Mind–body dualism Puns

So with both the Trill and the Vulcans it seems like personalities are just these things that can be transferred, not copied, between different bodies.

I heard the Philip Goff episode on "Consciousness Everywhere" Chalmers episode on consciousness, and the Kate Adamala episode on "Creating Synthetic Life", close to each other. Adamala was extremely interesting for me, because I know nothing about that topic. While listening to her, I started thinking about interaction with the Chalmers views.

I don't subscribe, myself, to mind-body-dualism. I have always aligned with SC's view that "the stuff is all there is, and is sufficiently explanatory" -- even long before I discovered SC or his books. Thus I wonder, if Adamala's lab or others would be successful in creating artificial life out of nothing but stuff, where does that leave mind-body-dualists?

I suppose they could argue:

1. There is no path from individual artificial cells to artificial consciousness. That seems like a last, desperate stand.

2. Somehow, the non-stuff they attribute the mind to becomes "automatically" or magically attached to the stuff when the stuff is arranged into a cell.

If Adamala's lab or similar work yields eventual success, does that not drive a nail into mind-body-dualism? At least, it seems like the space for that outlook becomes squeezed. It begins to feel like a "god of the gaps" argument. Right now we can drive trucks through the gaps, but after artificial cells, those gaps are squeezed.

Not sure if this has been mentioned but one of the symbols in the Clovis Bray mysterious log book (that is also seen around the Bray installations on Europa) bears striking resemblance to René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.

This is the image in question

René Descartes' (who famously said "I think, therefore I am") believed inputs were passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit. Dualism itself differs from Monism in that it assumes the Mind and Body are distinct non-identical entities as opposed to manifestations of a single substance.

This is something known as the Mind–body problem

>The mind–body problem is a debate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body. It is distinct from the question of how mind and body function chemically and physiologically, as that question presupposes an interactionist account of mind–body relations. This question arises when mind and body are considered as distinct, based on the premise that the mind and the body are fundamentally different in nature

So clearly this was an important problem in the field of Exo science as in Destiny there is clearly a duality between the human mind and the Exo body.

The image above stuck in my head because of the hourglass because after hearing "an hourglass counting down with infinite patience", this was actually the first reference to an hourglass in-game that I have encountered.

You can see further imagery from Descartes' papers here and here.

Now one thing I noticed is that in Descartes' image all the lines point to an arrow but in Clovis Bray's diagram they point to an hourglass. The arrow reminded me of the arrow of time (time's arrow, the concept positing the "one-way direction" or "asymmetry" of time) and in particular Entropy as an arrow of time.

>Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time,

Hi Consciousness Enthusiasts,

I started a YouTube series / audio-only Apple Podcast discussing "quantum consciousness" based on my experience teaching a student-run course at UC Berkeley. I hope this series gets a conversation started! I am a neuroscientist by training and think/read about consciousness in my free time.

Here is episode 8 discussing Mind-Body Dualism. The video goes through some basics of Rene Descartes and ask the question: will we see a revival of mind-body dualism in the coming age of digital computers interacting with quantum computers?

Quantum Consciousness is a term that sparks a lot of strong feelings in people, which I think is part of the fun of bringing it up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lb1SR0Dlw

Best,

Justin Riddle

I was doing some research on philosophy of the mind, and I came to the conclusion that I’m more of a dualist than a monist. Then I watched one of those “Crash Course” videos on it, and one of the arguments against dualism was that if the mind and body were separate, what keeps the mind from just leaving? My immediate thought was “well, the mind is just trapped in the body.”

To elaborate, the video used the case of Phineas Gage, which objectively points towards monism. Except if the mind is just trapped in the body, specifically the brain, wouldn’t an injury (physical) impact the mind (mental) because it is damaging the mind’s “home”? I mean if a tree falls on your house and the wall caves in, the stuff inside your house will be damaged as well.

Is there a name for this?

What is the term for the belief that there is no difference between physical and mental states; the antithesis of dualism?

Do epiphenomenalists believe in a soul like dualists or something different entirely? Do naturalism and epiphenomenalism contradict?

Does libertarian free-will logically follow from dualism?

I know these are pretty basic but I couldnt find too much online about these, also I dont need huge paragraphs for all of these, just some stuff to help kickstart my study in this area.

Hello, so I've been talking with my friends about this and am so certain that it is sound but none of them seem to buy it. I have not been able to get much out of them other than an I don't get it or a no way, so my GF told me to post here to try and settle things/ get a better formulation of the argument so as to convince them. So here it is:

During the experience of the color green there is no qualitative color green in any of the physical processes involved, yet, with absolute certainty I experience the qualitative color green when looking at grass, therefore the experience of green (consciousness) is non material.

1. The grass is not qualitatively colored green, it contains texture that reflects certain "to-be-green" wavelengths of light, but is just colorless atoms/energy.

