This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Mind鈥揵ody dualism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources:聽 Google ( books聽路 news聽路 scholar聽路 free images聽路 WP聽refs)聽路 FENS聽路 JSTOR聽路 TWL |
Archives: Index, 1 |
Mind鈥揵ody dualism was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This 聽
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
I want to note a problem brought out by an IP edit today. The article currently contains the paragraph:
The IP editor understandably changed "zimboes" to "zombies", but that's wrong even if understandable, because Dennett actually used the term "zimbo", which he had invented to mean a "zombie with higher-order informational states". The problem that needs to be solved is that this article doesn't explain what a zimbo is. I don't have time to deal with that at the moment (even if I could), but I didn't want to leave it un-noted. Looie496 ( talk) 19:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. The article has a lot of good qualities, but there are some issues, in particular one major one, that I believe prevent it from meeting the criteria.
These are just some examples, if anyone wants to go to work on this I can do a more thorough review. I will wait for seven days, if anyone has started a thorough revision of the article by then, I will extend the waiting period, so the article can remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it will be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Lampman ( talk) 16:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello, may I draw the discussant's attention to a new paper of mine, published in a volume on non-reductionist theories of consciousness: http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67 I present a new argument for dualism named 鈥淭he Bafflement Argument.鈥 It is condensed into a succinct theorem in Section 12. Being biased re this debate I shall not put any input in the article itself. I hope this note in the discussion page does not infringe on Wiki's rules, otherwise let it be deleted. Sincerely, Elitzur ( talk) 13:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I am suggesting the possibility that this article has a weasling Materialist bias, in that it begins with a focus on Idealism and slides into Materialsm towards the end of the article, despite the fact that both Materialist and Idealist standpoints have existed since the beginning of the Mind-Body problem. True to the point that both are mentioned back and forth throughout the text, nonetheless I see a crunch of anti-idealism arguments at the end of the article, which causes me to speculate the bias. Though in my personal opinion the Materialist standpoint is a stronger argument, this does not mean that the Idealist concept of an immaterial mind is altogether a false concept. I'm new to editing and commenting on articles so I am not about to take on the dauting task of restructuring this article so that it maintains all the information, but in a way that gives each side of the debate equal value. But I figured i would at least make mention of this for anyone who chances to read comments for this article. 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by 155.229.54.243 ( talk) 17:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that the non-reductionist physicalism diagram is correct, as it seems to imply that mental and physical are reducible to each other (which seems more likely to be true of reducible physicalism (monist)than non-reducible physicalism.) If the point being made is more complicated (such as being about ontology rather than property) could the text be modified to reflect that. Heligan ( talk) 14:07, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Is this a new argument for dualism? 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by Tennenrishin ( talk 鈥 contribs) 13:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I dont think its a new argument either, the subjective/private argument has been around for a while. I dont think it proves anything that the person/body that contains the brain has privilidged interaction with it. 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by Heligan ( talk 鈥 contribs) 20:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I was surprised by the simplistic interpretation of Plato's metaphysics and Aristotle's discussion on Plato's theory of forms. It is true that Plato postulated that the forms were immaterial. However, this is an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one. There need not be a strict soul/body or mind/body dualism in order for there to be a soul that has knowledge of the forms. In fact, other accounts of Plato [see for example http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/] argue that Plato was a monist and therefore it would be wrong to lay Descartes mind/body dualism at his feet. Furthermore, Hegel and Spinoza, among other monist philosophers, trace much of their thought to Platonic thinking. This too would seem to undermine the claim that Plato gave rise to modern dualistic thinking. As Whitehead stated, "All of Philosophy is footnotes to Plato." In this limited sense, we could use Plato as a precursor to dualistic thought, but it would only be insofar as he laid the foundation of all the important questions that lead to the mind-body problem. Many have argued, and will continue to do so, that Plato was in fact a monist and that his personal views are closer to the monistic or holistic thinking represented in modern thinking by the likes of Bohm in "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" who deal with wholes and aspects of wholes. That is, the whole is in the part and the part is in the whole. Thus, while Plato located the knowledge of the forms in the soul, this did not require the soul to be separate from the body. For Plato, the soul has multiple aspects and is an aspect of the human being; so, it not necessarily separate, although we may like to try to draw simple distinctions when it suits are arguments--as I believe the author(s) of this article have done. Cloninge ( talk) 16:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
For such an important topic in philosophy, not only in epistemology but in philosophy of mind as well, it seems as though the coverage of substance dualism is severely lacking. I'd personally recommend that a new article be made to cover the topic more in depth. I'm sort of shocked this is an issue! Come on Wiki-Philosophers! -- 74.137.217.154 ( talk) 05:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
...I searched the terming of bore it is through wikipedia that bore is of boredom. I can relate straight off in this article about the fifth line what bore is established with. Could we have that representation bore as an agreement or an affiliation towards something, you know an article discribing what this means. I realize it is seldom used, such as an expression like this one. "I bore the thought but after awhile bordom sunk in and I had to realize that I must conclude or go thus somewhere else". Perfect example of both terms spelled the same way. I shall now go and study, "spell"; dang it.
