Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism

Erwin Tegtmeier, Mannheim

1. The Dualism of the Mental and the Physical

British Empiricism and German Idealism have blurred the

distinction between the mental and the physical. Physical
Objects objects such as a chair or a tree have been construed
as complexes of sense data and thus as complexes of mental
contents. Kant has built his epistemology on this fundamental
confusion. Kant holds mind to be much more active than Locke
and Hume had assumed and to be the producer of the objects
of knowledge, which starts from with unstructured material
caused by something outside of the mind. Brentano tried to
overcome idealism by first clearing the confusion between the
mental and the physical and by fixing the distinction (Brentano
1874, 2. Buch, 1. Kap). He first held on to intentionality as the
hallmark of the mental. His methodological maxim was to start
from the phenomenological data and he counted the distinction
between the mental and the physical as such a datum. Before
he could note the hallmark which is common to everything
mental, Brentano had to get hold of the class of all mental
phenomena and contrast it with the class of all physical
phenomena.
The idealists attempt to show that these are not two
different classes, and so do the materialists. Today, idealists are
rare. Materialists, according to whom everything is physical,
dominate; and dualism in the tradition of Descartes or Brentano
has a hard time. Materialists have to reduce the mental to the
physical. The possibility of such a reduction is suggested by the
thesis of psycho-physiological parallelism, although this thesis
implies a dualism and no reduction. It is accepted by most psy-
chologists and says that each mental state is correlated with a
physiological state in the brain such that the accompanying
brain states are different when the mental states are different.
Obviously, the brain states are physical. Symbolise by MS a
mental state and by PH the accompanying brain state. A
reduction of the mental to the physical along the lines of
2 Erwin Tegtmeier

psycho-physiological parallelism would amount, with respect to

our case, to a claim of identity between MS and PH, or rather to
the claim that MS is nothing but PH. Let MS stand for a mental
state of hearing and PH for the parallel state of the brain (the
electrical and chemical activity of a certain area of the brain). It
is easy to see that the identity claim is false. What presents
itself to us when we are aware of hearing something, for
example1, is very different from an electro-chemical brain state.
To see that this, it is not necessary to take into account that the
first is mental and the second physical. It is enough to compare
how the hearing and how the brain state is.
I want to elucidate my argument of the obvious difference by
another proposed reduction, the reduction of colours to the
wavelengths of light rays. Colours are obviously different from
lengths or rather from distances between amplitudes. The
colour lime green, for example, is obviously different from the
correlated wavelength. To be sure, lime green light actually has
that wavelength. Nevertheless, the two are different. That two
properties occur at one and the same thing does not make
them one and the same property.
I called differences between mental and accompanying brain
states “obvious”. Hence, I presupposed that we know the two
kinds of states and that we are acquainted with how they are.
That seems to go without saying and should be taken for
granted. When we perceive a lime green object we are
presented with the colour lime green and we are also presented
in perception by lengths and have only to transfer it to light
waves in order to get a clear idea of the structure of light
waves. The difference is so great that it stands out and is
obvious. No theoretical presuppositions seem necessary to
recognize the difference. The readout on a spectrometer is also
obviously different from seeing the respective colour.
However, today the more implicit than explicit view endemic
in analytic philosophy is rather that the objects of mental states
are not given to us. Instead, according to this view, we have
only a description of the object, also called a representational
1
I deliberately choose a property of mental states as an example
although I know that the analytical philosophy of mind is still on
the Humean position of recognising only sense data, now called
more nobly “qualia” (see Gadenne 2004, Kap. 5). I maintain that
without mental states there can be no intentionality.
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 3

