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physicalism and immateriality

The following is an ironic/dialectical argument against the assumption that the mere claim that to every physical state there is a mental state (and vice versa) would, if granted, imply that mental states are not immaterial.

First reply: Mental states may still be thoroughly immaterial, but also capable of downward causality upon physical (this is not my position, but I'm just pointing out the non-sequitur in the physicalist argumetn).

Second reply: Or even if we posit ONLY bottom-up causality, we'd have a superfluous, epiphenomenal, mental state... which would be absurd... but not incapable of existing apart from matter.  Especially if the cognition had somehow transcends the limitations of space and time.

Comment: Yes, the latter does seem to be grasping at straws, and I'm not that inclined to be a dualist.  But I thought it interesting to point out the non-sequitur in the physicalist basis for denying the existence of the non-physical.  And I think it's important to take careful note of the nature of the sort of awareness that seems to make the human psyche a candidate for a non-physicalist understanding.  In knowing or seeking to know about what is true always and everywhere... we seem to transcend material limitations regardless of whether such knowledge also has a multiplicity of possible profiles, each of which corresponds to a material state.
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