David George DeLancey (
talk) 21:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
An argument was given by a Christian [1], and a similar type argument was given by Mark Goldblatt [2]. They basically claim that though the mind is non-physical ("the soul", since they are theists), it still needs the brain to function properly so it can manifest in the physical world. The first link actually uses the analogy of the mind being software, the brain being hardware. (My own interpretation of their claims:) So basically, the non-physical mind is like the driver of a car. When something is wrong with the car, the driver can't control it the way he or she wants to. To be clear, this is as a reply on behalf of substance dualism. I'm not trying to advocate my own view (that shall remain personal) or whatever, I just thought that section could have used a reply. 99.255.50.214 ( talk) 05:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
I would like to know the rationale for why my contribution has been subjected to deletion. It does not follow that though brain imaging devices observe causal-relative activities between mind and body, that mind-body distinction is logically dispelled. LaRouxEMP ( talk) 20:14, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Good day to you kind sir,
You are in the wrong for accusing me of inserting weasel words. I used the expression "Though it can be conceded" as a lead in to not a personal opinion, but a logical fact that an observed causal-relation between the mind and body does not necessarily imply that mind-body distinction is a false assertion. But I do see why you might label my addition as weasel words. I guess I could have rewrote it "However, it does not necessarily follow..." I hold a Masters in Philosophy with an emphasis on logic. Do not mistake me for a fool. LaRouxEMP ( talk) 05:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Is the claim that during C.S. Lewis' time, quantum determinism hadn't yet been resolved, but now is, a correct claim? There's an entire article in Wikipedia on quantum indeterminacy so I'd like to check the validity of this claim as suggested here in "Causal Interaction". Appreciate it. Ronsword ( talk) 02:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry to revert so many edits, I really am, and I've saved what I could but there's an NPOV/OR problem. From the edit history, I notice the user doesn't customarily edit philosophy articles and I'd encourage them not to take it personally or professionally because this is a topic in philosophy, not science. Just as scientists are the judge of what they take to be good science, philosophers are the judge of what they take to be good arguments... I'll try to give a run down here of material I didn't incorporate back in:
the mind and body are not identical 鈫 the mind is not wholly contained by the brain
physicalism 鈫 scientific physicalism
Descartes...was the first to formulate 鈫 Descartes...expressed
Dualism is contrasted with with various kinds of
monism, including
physicalism and
phenomenalism.
Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of
materialism, but
property dualism may be considered a form of
emergent materialism or
non-reductive physicalism in some sense.
This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the arguments which have been made both for and against this thesis. 鈫 Modern neuroscience strongly discredits all forms of dualism in favor of physicalism <ref>, but the various historical forms of dualism and the arguments that have been made both for and against them are given below.