content which the object is supposed to fulfil. Materialists deny

that there are mental acts intentionally related to objects, of
course. They have to rely on linguistic representation and the
causal relations of the brain state to other brain states and to
the environment. This view does not allow to speak of the
presenting itself of the object and it makes the
epistemologically realist claim that we know the world as it is in
itself very doubtful if not impossible. At any rate, it implies that
we know the objects, including properties and natures (such as
lime green or being long) only indistinctly and that they could
be very different from how they appear to be. Hence, according
to this epistemology and semantics, without an intentional
relation to the object the mental properties could be in reality
brain properties though the correlated properties are given to
us as very different. In so far as this epistemology stems from
materialism it reinforces itself by its epistemological and
semantic implications. But its also undermines itself because
those implications are strongly sceptical and thus makes all
claims of knowledge fundamentally specious. Isn’t that the
salient characteristic of contemporary analytical philosophy:
deep scepticism (at most a jump into or a bullying of the astute
mind into an unjustified realism)?

2. Is the Distinction between the Mental and Physical

Categorial?

At first, the division into mental and physical was a division of

properties or natures. To characterise a mental state as a
perception is to indicate one of its properties, one of its natures.
Likewise, it is a property of an individual brain that a certain
area of it is activated. Now, to say of the perception that it is
mental and of the activation of the brain area that it is physical
amounts to a characterisation of a characterisation and could
be understood as the ascription of properties of the second
order to properties of the first order. We know those properties
of the second order, and we take them to be incompatible.
Therefore, we could use them to decide whether the properties
correlated in accordance with the thesis of psycho-physiological
parallelism could be reduced to each other in one of the two
directions. The outcome would be negative. Since on the one
4 Erwin Tegtmeier

side of the parallelism there are the mental and on the other
side the physical properties. However, we saw that we need not
draw on the second order properties of mental and physical,
because the first order properties compared were obviously
different.
The two properties of the second order are not only useful to
block reduction of the mental to the physical or the other way
round but they are also important for their own sake. As was
mentioned already, the properties of the second order exclude
each other, i.e., a property of the first order is either mental or
physical. They seem also jointly exhaustive in their domain of
properties of the first order, i.e., each property has one of the
two properties either that of being mental or that of being
physical. Hence the two properties of the second order
determine a classification. Moreover, the classification is rather
comprehensive since it covers the domain of all properties of
the first order. Possibly it covers more kinds of entities and even
all entities, i.e., existents. Therefore, one could take the
dichotomy to be categorial, and the mental and the physical to
be ontological categories.
In order to decide whether the mental and the physical are
ontological categories one has to start from a system of
categories, from a hierarchy of categories which that belongs to
an ontological theory. I will ask the question whether the mental
and the physical are categories with respect to the ontology I
advocate (Tegtmeier 1993). The question is then whether the
category candidates can be fitted into the category hierarchy.
Until now, I talked about properties. Ontologically, That this is
ontologically not precise enough. Properties can be categorised
either as universals (i.e. it is assumed that more then one thing
can have the same property) or as particular (which implies that
they can be properties of one thing only). Particular properties
are today mostly called “tropes”. In my ontology properties are
universals and not tropes. But the category of universals is not
one of the highest categories of its category hierarchy. There
are three highest categories: things, facts, and forms. Facts
consist of things and forms give things and facts their category
membership. The category of things has the two subcategories
of individuals and universals. Universals come in several
subcategories divided according to the number of things to
which they are connected in facts. There are universals which
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 5

