Should dualists locate the physical basis of experience in the head?

Abstract

AbstractDualism holds that experiences are non-physical states that exist alongside physical states. Dualism leads to the postulation of psychophysical laws that generate experiences by operating on certain sorts of physical states. What sorts of physical states? To the limited extent that dualists have addressed this question, they have tended to favor a brain-based approach that locates the physical basis of experience in the head. In contrast, this paper develops an argument for a form of dualism on which experience has a physical basis that reaches out into the world. Specifically, the argument uses a puzzle about spatial experience to support a theory I call tracking dualism. On tracking dualism, a psychophysical law generates experiences by operating on complex physical states that involve both brain states and tracking relations that they bear to features of the environment. To develop the argument, I discuss tracking dualism alongside its more familiar physicalist counterpart, the tracking intentionalist theory associated with Dretske, Lycan, and Tye. I conclude by outlining a tracking dualist research agenda.