(revert back to the more chronological section ordering for Parallelism and Occasionalism)
A very important argument against physicalism (and hence in favor of some sort of dualism) consists in the idea that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different and perhaps irreconcilable properties. 鈫 One observation is that mental states and physical phenomena seem to have different properties; this is because minds perceive intramental states differently than phenomena they experience through senses. Dualists take this as supporting evidence, although it is true notwithstanding the physicality of the mind.
Although, by hypothesis, Mary had already known everything there is to know about colours from an objective, third-person perspective, she never knew, according to Jackson, what it was like to see red, orange, or green.
If Mary really learns something new, it must be knowledge of something non-physical, since she already knew everything there is to know about the physical aspects of colour. 鈫 From the setup, although Mary already knows everything there is to know about colours from an objective, third-person perspective, she has never known what it is like to see red, orange, or green. If Mary learns something new, it must be knowledge of something non-physical, since she already knew everything there is to know about physical colour.
However, this and other arguments only shows that experiences are intrapsychic, and that Mary obtains knowledge of a new intramental state (visual perception of color); it doesn't show that whatever contains these intramental processes is nonphysical.
Daniel Dennett and others also provide arguments against this notion, see Mary's room for details. 鈫 Daniel Dennett and others also provide arguments refuting this notion; see Mary's room for details.
This argument says that, if predicate dualism is correct, then there are special sciences which are irreducible to physics. These irreducible special sciences, which are the source of allegedly irreducible predicates, presumably differ from the hard sciences in that they are interest-relative. If they are interest-relative, then they must be dependent on the existence of minds which are capable of having interested perspectives. Psychology is the classic example of special sciences; therefore, it and its predicates must depend even more profoundly on the existence of the mental.
Physics, at least ideally, sets out to tell us how the world is in itself, to carve up the world at its joints and describe it to us without the interference of individual perspectives or personal interests. On the other hand, such things as the patterns of the weather seen in meteorology or the behavior of human beings are only of interest to human beings as such. The point is that having a perspective on the world is a psychological state. Therefore, the special sciences presuppose the existence of minds which can have these states. If one is to avoid ontological dualism, then the mind that has a perspective must be part of the physical reality to which it applies its perspective. If this is the case, then in order to perceive the physical world as psychological, the mind must have a perspective on the physical. This, in turn, presupposes the existence of mind.<ref name="Rob" /> 鈫
Predicate dualism claims that there are "special sciences" that are irreducible to physics. Robinson claims that these allegedly irreducible subjects, containing irreducible predicates, differ from hard sciences by being interest-relative. He defines interest-relativity as depending on the existence of minds that can have interested perspectives.<ref name="Rob" />
Psychology is one such science, completely depending on and presupposing the existence of the mind.
Unfortunately presuppositions of the mind's existance do not require the mind to be irreducible; this is an unproven premise of the argument. One can equivalently view these special sciences as studying the behavior of complex, aggregate systems (i.e. the mind). In fact many sciences including
chemistry,
evolutionary biology, and
physiology concern such complex, aggregate systems. While they could be rewritten verbosely in terms of
quantum field theory, it is much more convenient to use layers of abstraction, like
molecules,
cells, entire
organisms, or
minds). These systems are so complex that they can't feasibly be rewritten without tremendous analysis <ref> and computational power. <ref> Nonetheless it can be done, and given a mind reducible to physics, "special sciences" are alo reducible to physics, denying the dualist premise.
In short the argument holds that if, as thoroughgoing naturalism entails, all of our thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then we have no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground. Knowledge, however, is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it鈥攐r anything else not the direct result of a physical cause鈥攁nd we could not even suppose it, except by a fluke.<ref name=Reppert />
By this logic, the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid" is self-referentially incoherent 鈫 The argument claims that if our thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then we cannot assume that they are the consequent of a reasonable ground. However knowledge is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it鈥攐r anything else not the direct result of a physical cause鈥攁nd we could not even suppose it, except by a fluke.<ref name=Reppert /> However Lewis later conceded to
Elizabeth Anscombe that the first claim is a
non sequitur (see
criticism).
