Nida-Rümelin’s Subject-Body Dualism

Philosopher Martine Nida-Rümelin argues for “a version of dualism that is stronger than property dualism and that may be taken to be a version of so-called substance dualism.” But because “substance dualism” invites associations that she would like to avoid, she uses “subject-body dualism” to describe her theory of consciousness. Central is her claim that an individual has “experiences, thinks and is active, and is neither identical to any material thing nor constituted by any material thing.” While not a dualist in the Cartesian sense, she endorses a non-reductive, non-physicalist account of consciousness, where phenomenal properties are ontologically basic (Nida-Rümelin, 2010).

Three Pillars of Subject-Body Dualism

Nida-Rümelin builds her subject-body dualism on three pillar ideas:

1. Phenomenal Essentialism and the “Argument from Understanding”: Phenomenal concepts allow direct grasp of the essence of conscious experiences, an idea known as phenomenal essentialism. Because physical concepts cannot reveal phenomenal essence, phenomenal properties must be non-physical.
2. Cognitive Independence of Phenomenal and Physical Concepts: She refines the Knowledge Argument about Mary (the color-deprived neuroscientist): knowing all physical facts is not equal to grasping phenomenal facts. She distinguishes phenomenal beliefs from non-phenomenal beliefs, stressing their cognitive isolation. This parallels the claim that phenomenal and physical concepts are cognitively independent; hence, phenomenal properties aren't physical.
3. Primitive (Pre-reflective) Self-Awareness: She maintains that consciousness inherently involves pre-reflective self-awareness: the subject not only experiences but also implicitly knows it is experiencing. “Primitive awareness of being experientially presented with something involves… being pre-reflectively aware of oneself as an experiencing subject” (Nida-Rümelin, 2017). This supports her views that phenomenal consciousness and selfhood are related, and that self-awareness is intrinsic to experience.

A Middle Path Between Physicalism and Cartesian Dualism

Nida-Rümelin stresses that “subject-body dualism does not imply that conscious subjects can exist without having a body. If the term ‘substance’ is reserved to entities that do not depend for their existence on the existence of any other entity, then the view proposed cannot be classified as a version of substance dualism. Substance dualism is often associated with the view that the person is metaphysically composed of two parts: a body and a soul. According to subject-body dualism, the person is not composed. The person has a body and her body is in no sense a part of her.

There is no difference to be made, according to subject body dualism, between the person and ‘her self’. When a person uses the first person pronoun, or is addressed by the second person pronoun or is referred to by her name, then the reference in each of these cases is the same, it is the person (the subject of experience). Subject-body dualism rejects many of those ideas that are traditionally associated with the concept of a soul” (Nida-Rümelin, 2010).

According to subject-body dualism, “the subject is an individual that exists wholly at any given moment of its existence and persists across time while changing its properties. Subjects perdure and they do not endure (subjects exist across time but they are not temporally extended).”

As for how her subject-body dualism actually works, Nida-Rümelin proposes, rather than dualistic substances, an emergentist dualism: phenomenal properties emerge from, but aren’t reducible to, physical substrates. She straddles the proverbial fence between hard-core physicalism and hard-core Cartesian substance dualism. Her goal is for a scientifically respectful yet non-reductive position (Nida-Rümelin, 2010).