Dualism

What is dualism?

What do you consider to be the most persuasive argument for dualism?

Do you think dualism is correct? Explain your answer.

The nature of Persons:

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2 comments:

  1. Karla Sánchez Ibarra16 October 2009 at 22:53

    I found two definitions of dualism in philosophy:

    1-Dualism is the doctrine that reality consists of two basic opposing elements, often taken to be mind and matter (or mind and body), or good and evil.

    2-Substance dualism is the view that the universe contains two fundamental types of entity: mental and physical. Those who view themselves as immaterial minds housed in physical bodies are thus substance dualists.

    I didn't find good arguments for the first definition, but for the second one I have this:

    Descartes’ arguments attack the monist view that a person is identical with their body, that a person and his body are exactly the same thing. If this monist view is true, Descartes suggests, then whatever is true of the body will also be true of the person.

    There are some things, though, Descartes observes, that are true of my body that are not true of me: the argument from feigning rests on the idea that while we can feign that our bodies do not exist, we cannot feign that our minds do not exist; the argument from divisibility rests on the idea that while our bodies are divisible we ourselves are not; the argument from extension rests on the idea that while our bodies have a spatial location, our minds do not.

    I don't agree with the first definition of dualism, because from my point of view it is a really poor way to explain life, just going to the extremes, classifiying everything in opposite categories (such as good-bad, ugly-pretty, white-black, etc). It takes aways opportunitties to think in a critical way and consider many aspects in the moment of taking a desicion, because things are usually in a middle point (middle of good and bad, ugly and beautiful, etc).

    The second definition is a really good proposition, because thinking deeply, what can you be sure of in life? Maybe everything is an ilusion. Perhaps the sky is pink and not blue...or that you have three arms in place of two...the only thing you can be completely sure of (besides maths) is that you are a (as Descartes said) "thinking thing", because you can wake up someday with one eye more or the world can be all made of water or many other weird things, but there's one thing that can't change, you'll be still thinking and making desicions, because if that dissappears, you disappear with it.

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  2. Thoughts5 November 2009 at 10:08

    Dualism is a reaction to materialism. People discover that materialism does not seem to explain their experience or their analysis of mind and turn to dualism as an altrenative. For example, Descartes turns to dualism when he realises that the Res Cogitans would need to be a perfect geometric point to replicate the materialist geometry of perception (an "unextended place"). Others such as Chalmers turn to property dualism when they realise that the materialist account of conscious experience does not feel like phenomenal consciousness.

    The origin of dualism is materialism. It is interesting in this context that materialism is not identical to physicalism. Physical theory goes way beyond the simple motion of matter from place to place as an explanation of the world. The biggest divide between physicalism and materialism is in the treatment of time. See Presentism and the denial of mind and Materialists should read this first.

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