that are connected to only one other thing. They are called
“non-relational universals”. There relational universals which
that are connected to two, to three and to four other things.
They are called “two-term universals”, “three-term universals”
and “four-term universals”. In addition, universals are divided
into universals of the first and universals of the second order.
The mental and physical properties we first examined first
would be categorised as non-relational universals of the first
order. Hence, if the mental and the physical were categories at
all in my ontology, they would be subcategories of the category
of non-relational universals of the first order. However, the
properties of higher order of being mental and of being physical
could not be categorised as universals since they would deter-
mine categories. As was mentioned already, the bases of
category membership are forms. Forms are connected to what
they form more closely than things (individuals and universals)
are connected to each other by facts. Thus, although mental
and physical can be characterised as properties they cannot be
put in the category of universals in my ontology like the
members of the classes of the mental and the physical we
examined until now.
The category of universals is co-ordinated to the category of
individuals. It follows from the laws for classificatory hierarchies
that if the mental and the physical are subcategories of the
category of non-relational universals of the first order, they
cannot be also subcategories of the category of individuals. A
class must not occur twice in the hierarchy. It has to have
exactly one place in the hierarchy. Consequently, if non-
relational universals of the first order are divided into mental
and physical ones, individuals cannot also be equally divided.
But then also relational universals of the first order also cannot
be divided into mental and physical ones. That would be
questionable since there are clearly physical and mental
relations. Thus, the categories of the mental and the physical
would occur twice as subcategories of the categories of the
non-relational universals of the first order and as subcategories
of the category of relational universals of the first order.
It would be no solution either to place the dichotomy
between mental and physical above the division between
individuals and universals, either. Then the mental and the
physical would be subcategories of the category of things. But
6 Erwin Tegtmeier

the same difficulty arises. Since, as we already noted, there are

mental relations as well as mental properties, and physical
relations as well as physical properties, the categories of
relational and non-relational universals would have to appear
several times in the hierarchy of categories of my ontology.
As the classification into the mental and the physical has a
very large domain and might be thought to classify all existents,
the proposalit suggests itself to establishof establishing the
classification as the highest categorial division. That seems to
be the only way to avoid the difficulties discussed and to have a
category system where all categories occur only once.
However, it this demanded demands a comprehensive
adaptation of all the subcategories to the two highest
categories of the mental and the physical. In my ontology with
its categories as a given the difficulty would still arise. Hence,
the conclusion has to be that the mental and the physical
cannot enter as categories in the category hierarchy of my
ontology.
It seems that that the mental and the physical can be
categories only if all the other categories are separated
accordingly, i.e. only if no category comprises mental as well as
physical members. Now, traditionally in ontology the same
system of categories is applied to the mental as well as to the
physical. In Aristotle, for example, the category of substance is
applied to the mental as well as to the physical. Descartes’
(1644, part I) ontology stands out as one which that
accommodates the division between the mental and the
physical as a division between two categories, which em-
phasises the disparity (radical difference) between the mental
and the physical and which excludes any categorial overlap
between the two realms.
Bergmann showed in his book Realism how Descartes’
ontology contains the seed of a development to idealism
(Bergmann 1967, part II) and he introduces a test for an
ontology without tendency toward idealism. The test is just
whether the same categories apply to the mental and to the
physical. My own ontology passes that test and as a
consequence the classes of the mental and the physical are not
admitted as categories. If Bergmann is right in his diagnosis
that Descartes’ ontology creates a trend towards idealism, in a
way it is, in a way self-defeating, as idealism eliminates again
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 7

the dualism of the mental and the physical which Descartes

established with great effort in favour of mental monism.

3. Are there Mental Individuals?

I said that my ontology is designed to apply the same

categories to the mental and the physical. That does not mean
that all categories are applicable to the mental and to the
physical. Clearly, forms such as conjunction and negation are
neither mental nor physical. Presumably, facts also are neither
mental, nor physical although they have constituents which that
are mental or physical. The cases by which we introduced the
distinction between mental and physical were qualities or
natures. Such entities are categorised in my ontology, as was
mentioned already, as universals. Thus the distinction between
mental and physical is primarily a distinction between
universals. The question which poses itself is whether indi-
viduals can also be divided into mental and physical individuals,
whether individuals can be characterised as mental or as
physical. The question poses itself because in my ontology a
mental individual would be in my ontology what one usually
calls a soul (or a mind). Individuals are connected with uni-
versals in facts. Such facts explain ontologically to the
possession of properties ontologically. An individual is what has
the properties. Consider the individuals which that have the
mental properties or are in a mental state. Do they also have
physical properties? Or, do they have only mental properties
(universals)? If there were individuals which that had only
mental and no physical properties, then one could say that
there are souls. If mental properties in all cases belonged to
individuals which that also had physical properties, then one
could say that there are no souls, but that bodies have mental
properties, too also. It turns out that the souls envisaged here
are Cartesian, not Aristotelian, souls. Aristotelian souls are the
movers of bodies and also the essences of bodies (Aristotle De
Anima II). The individuals of my ontology are as such not active.
Only if they are also organisms are they active. Being an
organism is based on certain facts. The term “individual” is
used here not in the customary sense as synonym of “person”
but in a technical ontological sense, of course, as the name of a
8 Erwin Tegtmeier