Through this logic, Lewis attaches self-referential incoherence to the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid"...In the latter two cases...
he stated the logical possibility that 鈫 he stated that
However quantum mechanics was later shown to be
deterministic, and demonstrated (among other things) in the
Bell test experiments.
<ref>{{cite web|title=Arguments against Dualism|url=
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil100/argsagainstCD.html%7Caccessdate=14 November 2012}}</ref>
etc.鈥 Machine鈥奅lf鈥1735 20:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
First of all, thanks for reviewing these edits. Some were terribly NPOV. I do think some have validity, and I've discussed them below.
physicalism 鈫 scientific physicalism
the mind and body are not identical 鈫 the mind is not wholly contained by the brain
Reordering of views of mental causation.
Through this logic, Lewis attaches self-referential incoherence to the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid"...In the latter two cases...
<ref>{{cite web|title=Arguments against Dualism|url=
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil100/argsagainstCD.html%7Caccessdate=14 November 2012}}</ref>
Modern neuroscience strongly discredits all forms of dualism in favor of physicalism
Although discredit is probably too strong a word, my searches through neuroscience literature suggest that the prevailing model is physicalist, and has been for several decades. From a 1980 review in Neuroscience (a verifiable source), [8]: "Reasons are advanced to show that our latest mind-brain model is fundamentally monistic and not only fails to support dualism, but serves to further discount fading prospects for finding dualist forms or domains of conscious experience not embodied in a functioning brain." A 2009 letter in Science (a verifiable source) suggests that dualism is not at all favored [9].
These and other articles [1] [2] establish the physicalism of neuroscience in its methodologies and its discoveries. Cognitive science and neuroscience are exploring a frontier of knowledge, and discoveries in these fields can directly challenge philosophies of mind. When they do so, whether philosophers like it or not, the validity of philosophical theories will be affected. From another letter in Science, 2009, [10],
"However, philosophers deal in belief systems and personal opinions, not in natural laws and facts. They ask interesting questions and pose challenging dilemmas, but they have an unimpressive historical record of prognostication. August Comte, father of positivism, wrote in 1835 that we shall never know what stars are made of (2). A few decades later, the chemical composition of stars was deduced by spectral analysis of their light (3). Francis Crick, a scholar with a far better track record of prediction, stated in an interview in 1996, 鈥淚t is very rash to say that things are beyond the scope of science"
By no means should philosophical articles be made into non-philosophical articles, and they obviously shouldn't all hang disclaimers saying "Warning, subject to scientific refutation!". Most are so unrelated to science, they don't even need to contain the word "science". But given that there is a scientific field that:
I do think that the Dualism article should mention (somewhere) that neuroscience is at odds with it. Regards,
鈥 Wing gundam ( talk) 00:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Dualism should mention the same.
Well, no. Bell's theorem does limit the philosophical discretion of a non-physical entity ("He") who is acting to create probable/improbable events. Its verification requires that "His" interventions appear perfectly random under any observational conditions. This is, obviously, a strong restriction on "His" discretion. But I'll ignore your lack of Good Faith through complete reversions, and continue trying to find a more explicit source than Ch. 7. Wing gundam ( talk) 13:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
- The neutral monists happily acknowledge that 鈥渢houghts ain't in the head:鈥 (Holt 1914, 153) ...
- Avenarius was the most outspoken advocate of this idea. The original epistemic sin, as he sees it, is the 鈥渋ntrojection鈥 of mental states into the brain. He spends considerable time providing a genetic analysis of how the intellectual catastrophe of introjection could have happened. But he also presents straightforward arguments that are supposed to show the falsity of introjection:
- The brain has ganglia and nerve fibers, has neuroglia and vessels, has different colors (is colored this way or that) and so on. But neither the most detailed anatomical dissection, nor an arbitrarily powerful microscope would reveal thoughts qua components of thinking, much less thinking itself as part or property of the brain. (Avenarius 1891, 67)
- Considerations of this sort lead him to summarize his views about introjection in a remarkable paragraph:
- The brain is not the dwelling-place, seat or producer of thought; it is not the instrument or organ, it is not the vehicle or substratum, etc., of thought. Thought is not an indweller or command-giver, it is not a second half or aspect, etc., nor is it a product; it is not even a physiological function of the brain, nor is it a state of the brain at all. (Avenarius 1891, 76)
- Mach approvingly quotes this passage and tells us that Avenarius conception seems 鈥渢o approximate very nearly to my own.鈥 (Mach 1886, 28) ...