2. The light waves are colorless, just a certain wavelength of photon, the information for "green" is again here but not the real thing yet.

3. The eyes basically convert the wavelength to electronic impulses, again with the information for "green" but no qualitative experience of it yet.

4. (Getting close) the brain basically just circulates this imputed electrical info around for a while, something happens here that most closely relates to the qualitative experience of green that we have "first hand", but when looked at from say the perspective of a surgeon, there is nothing there but white and gray stuff and some electronic impulses-nothing that looks green.

5. Nevertheless the color green that we experience when looking at grass exists in our conscious awareness with 100% certainty.

6. Since this experienced quality green exists, but it does not exist in any material process, our experience of it is essentially non material/ exists in a non material realm or as some non material substance, showing that our consciousness is non material.

Tldr: nowhere is the experience of green itself to be found in the grass/light waves/eyes/brain, when we experience green- just different quantities and arrangements of matter. Nevertheless we have the qualitative experience green with 100% certainty when we look at grass. This experience must then be non material.

From this I think it's pretty easy to draw some pretty surprising conclusions like the likelihood of afterlife and some weird metaphysical stuff. Anyway that's the basic arg for dualism.

Pretty much the title, can someone point me in the direction of any contemporary academic philosophy defending mind-body dualism?

Probably 100% of my exposure to charitable (and academically rigorous) treatments of the subject have been from survey courses that ultimately loop around to dunking on it. While I'm generally disposed against MBD, it occurs to me that maybe there are some interesting arguments I haven't read!

Many philosophers posit that consciousness cannot exist without a brain (Mind/Brain Identity Theory). However, some scientists are hoping to one day successfully upload disembodied human consciousness to computers or robots (PopSci).

By hosting consciousness on computer servers, we are essentially saying that computer servers/chips/hardware act as a “brain,” and so hosting consciousness on computers in itself is not necessarily incompatible with mind/brain identity theory.

However, the process of uploading consciousness to a computer server–that is, extracting information from a brain and then transferring it to a computer–proves that consciousness can exist separate from a “brain” as immaterial information.

Am I misunderstanding this? If not, and if this ends up working out, does this prove mind/body Dualism? (Here is an entry on the problem with Mind/Body Dualism for reference).

Edit: Such amazing responses to this thread. Thank you everyone!

What are the rational reasons for accepting the mind-body dualism, if we can simply deny it and accept the simpler premise of non-dualism, which would not run into the same problems?

Why not simply accept that the wave-functions which make up the appearance of my brain-activity are in fact the same as the experiences which we claim to be correlating to these states of wave-functions? That one is not simply emergent from the other, but that what we describe as the fields of probability or states of wave-functions literally are what experience is, simply viewed from another framework? Of course we are biased in the way we frame experience, because conceptually it already implies the dualism between mind and matter, but if we look at it purely phenomenologically, why would we argue that these are not literally what we observe and understand as wave-functions? Why do we add this complication of "This is one thing, which makes this other thing emerge.", when that leads us into a fundamental question about how reality would even determine what kind of wave-functions let consciousness emerge, and even more importantly what kind of process that would even be?

It seems like such a stretch, such an unnecessarily complicated assumption that just leads us into all sorts of metaphysical problems. So why would we not assume the simpler position? Are there any problems with it that I do not see?

Hello, I was just curious as to how one refutes this particular aspect of the theory of mind-body dualism: the fact that we are able to visualize shapes and objects to practically no extent, so long as one has the imagination for it.

This has been bothering me for awhile and one of the reasons why I can't wrap my head around dualism, and it feels like a pretty obvious criticism that's already been answered.

If I abuse drugs, alcohol, or suffer trauma or disease to my brain, my mind would be affected by it wouldn't it? Isn't this supporting materialism?

Would highly appreciate a quick explanation. Thank you!

I think therefore I am. I cannot doubt I exist because the sheer fact that I can doubt I exist proves that I exist. I can doubt that physical things exist. I perceive physical things through my senses, and my senses have proven at times, they can be unreliable. Therefore I, the thing which I cannot doubt exists, am not just a physical thing. I am a thinking thing. I hold a candle to wax; it melts. My senses tell me that it has changed; but I can think that the candle has not changed. Therefore, I am not controlled by my senses. I interpret the world through thinking.

Is mind-body dualism so crazy? Some ask what we need it for. For one, one we need it as an explanation for free-will. What is free-will? At the very least, we can define it as an existence that is not bounded either by cause and effect or probabilistic physical laws. If the mind, an entity that doesn't follow cause and effect controls the body, then we aren't just machines. I am not sure we can define free will further; all the other points of reference are physical (I am using a little structuralism). Yet we all know what free will is. EDIT: I think I can define free will a bit further: it's the ability to, like Satre said, throw your own dice, no matter how limited the throw, to be the cause of your own actions. Because no other physical matter can do that, we may arrive at the conclusion that we are made up of something different from physical matter.

