What Is Dualism?

The collaborator is the most common use of the term dualism in modern philosophy, where it is usually contrasted with monism. Secondly, the term dualism is used in opposition to monism to indicate the conventional view that the existing universe contains two radically different types of being or substance, matter and spirit, body and mind. In this type of dualism, mind and body are conceptually distinct, although the phenomena referred to in mentalist and physicalist terminology are the same. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body, or mind and brain—are in some sense completely different types of things.

In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mind and body are in some way unequivocally separated from each other, and that mental phenomena are in some ways nonphysical in nature. The most basic form of dualism is entity dualism, which requires that mind and body consist of two ontologically distinct entities. Humans and bodies have different identity conditions, and they are all entities, so the essence of human beings is two entities, which is a form of entity dualism. The psychology of mind-body dualism refers to the idea that mind and body are two distinct things that can be separated.


Different types of dualism in the mind-body debate treat the physical object (i.e. the brain) and the mental processes that make up the mind as two distinct entities. While science shows that mental processes in the brain are coordinated, the dualism vs. monism debate questions whether thoughts really exist outside of the physical output of the brain. In a sense, the psychological debate between monism and dualism has been going on since Aristotle and Plato disagreed that the soul continues to exist after physical death. Since Rene Descartes wrote about the mind-body relationship in the 1600s, the focus of the dualism versus monism debate has shifted to dualism during his lifetime.

Among the Greeks, there is a radical dualism in Orphism, with its concept of kuklos tes geneseos (“cycle of births”) and the dualistic implications of its metaphysics; in the theory of Empedocles about the two opposite principles of Love and Discord; to Heraclitus; and in Plato’s teachings on the two alternating world revolutions mentioned in The Statesman, and on the eternity of the Ideas and on the “receptacle” (chora) in his Orphism. Thus, Platonic dualism is not just a doctrine in the philosophy of mind, but an integral part of all Platonic metaphysics. In dialectical dualism, the two principles are often understood as good and evil, respectively, in both an ethical and a metaphysical sense. Any doctrine of dualism that claims that there are two equal forces opposing each other (good and evil) is a false doctrine.

In theology, the concept of dualism implies the existence of two separate entities, good and evil, with the same power. Dualism asserts, in contrast to any form of idealism, an independent and extrapsychic reality of the world. Dualism can be opposed (both as a metaphysical concept and in relation to the philosophy of mind) by various types of monism (including physicalism and idealism), as well as pluralism, which claims that there are ultimately many types of substance, and not just two. It is true that dualism is ultimately rejected by the materialist, who reduces states of consciousness to functions or “aspects” of the brain; but objections from this point of view is dealt with more adequately under materialism and monism.

It should be remembered, however, that all arguments against physicalism are also arguments for the irreducible immaterial nature of the mind and, given the existence of the physical world, are therefore arguments for dualism. This view assumes that thought and matter are fundamentally different. If the mind is material and irreducible, the mind should see it as such. Presumably, thoughts with mental states such as beliefs are also not physical.

If we are to avoid ontological dualism, the mind with this view must be part of the physical reality it sees from the world’s perspective. All forms of idealist theory since Berkeley have held that the mind can only know its own state or representation, and that what we think of as an independent physical world is ultimately just a series of thoughts and feelings. Believe in the possibility of other senses. A number of theories have been proposed to explain the relationship between what we call your mind (defined as the conscious mind that outlives your mind) and your brain (that is, the part of your body). Property dualism (sometimes also called symbolic physicalism) argues that the mind is a set of independent properties originating in the brain, but not a separate entity.

In recent years, attribute dualism has been increasingly used to distinguish between physical phenomena (such as brain states and behavior) and psychological phenomena (such as thoughts and emotions). Two realistic ideas seem to violate Occam’s razor’s principle of simplicity, which states that it should be avoided if additional entities need not be assumed. Variations With regard to the question of the spiritual body, there are two variants of dualism. Variations of dualism A. Interactionism – Mind and body exist and interact in some way B. Epiphenomenalism – Body affects mind but mind does not affect body C. Two-sided theory – There are two aspects of one substance (mind/body) D. Parallelism – Element and body exist in different dimensions and are consistent i. The pre-established harmony, mind and body are moved and coordinated from the beginning by the God who created the universe.

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