A big part of subject dualism comes down to the mind body problem. One important part of the mind-body problem arises because it seems impossible that a scientific account of what goes on in a conscious brain, however complete, could of itself predict the conscious experiences of the person whose brain it is. Ordinarily, perhaps, we are not too puzzled by the fact that we have inner experiences. Invoke science, to arrive at a better explanation and understanding of inner experiences, and we encounter neurons, synaptic …show more content…
There is another kind of explanation, I shall argue, which may be called "personalistic" explanation. This is an entirely respectable kind of explanation; it works, however, in a certain sense, in the opposite direction to scientific explanation. As things become increasingly personalistically intelligible, they become, roughly, increasingly scientifically unintelligible, and vice versa. As the contents of a conscious person 's head come increasingly into focus scientifically, as a brain or physical system, inevitably the mental aspects seem to disappear; as the contents of the person 's head come increasingly into focus personalistically, as a mind, so the brain, the neurons, the physical system seem to disappear. The key to solving this important part of the philosophical or conceptual mind-body problem is to recognize a dualism, not of kinds of entity, but of kinds of