Because at the end of the day, the thought that "I have no free will; I am just a machine" cannot help us decide who to vote or what to choose from the menu. I can't sit and tell the waiter at the restaurant that determinism will pick for me.

Some say the "mind" and "free-will" are illusions, but then "illusions" pre-suppose an observer, at least in our language. Now granted, language may just be approximations of what reality is (Wittgenstien), but we can only think or act within its boundaries. We interpret the world through thinking - through signifieds and signifiers - and not our senses because we are not controlled or bound by the laws of physical things.

Why do people therefore cling to materialism? The fact that we can manipulate the consciousness doesn't disprove that the conciousness incoporates something non-physical. Materialism seems to contradict something fundamental that allows us to exist in our everyday lives, and thus perhaps something fundamental about our existance.

So let's say for the sake of the question that OBEs are real, not hallucinations, not caused by lack of oxygen, etc.

Can any other Philosophy of Mind explain them? Or is it just Substance Dualism. Would Substance Dualism become the majority view?

hello. i am new in r/awakened.

its hard to make this post without going into too much detail. i have to remember what detail is most pertinent. ive been applying and practicing buddhism/taoism/non-duality/etc for about 6 or 7 years. ive gone through a lot of trauma as many of us have. noticing how i was hurting myself and others, as well as feeling generally lost/confused/angry, i went beyond the counseling i had been getting for years and began to learn "self-help" techniques. after studying rational emotive behavior therapy, and other cognitive-based schools of thought, i found buddhism. and from buddhism came more secular applications as well as other spiritual applications... taoism, hindu... and then i discovered raw non-duality and began to read ramana maharshi, sri nisargadatta maharaj, etc.

rewind to when i was in my mid teens, i was interested in getting help for my emotional troubles. i convinced my parents to get me to a doctor. ive always had a desire to be introspective and improve (which can obviously lead to a lot of hang-ups...when youre in a perpetual state of self-improvement, there is a sense of never being good enough for your own standards). i was prescribed zoloft, which seemed to numb me out to a flat line, so i then went on to try lexapro and welbutrin, both of which didnt seem to have an effect on me. finally i was prescribed effexor, and it seemed to... do something? so i kept going with that through my late teens and all of my twenties. then it wasnt until 2015 when i was prescribed lamictal by a new psychiatrist (i had moved to a big city...needless to say i could barely handle that). at the time i felt it had changed my life for the better. that "dark place" that seemed to linger before, and was always available, disappeared with lamictal. i still felt sad, angry, happy, everything else that normal people feel, but it felt like all of those emotions were a healthier version. they werent in the grip of whatever weird thing was going on in my brain that the lamictal helped. they werent totally tainted and skewed by an underlying black hole of misery.

back to my spiritual journey. about 6-8 months ago i began to slowly, slowly ween myself off of both effexor and lamictal. i felt as if i deserved to try it. i felt like at that point in my journey, i needed it. i needed to lift the blankets up and see what ugly stuff was underneath. in march, i threw out my back. i technically had been struggling with chronic back pain sin

According to: https://philpapers.org/surveys/linear_most.pl , Mind-Body Dualism and Libertarian Free Will is the 7th most correlated pairing.

I am asking this as a Substance Dualist and Compatibilist.

Is there some sort of inconsistency between my two positions?

Does one of the strongest arguments for Libertarian Free Will rely on Mind-Body Dualism?

Does one of the strongest arguments against Compatibilism rely on Mind-Body Dualism?

Is it a happy coincidence?

Something else?

Not sure if this has been mentioned but one of the symbols in the Clovis Bray mysterious log book (that is also seen around the Bray installations on Europa) bears striking resemblance to René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.

This is the image in question

René Descartes' (who famously said "I think, therefore I am") believed inputs were passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit. Dualism itself differs from Monism in that it assumes the Mind and Body are distinct non-identical entities as opposed to manifestations of a single substance.

This is something known as the Mind–body problem

>The mind–body problem is a debate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body. It is distinct from the question of how mind and body function chemically and physiologically, as that question presupposes an interactionist account of mind–body relations. This question arises when mind and body are considered as distinct, based on the premise that the mind and the body are fundamentally different in nature

So clearly this was an important problem in the field of Exo science as in Destiny there is clearly a duality between the human mind and the Exo body.

The image above stuck in my head because of the hourglass because after hearing "an hourglass counting down with infinite patience", this was actually the first reference to an hourglass in-game that I have encountered.

You can see further imagery from Descartes' papers here and here.

Now one thing I noticed is that in Descartes' image all the lines point to an arrow but in Clovis Bray's diagram they point to an hourglass. The arrow reminded me of the arrow of time (time's arrow, the concept positing the "one-way direction" or "asymmetry" of time) and in particular Entropy as an arrow of time.

>Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time,