Mind-Body Dualism

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, mind-body dualism is the view that the mind (the mental realm) and the body (physical matter) are fundamentally distinct and both real.

Substance Dualism:

Most famously championed by René Descartes in the 17th century, this asserts that the mind and body are two completely different substances. The mind is an immaterial, thinking entity, while the body is a physical, spatially extended entity.

Property Dualism: This variation argues that there is only one physical substance, but it possesses two distinct fundamental properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Metaphysical and Religious Dualism

Beyond the mind, dualism applies to broader reality and theological concepts:

Cosmic Dualism: The belief that the universe is governed by two opposing, often antagonistic principles, such as Good and Evil, or Light and Darkness (prominent in ancient traditions like Zoroastrianism).Platonic Dualism: Traced back to Plato, it separates reality into the imperfect, changing material world and the perfect, unchanging realm of "Forms".

Psychological and Behavioral Dualism

In psychology and everyday reasoning, dualistic thinking involves reducing complex issues into simplistic binaries (e.g., us vs. them, rational vs. emotional). While it helps organize thoughts, it can also lead to oversimplification, polarization, and a lack of empathy.

Dualism directly contrasts with monism (the belief that reality is made of only one substance, like physicalism or idealism) and pluralism (the belief in many substances). For a comprehensive look at the arguments for and against this concept, explore the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50017883)

Suppose physical causal closure is false and res cogitans affects the brain. Then specify the interaction. What physical states does it change, under what conditions, according to what regularities? And how could its contribution be distinguished from ordinary physical causes? Once it has systematic, detectable effects, it becomes part of the empirical causal ontology.

Rejecting causal closure only makes interaction logically available. It does not establish two substances, explain their boundary or solve the interaction problem.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50017878)

if determinism is true, and you knew all of the matter and mechanisms and trajectories and cause/effect relationships on earth, you could predict the future. maybe quantum mechanics complicates this because it adds randomness, but imho that doesn't really help the argument in favor of free will being possible.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50018831)

The way that most people think about "free will" is wrong imho

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50019084)

Sup Claude

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50019090)

When you drill down this far, the questions become more like thought experiments than anything seeking actual answers. And when you look at it like that, you can go down all sorts of wacky and enjoyable rabbit holes. I particularly get a kick out of panpsychism and essentialism and, more broadly William James' take on pantheism. In that same vein, I really enjoy reading Freud but I can easily recognize that he was a terrible practitioner/psychoanalyst.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50019559)

I think some people feel like "I can make a decision" is inconsistent with "my decision is predictable according to laws and states", but I don't see it that way. *I* don't know all the laws and states, so from my point of view I'm still making choices all the time with the info I have, not falling into a certain path just because it's How Things Are.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50020245)

In a nutshell, I am something of a panpsychist. While I think our "minds" are formed inside of our brains, I think it is highly likely that our bodies exist as systems through which the Electromagnetic Field experiences the world. I don't think this is limited to us, in fact I think that all living organisms are effectively vessels for the EMF to experience the world. What we know of as the EMF may actually be some sort of "Spirit OS" in a sense.

I think it's altogether possible that some organisms may be more of a "hive mind" through which the EMF interacts with the world. Take ants, for example. Or even much simpler single cell organisms that behave in ways that are difficult to really understand. Fundamentally I am talking about organisms that don't have anywhere near a real brain and that seem to do things with some level of complexity / act in concert with one another.

What's more, we also know that people who spend many years in meditation practice can reach a point in which they experience a total lack of self. They seem to reach a point where their awareness moves beyond the "self" produced by our brain for purposes of processing information.

Maybe the Zen Buddhist types were right all along.

To be clear, I (obviously) did not come up with this idea and am borrowing much from the dude Ryan Faulke (The Alternative Hypothesis) who has written some interesting stuff on the matter.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5885256&forum_id=2#50019247)