- And Petzoldt celebrates Avenarius for having done away with
- the barbaric quid pro quo that lets the psychological sensations get into the brain together with the physiological stimulations, and which then have to be moved back out again, of course. (Petzoldt 1906, 170)
- The radical externalism about the mental evidenced by these passages stands in the service of overcoming 鈥渢he problem of the external world鈥 by making it into the immediate object of our thought, or better, by making our thoughts be portions of it. That neutral monism allowed for this nonidealistic fusion of mind and world, thereby opening our cognitive doors onto the world, was what attracted most neutral monists to this doctrine in the first place.
- Russell's Internalism
- Finally, it must be emphasized that Russell's versions of neutral monism never did deliver the direct perceptual grasp of the external physical object that the standard versions of the mainstream doctrine were designed to achieve. ...
- Considerations about the causal theory of perception persuade him to place the percept into the percipients brain. And the proximal model of construction (see the section 鈥淩eduction of the Physical鈥) allows him to understand the 鈥渋ntrojected鈥 percept as a constituent of the matter that forms the percipient's brain. Hence he can proclaim that 鈥淚 know about what is happening in the brain exactly what na茂ve realism thinks it knows about what is happening in the outside world.鈥 (Russell 1927b, 104) A slightly longer version of this goes as follows:
- I maintain an opinion which all other philosophers find shocking: namely, that people's thoughts are in their heads. The light from a star travels over intervening space and causes a disturbance in the optic nerve ending in an occurrence in the brain. What I maintain is that the occurrence in the brain is a visual sensation. I maintain, in fact, that the brain consists of thoughts鈥攗sing 鈥榯hought鈥 in its widest sense, as it is used by Descartes鈥hat I maintain is that we can witness or observe what goes on in our heads, and that we cannot witness or observe anything else at all. (Russell 1959, 18鈥19)
- This position is still realistic in the minimal sense guaranteed by neutral monism: there can be no objectless experience, because the object and the experience of it are one鈥攖here is one neutral element (an event or percept) that plays this double role. But in all other respects Russell's internalistic version of neutral monism is the antithesis of the realist spirit that informed the versions of the doctrine we find in Mach, James, and the American New Realists. Perceptual contact with external objects becomes as indirect and as inferential as in the representative theories of perception鈥攅.g., the sense-datum theory鈥攖hat neutral monism was designed to overcome.
- The pervasive externalism of mainstream neutral monism makes Russell's radical turn towards internalism particularly disorienting. The point here is not to assess Russell's reasons for this disturbing conclusion. The point is to demonstrate, one final time, how accommodating the neutral monist framework is, and how little of that which may seem most characteristic about the neutral monist doctrines on record is really part of neutral monism. Neither the externalism of Mach, James, Avenarius, Holt, etc., nor the internalism of Russell have anything to do with neutral monism.
鈥斺Leopold Stubenberg, "Neutral Monism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It is the idea, in brief, that conscious phenomena as emergent functional properties of brain processing exert an active control role as causal determinants in shaping the flow patterns of cerebral excitation. Once generated from neural events, the higher order mental patterns and programs have their own subjective qualities and progress, operate and interact by their own causal laws and principles which are different from and cannot be reduced to those of neurophysiology, as explained further below. Compared to the physiological processes, the conscious events are more molar, being determined by configurational or organizational interrelations in neuronal functions. The mental entities transcend the physiological just as the physiological transcends the molecular, the molecular, the atomic and subatomic, etc. The mental forces do not violate, disturb or intervene in neuronal activity but they do supervene. Interaction is mutually reciprocal between the neural and mental levels in the nested brain hierarchies. Multilevel and interlevel determinism is emphasized in-addition to the one-颅level sequential causation more traditionally dealt with. This idea is very different from those of extra-颅physical ghostly intervention at synapses and of indeterministic influences on which Eccles and Popper had earlier relied. The question at issue is whether this form of psychophysical interaction is fundamentally monistic as I interpret it or whether it is dualistic as presented by Popper and Eccles.
