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17 votes
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How can substance dualism survive the arguments from neuroscience?

Disclaimer: None of the ontological positions detailed is my own. 1. Neurosciences and the category mistake: a first take As Peter Reynaert puts it in Reynaert, P. (2015): "Neuroscientific ...
Philip Klöcking's user avatar
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15 votes

How can substance dualism survive the arguments from neuroscience?

There are other arguments for mind-body dualism on the "Mind-body dualism" Wikipedia page, but the question is about a specific argument against it coming from neuroscience: In some contexts, the ...
Frank Hubeny's user avatar
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15 votes

Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

Mainly because we have no idea how mind and matter are supposed to interact Causation is understood by many in a way that makes that problematic. This post gives a perfectly neutral definition which ...
Philip Klöcking's user avatar
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12 votes
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Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

The key difference between matter-matter interactions and mind-matter interactions is that we have been able to discover governing relationships (eg Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, General Relativity ...
Marco Ocram's user avatar
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10 votes

What are the problems with the argument for the mind-body dualism from immateriality of thoughts?

This argument is a variation on what Kitcher calls the "rational psychologist's fallacy" in Kant's Transcendental Psychology. It is a particular case of the argument from ignorance fallacy, and was ...
Conifold's user avatar
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10 votes

Are there any philosophical writings/works about Fourier transforms?

A prolific modern Leibnizian, Mike Hockney, might be somewhat like what you are looking for, see e.g. his Mathematical Universe and Smith's review of it, but do not expect the caliber of Badiou or ...
Conifold's user avatar
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9 votes

How do modern dualists explain the mind-body interaction?

Believe it or not, but the biggest challenge to dualism does not come from neuroscience or physiology, and in fact is shared with materialism, it is the threat of epiphenomenlism. Whether mental is ...
Conifold's user avatar
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9 votes

Are there philosophies that call for things which are not mind nor matter?

The question refers to ontology. The classification matter or mind is a strong simplification. Popper advocated a tripartition with world 1: physical objects and events world 2: mental objects and ...
Jo Wehler's user avatar
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7 votes

Is any aspect of the supernatural testable? What level of proof is possible for the supernatural?

Yes, of course. You can *scientifically prove** things deemed supernatural. But once you do, they are no longer supernatural. They are "natural," as demonstrated by the methods of the natural ...
Nelson Alexander's user avatar
7 votes

I have seven steps to conclude a dualist reality. Which of these steps are considered controversial/wrong?

Re-posting here from the other thread, I would propose a simpler argument to show the existence of an objective reality outside the subjective realm, with less leaps of faith. I would propose the ...
Frank's user avatar
  • 2,402
6 votes

The demarcation problem and the materialism/dualism debate?

The line is typically drawn slightly differently, mostly because the word "explain" is not precise enough for a hard-edged debate on the topic. As given in the introduction to Phyiscalism on ...
Cort Ammon's user avatar
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6 votes

Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

Not everyone has an "inner monologue" or ability to vividly imagine things: this is known as aphantasia. At an imaginary-angled diagonal from that, there are also people who are pain-...
Kristian Berry's user avatar
6 votes

Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

So there's this supposedly an 'interaction' problem for substance dualism, that isn't there for physicalism or idealism. I've never understood this. So as Hume pointed out, we see event a followed by ...
J D's user avatar
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6 votes

Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

I agree, the interaction problem is not unique to mind/body questions. For example, the original materialism posited everything was atoms colliding. However, now we know nothing collides, all ...
yters's user avatar
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5 votes

Are there philosophies that call for things which are not mind nor matter?

It is very popular among philosophers to "overcome" the divide between idealism and materialism by dissolving the distinction, i.e. "embedding" both ideality and matter into something more fundamental,...
Conifold's user avatar
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5 votes
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For Kierkegaard, how does being "animal" and "rational" compel us to invent meaning?

I haven't read Richard Schmitt which makes me hesitant to answer the question as to what he means, but I can address the quote and what Kierkegaard means. First, the idea is not singular to ...
virmaior's user avatar
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5 votes

Scientific consensus about the soul

There seem to be several questions packed into this post. From the philosophy of mind point of view, please refer to the extensive literature on Dualism vs Materialism. Musolino isn't the first to ...
Alexander S King's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

How can substance dualism (Cartesian) explain how the mind is affected from brain damage?

This is an important question, and one that interactive dualists are generally poor at even admitting exists. Most of the other physicalist attacks on interactive dualism are based on reasoning or ...
Dcleve's user avatar
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5 votes

Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

Mind is software, the brain hardware. Back in 1973, when I used to write drivers for hardware on an HP2100 minicomputer, we had hardware instructions that wrote to devices and read from them (I/O ...
Simon Crase's user avatar
5 votes

I have seven steps to conclude a dualist reality. Which of these steps are considered controversial/wrong?

Re. Step 1: We start by believing in the bare minimum : our own subjective experience exists. the reduction to the pure ego and to the solipsistic sphere of the mine, in the sense that Husserl ...
Chris Degnen's user avatar
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5 votes

I have seven steps to conclude a dualist reality. Which of these steps are considered controversial/wrong?

You say yourself after Step 4: Here we take a leap and conclude that other people also have subjective perceptions like us. You are taking a leap because the conclusions after this do not follow ...
gomennathan's user avatar
5 votes

I have seven steps to conclude a dualist reality. Which of these steps are considered controversial/wrong?

Your basic argument is actually widely accepted and implemented by humans world wide. It is why children universally become dualists (See https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/...
Dcleve's user avatar
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5 votes

Which is the best explanation of the mind body relation, dualism or physicalism?

The mainstream view, physicalism, ie. materialistic monism, is the philosophical position that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the only existing ...
Ioannis Paizis's user avatar
4 votes

Contemporary proponents of Cartesian dualism

W.D. Hart's Engines of the Soul (1980) gives a book-length defense for the indivisibility of mind and its substantial distinction from matter (as opposed to more modern property dualism). Unlike many ...
MDF's user avatar
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4 votes

How do modern dualists explain the mind-body interaction?

According to my observation it is rather seldom that dualists actually explain the interaction of the mind and body. Often they restrict themselves to criticizing the monist position, hereby calling ...
Jo Wehler's user avatar
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4 votes
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What is the difference between functionalism and property dualism?

The main difference is that functionalism is not an ontological doctrine, although it imposes some constraints on ontology, while property dualism is. The point of functionalism is to reduce ...
Conifold's user avatar
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4 votes
Accepted

Hubert Dreyfus & Heidegger - is Heidegger a dualist?

Thanks for the referred video. I cannot agree more with l_ruth on the interpretation of what Dreyfus was saying. I post this answer since I do not think l_ruth's response is sufficient to answer the ...
Nanhee Byrnes PhD's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Can theism be reconciled with the apparent state of dualism?

I think the actual beliefs of philosophers are more open to dualism than the "discredited" quote implies. The philosophical survey shows a majority of philosophers to be physicalists (56.5%), but ...
Dcleve's user avatar
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