category. The members of the category of individuals have a

certain categorial form (which is called “individuality” in a
special technical sense) of themselves (with any facts
connecting individuals and individuality). That is what makes
them individuals. But apart from their categorial forms, they get
their natures by facts which that connect them to universals of
the first order. It the properties of being mental and being
physical are categorised in my ontology as non-relational
universals of the second order, they cannot be connected with
individuals. Individuals can be connected only with universals of
the first order. It follows that as long as being mental is catego-
rised as a second order universal, my ontology does not admit
mental individuals in the sense of individuals which are
connected by facts with the universal of being mental.
However, it does not exclude that some individuals are
connected by facts only to mental universals and that all
individuals which are connected with mental universals are
connected with mental universals only alone and not with
physical universals. The individuals which are connected with
mental and not with physical universals could also be
characterised in a wider sense as mental individuals.

4. The Argument from Introspection

What is needed now is an argument for or against individuals

with mental but without physical properties. I think an argument
can be advanced for such individuals. It draws on introspection.
When we introspect our perceiving or remembering, when we
become aware of our perceiving or remembering something, as
one commonly says, we are presented with a fact which
connects an individual and a universal. The universal is in any
such case a mental one. We do not introspect the corresponding
physiological universal. We do not introspect any physical
universal. We do not introspect an individual with a physical
universal. Clearly and surely, we do not introspect an individual
which is connected with both mental and physical universals.
Do we perceive such individuals? Obviously, we perceive
individuals with physical properties. The question is whether we
ever perceive an individual which also has mental properties.
The claim that we never perceive mental properties and states
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 9

may seem doubtful because we frequently use talk which

suggests that we perceive the mental states other people. One
says, for example, “I saw that you observed him” or “I heard in
his voices that he was angry about with me”. Such phrases are
misleading, I think. What one sees or hears in these cases are
just indications or indicators of mental states.
Influenced by Wittgenstein's argument against private
languages, many philosophers argue that introspection must be
irrelevant even for to the meaning even of mental terms,
because language learning always happens in public (between
people), while introspection is conceived to be private, i.e.
restricted to one’s own mental states. These philosophers even
doubt that there is such a thing as introspection. The notion of
being public involved is deceptive because it makes us forget
that the public objects have to be perceived. Several persons
share, so to speak, the public object only insofar they all
perceive them. It is highly implausible that only perception
plays a role in the language learning of a child and introspection
does not, all the more since the learning child is rather active.
Thus, I would deny that mental words have to refer to
something we perceive and I would maintain that we do not
perceive mental properties and states.
I conclude that we never introspect, nor perceive an
individual which is connected with both mental and physical
properties. This cannot be my final step of the argument,
though. Rather, the final conclusion has to be that there are no
individuals whichthat are both mental and physical and that the
class of individuals with mental universals is separate from the
class of individuals with physical properties.
One would not want to infer in general from not being
perceived and introspected to not being existent. We know in
everyday life and in science about many things we do not
perceive, about individual things and about kinds of things.
However, our case is special. Physical and mental universals are
given but they are not given together at the same individual. If
an object is too small or too large or too fast or too slow, it may
be impossible to perceive it but the togetherness of two
properties should not be an impediment to perception or
introspection, provided the object exists.
Since it was noted that by introspection we know only
mental properties and by perception only physical properties,
10 Erwin Tegtmeier