鈥斺R.W.Sperry, "Mind-brain interaction: mentalism, yes; dualism, no" in Neuroscience Vol.5, (1980) pp.195-206
A traditional working hypothesis in neuroscience holds that a complete account of brain function is possible, in principle, in strictly neurophysiological terms without invoking conscious or mental agents; the neural correlates of subjective experience are conceived to exert causal influence but not mental qualities per se.
鈥斺R.W.Sperry, "Mind-brain interaction: mentalism, yes; dualism, no" in Neuroscience Vol.5, (1980) pp.195-206
Hume criticised the whole conception of substance for lacking in empirical content: when you search for the owner of the properties that make up a substance, you find nothing but further properties. Consequently, the mind is, he claimed, nothing but a 鈥榖undle鈥 or 鈥榟eap鈥 of impressions and ideas 鈥 that is, of particular mental states or events, without an owner. This position has been labelled bundle dualism, and it is a special case of a general bundle theory of substance, according to which objects in general are just organised collections of properties. The problem for the Humean is to explain what binds the elements in the bundle together. This is an issue for any kind of substance, but for material bodies the solution seems fairly straightforward: the unity of a physical bundle is constituted by some form of causal interaction between the elements in the bundle. For the mind, mere causal connection is not enough; some further relation of co-consciousness is required. We shall see in 5.2.1 that it is problematic whether one can treat such a relation as more primitive than the notion of belonging to a subject. ... His bundle theory is a theory about the nature of the unity of the mind. As a theory about this unity, it is not necessarily dualist. Parfit (1970, 1984) and Shoemaker (1984, ch. 2), for example, accept it as physicalists. In general, physicalists will accept it unless they wish to ascribe the unity to the brain or the organism as a whole. Before the bundle theory can be dualist one must accept property dualism...
A crisis in the history of dualism came ... with the growing popularity of mechanism in science in the nineteenth century. According to the mechanist, the world is, as it would now be expressed, 鈥榗losed under physics鈥. This means that everything that happens follows from and is in accord with the laws of physics. There is, therefore, no scope for interference in the physical world by the mind in the way that interactionism seems to require. According to the mechanist, the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon (a notion given general currency by T. H. Huxley (1893)): that is, it is a by-product of the physical system which has no influence back on it. In this way, the facts of consciousness are acknowledged but the integrity of physical science is preserved. However, many philosophers found it implausible ... It is very largely due to the need to avoid this counterintuitiveness that we owe the concern of twentieth century philosophy to devise a plausible form of materialist monism. But, although dualism has been out of fashion in psychology since the advent of behaviourism (Watson (1913)) and in philosophy since Ryle (1949), the argument is by no means over. Some distinguished neurologists, such as Sherrington (1940) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles (1977)) have contined to defend dualism as the only theory that can preserve the data of consciousness. Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century.鈥斺Howard Robinson, "Dualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
References
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite web}}
: |access-date=
requires |url=
(
help); External link in |work=
(
help); Missing or empty |title=
(
help); Missing or empty |url=
(
help)
Hi, I know I haven't been involved in these discussions which seem to have been going on for quite some time, but I have to say, Machine Elf, you're being pretty uncharitable. If you are facing sources you can't access, the proper response is to ask people who can access them, not assert that they are worthless. Nature is a preeminent scientific journal, and you can't just ignore it because it turns a profit.
In particular, the article in Neuroscience is pretty much the most specific, notable, and respected source on the matter you could ask for. Assuming you don't intend to systematically purge all science from the article, you have to at least admit that peer-reviewed articles from widely-available sources directly addressing the question at hand must be acceptable.
