-
vant one. That is, some believe that the razor as an inductive bias spec-
ifying which hypotheses to prefer is different than the razor as a maxim
that claims not to postulate entities where they are not necessary.
It is interesting to note in this regard that the scholastic philosopher
William of Ockham was a devout theist, and if his principle implied the
truth of materialism, he was apparently ignorant of this fact. This is
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54 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

probably because this other “version” of the razor was never intended
as an ontological principle at all, but rather an epistemological or
methodological axiom (Ockham, trans. Boehner, 1959). Thus, if one
wishes to make the distinction, it should be pointed out that this meta-
physical application of the razor is entirely inappropriate. The likely
counterargument is that there is nothing sacred about how Ockham
intended this principle to be used. In defense, one may reiterate the
above arguments, that in either form this principle is nothing more
than an arbitrary bias. It is a bias which has often suited the needs of
human scientists, but that gives it no special status in regards to meta-
physical issues such as the mind-body problem.
Perhaps the reader will dismiss Ockham as a partisan, and think
reinterpretation of his maxim is justifiable; even though this reinterpre-
tation doesn’t salvage the argument. In this case, consider the argu-
ment of noted materialist Gerhard Wassermann (1997) regarding the
principle of parsimony. Wassermann’s argument parallels the current
proposition in that both agree that the principle of parsimony is “at
best, an arbitrary convention” (p.36). His analysis actually indicates
that the principle fares much worse than this. According to his obser-
vation and systematization of modern scientific theory, successful theo-
ries accrue more components than their less successful counterparts,
partly because a fruitful theory will lead to many related deductions
and testable hypotheses. The theory is then dependent on the verifica-
tion of those hypotheses; these become essential components of the
theory. Thus, a “good” theory may have many hundreds of component
hypotheses. Wasserman states that the accuracy of a theory is what is
principally important, and that continued invocation of parsimony is an
artifact of scientific indoctrination. While this scientific philosophy
bears only incidentally on the supposed metaphysical version of Ock-
ham’s razor, the recognition of the latter principle likely depends on
the prestige its cousin enjoys in scientific circles. If Wassermann is cor-
rect, the principle of parsimony has no place in modern scientific inves-
tigation and its ontological application would be abandoned, were this
fact to be recognized.
Obviously, there is doubt as to whether Ockham’s razor is always or
even usually a good rule. Furthermore, there is room to question
whether its application to metaphysics or ontology (the philosophical
subdisciplines relevant to the mind-body problem) makes sense. This
has the net effect of opening premise (1) of Churchland’s Raze Dual-
ism argument to doubt, if not outright rejection. Even if one is
unwaveringly committed to the principle of parsimony in all areas of
philosophy as well as science, there are other grounds for dismissing
the argument.
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Raze Dualism 55

2.2. Materialism Overestimated

Recall that premise (2) of the Raze Dualism argument states that
dualism and materialism are equals when it comes to explaining the
data at hand. This is crucial to the argument, because there is no need
to employ Ockham’s razor or any other sort of inductive bias unless we
cannot decide between two theories on the grounds of evidence.
Churchland is aware of the need to justify this premise and attempts
to supply some evidence regarding how much the materialist enter-
prise has accomplished. However, this attempt at persuasion depends
on what would appear to be a misrepresentation of the state of our
scientific progress. For example, examine a statement Churchland uses
to bolster (2) and whether an investigation of the field in question sup-
ports that statement. For the time being we will grant that interaction-
ist dualism is somewhat lacking a fleshed-out explanatory theory
(although the proposal of Libet, 1994, deserves consideration), and
defend the “fallback” position Churchland’s dualist takes, that materi-
alism hasn’t explained the central aspects of mind (e.g. reason, emo-
tion, and consciousness). Here is the materialist counterargument to
that:
. . . this reply is not a very good one. So far as the capac-
ity for reasoning3 is concerned, machines already exist
that execute in minutes sophisticated deductive and math-
ematical calculations that would take a human a lifetime
to execute. . . central properties, no less than the periph-
eral, have been addressed with profit by various material-
ist research programs (Churchland, 1988, footnote
added).
This is doubly wrong. First, it is questionable that scientific research
alone could answer a metaphysical question; consider the point made
earlier about the inseparable link between consciousness and data.4
Perhaps this is why metaphysics was essentially dismissed as the natu-
ralization of philosophy became prevalent.
Secondly, on a factual basis, the argument is mistaken. Any casual
observer of the field of machine learning/AI can tell you why5, and
leaders in the field reaffirm this. The problem is not that machines