one may suspect that it is only due to the restrictions of our

mental capacities that we do not introspect or perceive
individuals with mental as well as physical universals. However,
suppose that there exist individuals with both mental and
physical universals, the mental universals of which are
introspected. Why should we be unable to introspect its physical
universals? Or suppose that we perceive all its physical
universals. Why should we be unable to perceive all its mental
universals? If we perceive its physical universals it is in reach
and there seems to be no impediment to perceive the mental
universals, provided only that they are present at the individual.
I admit these are not cogent but merely plausibility arguments
for the view that individuals with physical universals are not
introspected because the individuals introspected don't have
physical properties and that individuals with mental universals
are not perceived because the individuals perceived lack mental
properties. It is basically the view that individuals divide into
two classes, the class of those with mental and the class of
those with physical universals. The members of the former
would be the souls.
I talked of “individuals with mental universals” instead of
talking of “mental individuals”, being mental, as was mentioned
already, is a non-relational universal of the second order, i. e., a
property of properties, not a property of individuals. Therefore,
individuals cannot be mental in the sense of being connected
with the universal of being mental.
To have individuals which are mental in the strict sense one
had has to drop categorising being mental as a second order
universal. But if it were categorised as a non-relational universal
of the first order it could not be connected with universals and
the advantage of that move would be only to open the
ontological possibility of individuals connected with the uni-
versal of being mental. It would not be an argument for the
existence of such individuals. And I would not want to argue
that we introspect that the individuals we introspect are mental.

5. The Argument from Essences

To make my task of arguing for souls much easier, I could have

taken the individual to be an essence. To assume essences (ti
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 11

en einai) is Aristotelian (Aristotle Metaphysica Z). But to assume

a mental and a physical essence is not. It is rather Cartesian. A
Cartesian substance with the a mental essence has only mental
properties. Starting from the distinction between mental and
physical properties and noting that introspection presents us
only with substances which have mental properties would lead
in a Cartesian ontology to the conclusion that the substances
known by introspection all have the a mental essence. Thus, the
circumstance that introspection shows us only mental
properties would support the assumption of substances with the
mental essences.
Now, the individuals of my ontology do have essences, but
that is based on facts which connect them with their essences,
and essences are normal non-relational universals of the first
order. The important point is that essences are not categories. It
is for other sciences to determine the essences, not for
ontology. While I would claim that the distinction between
mental and physical properties is a phenomenological datum
and thus within the area of competence of the ontologist, I think
that other sciences have to investigate the essences.
Psychology has to ascertain the mental essences. As an
ontologist, I would only claim that there are essences.
I said that the essences are non-relational universals of the
first order, which entails that they can be connected only to
individuals. Hence in my ontology only individuals have
essences. Universals and facts do not. They do have categorial
forms, though. Categorial forms are, in my ontology, different
from the essences of individuals. Thus individuals have
categorial forms as well as essences. Categorial forms are more
closely connected than essences. This could be expressed by
saying that individuals have their categorial forms necessarily
while individuals have their essences only factually, i.e.,
because the fact connecting the individual and the essence
universal obtains.
What distinguishes essences from other non-relational
universals of the first order, i.e., from other properties of
individuals? The individuals do not change with respect to them.
They do not loose essential properties. An ontologically more
precise characterisation of essences can be given if the analysis
of change is taken into account. Consider a mental example:
first First, someone s sees a person. Then he remembers having
12 Erwin Tegtmeier

