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Heart Of Substance Dualism

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Recommended: The mind-body problem questions

How does the mind relate to the body? This query is known as the mind-body problem is puzzling due to the mystery behind the interactions between the mind and body. For example, I can have mental activities like my belief that today is Tuesday, but one could not open my head and find the weight or physical location of that very same belief. However, my belief that it is Tuesday can alter things in the physical world. For example, my Tuesday belief might cause me to walk to a certain building ready for class or cause me to set my alarm for a different time. These two concepts, mind and body, seem to have some sort of relationship, but the puzzling aspect is identifying what exactly that relationship entails.
There are several theories that …show more content…

As Mandik describes it, “the heart of substance dualism is the idea that your mind and your brain are two distinct things, not one and the same thing” (Mandik 15). This view asserts that the brain is a physical substance with the mind being non-material. Due to this difference, a dualist would also claim that it is possible for the mind to survive independently of the body. Though there are many arguments that support the dualist interpretation of the mind-body problem, the most influential is Leibinz’s Law. This law, according to Mandik’s book, is known as “the indiscernibility of identicals” (Mandik 16). Essentially, if the substances x and y are completely identical, then substance x must have all the same properties as substance y. Leibinz's Law can be used to prove that the mind and body are two distinct substances. If the mind and brain share the all the same properties, they must be the same substance; if they do not share all the same properties, they must be different substances. There are many versions of this same argument. One example of this compares the spatial location of the body to the seemingly non-spatial location of the mind. However, the most influential utilization of Leibinz’s Law originates in the work of …show more content…

The first counter example relies on the concept of two parallel streams of events; one stream contains physical and body events while the other has mental events. Thus, if I stubbed my toe, the actual stubbing occurs in one stream while the pain felt occurs on the other stream. The other counter-example states that God is in control of these events. It is believed with this counter-example that God is the cause of the relationship between mind and body. Both of these arguments raise a problem due to the fact that they cannot technically be completely disproven; no one can say for certain that parallel streams and God do not exist. However, on the same note, they can't garner much support either due to their focus on the realm of prediction and belief rather than fact and evidence. Overall, the interaction problem is the most damaging objection to Dualism due to its ability to shake the very foundation on which the theory

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Substance dualism-you and your body are different entities, the substance that makes up you is separate and not reliant on the physical body. An argument against substance dualism is that if the mind stuff and the physical stuff are so different, how can they communicate? If they are truly separate and different it must be impossible for them to communicate. Property dualism is the view that the mind-brain is the only relevant substance. “the brain has a set of properties possessed by no other kind of physical object.

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Substance dualism is the false theory that persons and bodies are distinct from each other. More definitively, according to the proponents of substance dualism: the person is you – a conscience, and the body is also you, but the body itself is also an entirely separate entity from your conscience. But why is this theory wrong? Substance dualism is false because if I am a nonphysical entity, then I have no spatial location; if I have no spatial location, then how can I exert force upon the world around me? The breakdown of the argument that disproves the theory of substance dualism is as follows:

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Therefore, dualist perspectives came about to challenge the relationship of physicalism and the experience of a sensation with devices such as qualia. To begin, physicalism is the philosophical position that everything that exist is nothing more than its physical properties, which implies that the only existing thing is physical. In challenging physicalism, a dualistic perspective emerged. Frank Jackson gives the dualistic theory epiphenomenalism, which is the doctrine that mental and physical phenomena are two different entities, yet there is a causal relationship between the two. (Handout 4)

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For example, if the brain stops working it doesn’t affect the mind because the mind continues to exist. The Body-Mind Problem is the philosophical question of how the mind and body are related and if the mind is a non-physical substance. We

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My perception of my body and matter in general is that it is in its essence divisible (Descartes,1641) This essay here will insert a reference to ‘Leibnitz’s Law’ or otherwise the relatively intuitive principle that for two things to be the same thing, they must share all the qualities of each other. Descartes does not specifically do so, but it is heavily inferred from his argument. Descartes now concludes that since minds are indivisible and bodies are, that according to the Leibnitz’s law they cannot be the same thing and hence:

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The dualist states that the psychological states and the brain are two separate entities, but this objection states that they are not. The argument goes like

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One way that Descartes might explain the mind-body interaction is by appealing to God. Since God created the union of mind and body, God gave both the mind and the body the ability to interact with each other. In his Fourth Meditation, Descartes argued that there are some things that we cannot understand because our understanding is limited compared to God’s. Thus, Descartes can conclude that we cannot understand specifically how the mind and body interact with each other, since the specific details of mind-body interaction are beyond our understanding. However, this explanation fails to resolve the contradiction between (1) and (2).

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To begin with, Dualism is the philosophical doctrine, first introduced by Rene Descartes, that the Mind and Body are two distinct separate entities. Rene Descartes believed that the Mind and Body were separate entities that were not only independent from one another, but that both were composed of dissimilar elements. Descartes explains that the body, and all its physiological attributes, are composed of “Physical” matter, and as such, dwells in the material realm and abides the laws of Physics or the laws of nature. Conversely, the Mind and all its attributes, thoughts, emotions and qualia, are composed of “Spiritual” matter, and as such, dwells in the immaterial realm and does not abide to the laws of physics or nature.

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Various philosophers and scientists have inquired about the mind and body issue for a long time. The mind-body philosophies try to explain the way a person’s mental state and processes are linked to the physical state. The core of the mind and body is that individuals have a biased experience of an inner life that appears detached from the physical world. Although they are separated, they need to work together in some way. Individuals may appear to have physical properties and mental properties.

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They say that mental processes are the same thing as brain processes. This gives us a better explanatory role with causation regarding mental states. According to the identity theory, the “Mind” and the “Brain” refer to one object (the physical brain). (Anthony Oyowe, personal

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This paper will critically examine the Cartesian dualist position and the notion that it can offer a plausible account of the mind and body. Proposed criticisms deal with both the logical and empirical conceivability of dualist assertions, their incompatibility with physical truths, and the reducibility of the position to absurdity. Cartesian Dualism, or substance dualism, is a metaphysical position which maintains that the mind and body consist in two separate and ontologically distinct substances. On this view, the mind is understood to be an essentially thinking substance with no spatial extension; whereas the body is a physical, non-thinking substance extended in space. Though they share no common properties, substance dualists maintain

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I will explore this question by looking at how this question has developed into two key schools of thought: Dualism and Monism. Dualism states that the mind is not physical and exists separately while Monism states that the mind and body are not separate. There are arguments for both theories and these dichotomous ideas have brought to light the mind-body problem, which I will analyse below. There are sub-forms of both schools of thought and one of the key sub-schools of thought under Dualism which I will discuss is Interactionism; that the mind and body are separate but both influence each other The Mind-Body Debate Rene Decartes believed that the mind

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But may believe even Descartes isn’t exactly clear on the inner working of the relationship (Robinson, Howard). Spinoza’s substance monism cleverly dissolves this issue by labeling mind (thought) and body (extension) as attributes to a common and singular substance. Other substance pluralist philosophies are also denied when we truly capture the infinite extent of

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The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses if we see the previous literature. In common sense, the notion is that, for any particular area of interest, there are two commonly different classes of things. In theory, for example a ‘dualist’ is one who believes that Good and Evil-or God and the Devil-are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism compare with monism, which is the theory that there is only one significant type, category of thing and rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is commonly referred to as many categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mind and body are, in some sense, totally different types of thing.

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