3
Note the selectivity here, the importance of which will be apparent
shortly, if it is not already so.
4
Incidentally, this is why books which attempt to use data to demys-
tify consciousness, are alternately circular or frustrating. The futility of
our scientific attempts to explain away consciousness is an issue I hope
to see developed in the future.
5
This remains true, even given an additional dozen years of progress
since Churchland’s book was published.
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56 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

cannot do some of the things he claims they have done. The problem
is that the state and potential of artificial intelligence is misrepre-
sented. Indeed, a computer can calculate pi to an unimaginable num-
ber of decimal places, much faster than even the most exceptional
human might. Certain programs can replicate some scientific deduc-
tions, given appropriate data. But the same computers, and more
advanced ones, cannot execute some of the most taken-for-granted
aspects of ordinary cognition. Inferences and decisions which mentally
retarded persons make are beyond the capability of current technol-
ogy, and there is no sign of an impending solution. Some of these diffi-
culties are captured by the classic “frame problem,” which concerns
just how we make inferences about novel problems so quickly when we
do not have the answer itself stored in memory. Questions such as
“does a giraffe wear underwear” are absurdly difficult for a computer
to answer without having the answer itself represented in memory.
Even a slow, heuristic-using, error-making human (who has never
thought about this before and certainly does not have the answer rep-
resented) can answer the question rapidly and accurately. The com-
puter, meanwhile, will work away indefinitely. This is one of the most
difficult problems in the field of AI, and it seems to have remarkable
staying power.
On the basis of this issue and others (such as the difficulty of imple-
menting creativity into AI), some AI researchers challenge Church’s
(1936) thesis that all cognition is computable. Churchland assumes
that Church’s thesis is correct. Unfortunately, space constraints pre-
vent discussing this in detail, since a fuller analysis would require delv-
ing into Churchland’s discussion of computers in a later chapter of the
book, along with Selmer Bringsjord’s challenge to some of the assump-
tions of such arguments (Bringsjord & Ferrucci, 2000). The important
point for the current purpose is that this premise of the Raze Dualism
argument requires further assumptions about the nature of mental
states that are still controversial.6
A sober position for both the materialist and the dualist to take here
would be to acknowledge that both camps have difficulties in explain-
ing certain things clearly, without circularity or paradoxes arising. To
some, materialism may seem more promising, but this is a matter of
faith or speculation.

6
To show this is so, one need not even resort to the fact that Church-
land doesn’t defend the claim that other central properties like emo-
tion and consciousness are addressed by AI. The example of progress
on “reason” is just as murky. Although the quoted paragraph sounds
convincing, Bringsjord (personal communication) cites several exam-
ples of logical problems which are unaddressable by even the most
powerful computers.
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Raze Dualism 57

Overall, it is unclear what we should believe regarding premise (2).

Either materialism or dualism may ultimately claim the explanatory
advantage, although it will not be unusual if many will continue to
assume dualism is thoroughly discredited on this criterion. If my argu-
ments are correct, any explanatory advantage is more apparent than
real. The era and culture in which we live in can make us prone to
unsupported statements about how materialism has the answer to eve-
rything when this is actually quite uncertain. Furthermore, the fact
that all data arrives through consciousness makes attempting to reduce
consciousness with data meaningless. For this reason, I do not believe
any of the major proposed solutions to the mind-body problem will
ever gain an empirical advantage. This statement actually supports
premise (2), but since Churchland’s statements on behalf of material-
ism actually undermine this premise, the argument is still against mate-
rialism. I have not found any arguments about the empirical power of
major philosophies intelligible, so I do not wish to supplement this
trend here simply to undermine another premise when the other two
can be faulted. Fortunately, the critique of the third premise of Raze
Dualism is the most straightforward.

