Philosophy
Lecture 4 - Cartesian Dualism & the Mind-Body Problem
There are all sorts of psychological reasons why people tend to believe that we have an immaterial soul that can somehow overcome the physical limitations of the body (think out-of-body experiences, misinterpretation of brain quirks and our tendency for promiscuous projection of agency, to say nothing of religious indoctrination).
When it comes to actual reasoned philosophical arguments, Descartes is, for the most part, still the man to go to, but as Professor Millican explains in this fascinating lecture (that explores the mind-body problem and the fallacies one can commit when trying to derive metaphysical conclusions from epistemological premises), that doesn't mean that substance dualism doesn't face some seriously problematic challenges...
And this is a lecture on more modern responses to dualism:
Click here to see the class slides, and remember that the problems for substance dualism don't end there...
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Ghost In The Machine?
When TheWife's grandfather passed away a number of years ago, her sister broke the news to her daughter who was about five at the time. Looking thoughtful, she asked her mom where Greatgrandpa is now, to which my sister-in-law responded that his body...
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Physical Monism Vs. Substance Dualism - Arguments
In the last post we?ve been dealing generally with the differences between the two major schools which are monism and dualism. It?s time we take a closer look to one of the most popular branches of the dualism ? substance dualism. It states that there...
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Peter Millican's Introduction To General Philosophy
You know what's missing from your life? More philosophy. Sure, the practical benefits may not always be obvious (though they are most decidedly there), but philosophy deals with the deepest, the most elusive, the most important and the most interesting...
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Substance Dualism
If you believe that, in the ultimate analysis, you are a combination of a physical body and a non-physical soul, then you would be a substance dualist. This tradition has been around for thousands of years, and has been espoused by thinkers as prominent...
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John Searle - Beyond Dualism
Descartes' philosophical articulation and defense of psycho-physical dualism (the idea that the mind has an existence different and independent from the physical body), and the idea that the mind cannot be reduced to simple physical processes, have...
Philosophy