I'm very troubled when I see you saying things like "[saying neuroscience investigates the mind-body problem] fails WP:V". How can this even make sense? One can easily verify that scientists in the field are investigating the problem simply by checking the very source he cited. The conclusions might be harder to verify, but surely the investigation itself is unequivocal.
You make a number of even stranger claims, like stating that thought ID is "begging the question," as if testing the predictions of a model is equivalent to assuming it is true to prove itself. Making predictions and testing them against reality is precisely how scientific models are falsified. And the suggestion that because philosophy incorporates more modes of thought than science, science cannot impact philosophical conclusions is clear sophistry.
In fact, neuroscience and related fields are the only direct, falsifiable investigations into the mind-body problem, so excluding them is beyond incomplete, it is blatantly dishonest. If you think there is a better way to structure their inclusion, then you should work toward that. But don't make this a power struggle over what evidence is allowed inclusion and what is not. That in itself is the heart of POV.
I'm not going to go through every point, and to be honest I don't even have a position on them all, but I do think you have to change your attitude here. Dualism is not a purely speculative question, and has not been for decades. Scientific facts will bear on this article if it is to ever make GA criteria again.24.93.180.3 ( talk) 21:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help) Posted March 17, 2009:
International Psychoanalysis - Neuroscience and the Soul.
I think the way this is supposed to work is that you can't continue editing the article and talk page without at least addressing my objections. I've reverted your last edit.
Eebster the Great (
talk) 07:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
#re_09 This has nothing to do with the religious beliefs of particular scientists, nor an individual's comfort with a non-scientific explanation of the mind. The methodology of science is physicalist, in that inquiry assumes phenomena can be described physically. Segueing to #re_10, your last sentence is incorrect. Numbers, algebras, and other mathematical structures are obviously different from both the physical mind and a non-physical concept of the mind. For one, math is rigorously axiomatized, in contrast to dualist theories of the mind. Furthermore even a physicalist assumption doesn't imply the mind has spatial extent or location. By analogy, the internet is certainly physical yet has neither of these; at best one could point to the network infrastructure, the wires, and the hardware of every connected object, but that's superfluous: it's some subset of the configurations of these HW devices that define it. That's all I mean.
#re_10 non-"identity" is not the most appropriate way to define dualism. Even neutral monism doesn't assert that the mind and body exactly alike, the same, or identical, rather than at most both composed of the third substance. Physicalism certainly goes further. For instance, the spleen is undeniably part of the body and not part of the mind. If "the mind is not contained by the body" is intolerable, then why not a third possibility like "the mind is not exclusively a function of the brain."
#re_11 clearly I didn't notice. On my first two reads of the article, I found the relationship between these two sections confusing. It's still not ideal, but this article has general flow issues. While historical order works for the Historical Overview section, the preceding two are thematic overviews, and they're more readable when organized as such.
#re_12 You're cherry picking. Anscombe's recounts no feeling of humiliation on Lewis's part, Lewis's biographer disagrees. His biographer also states Lewis told him, '... that he had been proved wrong, and that his argument for the existence of God had been demolished'. Sayer himself describes Lewis humiliated. But regardless he lost the debate, and apparently made alterations to his book.
#re_13 You're encouraged to search for better citations for any material incorrectly cited. You may not know this, but edit reversion is seen only as a last resort.
#re_14 Your brick is difficult to follow. I agree with Eebster on several points.
All citations are valid, regardless of whether the publisher turns a profit. I encourage you to read Murphy (2009). [1] Francis Crick's article is good too, [2] as is Dehaene's book. [3]
Extended content
|
---|
|
Wing gundam ( talk) 10:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
1. A broad accusation, and false accordingly: I certainly didn't "reverted all of your changes back into the article, in whatever way you saw fit," primarily because I conceded several in agreement. In other cases, I addressed NPOV/OR/w/e concerns for every point you listed. Perhaps you're confused because I never spelled this out for you:
2. I have no association with 70.194.0.185. If you have a problem, take it up with a Steward.
3. So, (Finally), your concern is that the claim "Neuroscence is operating under a Physicalist assumption" stands Not Verified, as that would be SYN on Sperry? (Y/N)
鈥 Wing gundam ( talk) 09:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I've stricken "all" to read "whichever" in order to more clearly convey all that you saw fit, which was not meant as an accusation.