seen that person earlier. Let us symbolise seeing by P and

remembering by R. The soul s changes from P to R. P and R are
incompatible, i.e., for all x, if Px then not Rx. Hence, to analyse
the change, as suggests itself, namely by “Ps and Rs” leads to a
contradiction. The customary way to avoid the contradiction is
to relate the connection between thing and property to time
points. However, that presupposes time points which I reject.
Moreover, it turns properties implausibly into relations. I would
argue that properties show themselves to be properties. The
way of avoiding the contradiction I advocate is to acknowledge
inherents of changing individuals (Tegtmeier 2007). They are
inherents by standing in the relation of inherence to the
changing individual. The relation of inherence is a two-place
universal of the first order. Such universals hold only between
individuals. The relation of inherence has, in my ontology,
nothing to do with the possession of properties. Nevertheless, I
borrow the term from the Aristotelian tradition where it was
used to explain the possession of accidental properties. I draw
on Aristotle’s analysis of the possession of properties as a kind
of identity relation. He takes the sentence “the apple is green”
to mean “the apple is (identical with) the green object”. The
inherence relation in my ontology is also a kind of identity
relation. In our example the seeing s’ inheres in s and the
remembering s’’ also inheres in s. The change of s from seeing
to remembering is assayed ontologically thus: Ss’ Ps’ & Rs’’ &
IN (s’,s) & IN (s’’,s), where “IN” symbolises the inherence
relation. Since S P and R are not connected to the same
individuals no contradiction can be derived from the theorem of
incompatibility between S P and R. Inherents resemble temporal
parts and originally I also used the term “temporal part”. That
led to misunderstandings though because the so-called
perdurantists take it for granted that what has temporal parts is
complex and is composed of them. Now, it is an important point
which solves many problems that the individuals of my ontology
are all simple, including those with inherents (and also those
with spatial parts). If the individuals with inherents and with
spatial parts were not simple with temporal and spatial parts,
they would have to be point-like. Otherwise, one could not do
justice to the interdependence between space and time, in
particular to the law that spatial part and spatial whole must be
simultaneous. I do not countenance point-like entities because
 Two Kinds of Ontological Dualism 13

such entities are not presented to us. Points seem to be

mathematical fictions.
Return to our question about the universals which are
essences: the ontological analysis of change sketched implied
that the inherents (which are like phases of a changing thing)
have the changing properties but the changing thing does not
have them. It can have only those properties which do not
change. Otherwise, a contradiction would still arise. Now, the
essences are those universals which the changing things have.
The inherents do have them also. Assume that ‘being a
cognitive subject’ is an essence. T then the s of our example
has this essence but also so do s’ and s’’. The inherents, s’and
s’’, and the individual in which they inhere, are of themselves
(without facts) individuals. That they are cognitive subjects is
based on the facts PC(s), PC(s’) and PC(s’’) where “PC” stands
for the essence of being a cognitive subject.
Clearly, it does not make individuals mental in the sense that
they are connected only with mental universals that they are
connected with the essence PC. One can assume that P C has
the universal of being mental. That leaves open that all the
other universals an individual has apart from P C are also
mental. To make sure that the individuals which have P C have
only mental universals it needs a law. In my ontology laws are
general facts. The law necessarily would be the fact that for all
individuals x and for all universals of the first order U: if PC(x)
and U(x) then M(U), where “M” stands for the second order non-
relational universal of being mental. Laws of this kind are
central to Aristotle’s concept of essence. He thinks that the
essence of an object generates its development. I adopt that
idea and assume the law sketched above. Then it follows that
there are souls in the sense of individuals which have only
mental universals. In an analogous way one arrives at a class of
individuals with physical universals only. Combining the two
classes of individuals a second kind of mental-physical dualism
results besides the dualism of mental and physical universals.

References

Aristotle De Anima.
14 Erwin Tegtmeier

Aristotle Metaphysica.
Bergmann, G. (1968) Realism, Madison, Wisconsin: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Brentano, F. (1874) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt,
Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot.
Descartes, R. (1644) Principia philosophiae.
Gadenne, V. (2004) Philosophie der Psychologie, Bern: Huber
2004
Tegtmeier, E. (1992) Grundzüge einer kategorialen Ontologie.
Freiburg: Alber.
Tegtmeier, E. (2007) “Persistence”, in C. Kanzian (ed.),
Persistence, Heusenstamm: Ontos.