Substance dualism is the position that there exists and immaterial mind for each individual and a physical body for each person. One of the most common forms of substance dualism is that the immaterial mind interacts with the physical body and/or vice versa. This is known as dualist Interactionism.
One of the main objections against substance dualism is, “How does an immaterial substance/mind interacting with a material substance/the body?”
As popular as this objection has been, I don’t think it’s a good objection.
In order to know that something is the cause of something, you don’t have to know how they interact.
For example, I don’t know how gravity causes changes in the earth . Nevertheless it does.
Also in Science you get really weird cases of things that are totally different physical substances. We know one causes the other. But we don’t know how this interaction takes place.
Furthermore, just because we can’t explain how something causes another, it doesn’t follow that such things does not cause the other. This is obviously bad reasoning.
Indeed we are rationally justified in holding that certain things cause other things of almost totally different substances, without knowing how such substance can cause the other.
We can also run a counter-argument
1. The mind can be immaterial or material
2. The mind can’t be material
3. Therefore, the mind is material
There would need to be support for premise 2 and I do think there is support for premise 2.
The mind can’t be material because material beings and substances don’t think. There isn’t any thought processes. Atoms are in motion and neurons are firing. Rocks and trees are physical beings. As physical beings they don’t have the property of reason. They aren’t consciously engaged in anything through reason. They are mindless matter.
On naturalism, all things come from mindless matter. How does mindless matter lead to reason? arational and irrational do not cause rationality to spring forth
Philosophy of Religion blog 