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Ralph Stefan Weir, The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics, Routledge, 2024, 177pp., $144.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781032457680.
Reviewed by Alin Cucu, University of Lausanne
Is property dualism really the best way out between the Scylla of physicalism and the Charybdis of substance dualism? Ralph Weir’s book builds on the growing discontent with physicalism among philosophers of mind, accompanied by a simultaneous aversion to substance dualism, with property dualism allegedly being a more adequate and defensible metaphysics of mind. His main argument, the parity argument, builds on the common ground between virtually all dualists (property or substance)—the conceivability argument—and concludes that if one accepts the conceivability argument, one should accept the existence of mental substances. The book is thus a defense of substance dualism.
The first four of the seven chapters are preparatory. Chapter 1 discusses the question of why the soul—the popular term for mental or nonphysical substance—is so…
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