2.3. Materialism is Simpler. . .than What?

Assertion (3) of Raze Dualism, that materialism is more parsimoni-

ous than dualism, can be critiqued without any complicated logic.
However, it is not a matter of showing this premise is in itself false.
The issue here is in the information that is omitted by this premise, and
the fact that this information changes the possible conclusions.
Simply put, even if we grant that materialism is simpler in terms of
the number of “entities” it postulates, there are other alternatives to
dualism that are also parsimonious. Thus, even if one finds the prior
arguments lacking, there is still difficulty for one who aims to affirm
Raze Dualism’s conclusion.
Two especially salient alternatives should be considered by one
inquiring into the mind-body problem: non-reductive materialism (e.g.
McClamrock, 1995) and the various forms of idealism (e.g. idealisms
founded by Berkeley, Bradley, Kant, or Royce, as well as panpsychist
formulations). In general, idealism(s) take a path opposite materialism
in simplifying and solving some of the problems of dualism, by suppos-
ing that reality is fundamentally mental, that experience and conscious-
ness are more fundamental than what we call matter. Churchland
suppresses the concepts of immaterialism, idealism, and panpsychism
in his book, an introduction to philosophy of mind. However, one
could easily swap idealism for materialism in the Raze Dualism argu-
ment, and draw a quite contradictory “valid” conclusion, that we
should affirm idealism.
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The closest Churchland comes to considering the idealist alternative

is the following statement: “there is no doubt at all that physical matter
exists” (p.18). This is simply untrue; the fact that there are ideas such
as idealism and panpsychism and that debate continues regarding the
nature of reality among those who have a monistic perspective is
enough to refute the statement. Being generous, perhaps it is meant to
be read as “there is no doubt in my mind that physical matter exists.”
We could discard such a statement as fairly irrelevant to the rest of us.
One can read this statement a third way as an attempt to claim that
doubt about the material is simply outdated and discredited. However,
it would seem to be problematic to state this as a flat assertion in an
introductory treatise. Churchland most likely intends for the reader to
see this kind of doubt about matter (which is the Cartesian intuition)
as analogous to considering vitalism seriously. The irony is that this is
exactly the kind of question-begging that Churchland attacks in his sec-
tion on arguments against eliminativism (p. 48). Is it incoherent for me
to doubt the material nature of reality? Why? Because “I” am a mate-
rial object? This begs the question in the sense that we are supposed to
ignore challenges to materialism solely on the grounds that material-
ism is true. Ultimately, I can imagine no reasonable interpretation of
premise (3) that leaves the conclusion of Raze Dualism intact.
In any case, the issue of idealism and materialism is clearly a com-
plex issue. A credible argument should justify rejecting non-material-
ist monisms, rather than feigning ignorance of such positions. As
regards Raze Dualism, the point has clearly been made that premise
(3) ignores several equally accurate premises (e.g. “idealism is more
parsimonious than dualism”) which lead to different and incompatible
conclusions.

3. SUMMARY
To sum up, arguments were presented questioning each of the three
premises embedded in Churchland’s rejection of dualism. First, Ock-
ham’s razor is not an unproblematic principle. There is still debate
concerning its appropriateness and doubts about its implementation.
Second, there is no decisive “evidence” concerning the explanatory
supremacy of either of these two worldviews. Sometimes proponents
of both positions make somewhat extravagant claims, their faith in the
position perhaps coloring their view of the evidence and the criteria for
superiority. Finally, even if one accepts the validity of Ockham’s razor
and assumes our metaphysical theories reach a draw on explanation,
we aren’t compelled to accept materialism because there are alterna-
tive positions with a monistic basis.
Metaphysical questions are important to psychology because the
answer a discipline accepts determines the direction of future research,
partially through the mechanism of what is perceived as legitimate
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Raze Dualism 59

research by funding agencies. To those who favor the assumption of

eliminative materialism, cognitive neuroscience is the future of psy-
chology. Non-reductive materialists favor cognitive science. What
non-materialists believe is the best direction for future research is
rarely considered, because materialism is so widely assumed to be true.
This paper is one initial attempt at demonstrating that this assumption
is unjustified. Materialism’s arguments must be opened to further
scrutiny to determine if there is anything compelling underlying its
dominance in psychology and in academia. Idealist alternatives in the
philosophy of psychology have been long neglected (despite noted ide-
alists Josiah Royce and Hugo Munsterberg serving as early presidents
of APA). There is never a bad time to question one’s assumptions;
these arguments are presented with the hope that psychology begin its
questioning anew, from the “top-down.”

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60 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001

Author’s Note
The exposition of these arguments owes much to the following indi-
viduals: Ron McClamrock, Selmer Bringsjord, Robert Sternberg, Tram
Neill, and George Berg. Gratitude is likewise extended to Jeff Jack-
son, Kirk Schillinger and others who have endured and even enjoyed
much philosophical discussion concerning this issue and other topics.