I see you were not still making changes at the time after all: your last edit prior to reverting the IP was at 04:40, 30 November 2012鈥, but I replied on 15:30, 30 November 2012. I was not trying to "give [you] grief", I was trying to respond to the demands/accusations that I must take action or stop preventing you from making edits when, in fact, I was merely objecting to edits that you had already made, and only one of which I've pressed... I'd like to think you'd regret having endorsed it: "...excluding them is beyond incomplete, it is blatantly dishonest. If you think there is a better way to structure their inclusion, then you should work toward that. But don't make this a power struggle over what evidence is allowed inclusion and what is not. That in itself is the heart of POV."
I objected, but I didn't stop you from replacing "Though it can be conceded that this does not logically dispel the feasibility of mind-body distinction." with less philosophical WP:OR/ WP:SYNTH, i.e., "strong empirical evidence" for a "physical basis"... at the end of this section. A "non-material neuroscience" advocate might beg to differ, but no physical evidence could falsify physicalism, much less dualism. Physicalism and dualism are not competing scientific theories.鈥 Machine鈥奅lf鈥1735 15:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Well I know grief when I see it.
There is a preponderance of physicalist neuroscientists, and reviews in Nat Rev Neuro advance this view when explicitly discussing philosophical implications (rarely). I cited several papers by Murphy, Koch, Francis Crick, and Dehaene, but Laurence Tancredi's book may also be a relavent. Dropping Sperry...
"...physical basis in the brain." 鈥 It was probably too strong given the source. I added Dehaene's review from Cognition, wherein he explicitly describes empirical consequences of the current model of neurophysiological consciousness, and consequently which results would yield positive verification.
As Koch writes several times (as do the 4 authors mentioned above), topics like free will and the mind-body problem that were once the domain of theology and philosophy are no more so. It's been an uphill battle to wrestle them from their philosophical ancestry, but it's done. (see Churchland's Studies in Neurophilosophy).
Dualism, physicalism, etc, are no longer speculative issues. Work to demonstrate that the mind may be accounted for solely by neuroscientific processes is ongoing and successful. In fact that section's title is oddly specific, and should probably be "Argument from neuroscience." (done)
鈥 wing gundam 13:00, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
References
{{
cite journal}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help); Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help)
{{
cite book}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: Check |doi=
value (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help); Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
Can I respectfully ask that people contributing to this page give some structure to it? The mega-section above makes things really difficult for anybody who doesn't want to spend hours trying to parse it. Looie496 ( talk) 17:06, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
If somebody is going to edit the article to make the extraordinary claim that "dualism isn't true because science. and facts." I think it would be appropriate to back that claim up with the actual facts. From what I can tell from the sources, those authors aren't making any claims about monism that haven't already been made for hundreds of years. While the editor is at it, they may want to hop on over to empiricism and update that as well, since it also seems to be lacking references to these alleged revolutionary breakthroughs. 鈥 Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.9.145.227 ( talk) 14:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
The editor who summarized Breuer's thesis regarding self-measurement has misstated Breuer's conclusions, in my opinion. Breuer is talking to the operational reality of performing measurements on a quantum system which includes the observing system, not a human brain, or anything larger. The context of Breuer's thesis regards quantum systems and operational validation of quantum theories. Furthermore, the summary states that the inability to validate a theory proves that it is false. This is a fallacy. I propose that all of this be deleted because it has nothing to do with dualism to begin with, and because it is asserting 'facts' not present in the source. 50.147.26.108 ( talk) 15:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
"David Chalmers recently developed a thought experiment inspired by the movie The Matrix in which substance dualism could be true: Consider a computer simulation in which the bodies of the creatures are controlled by their minds and the minds remain strictly external to the simulation. The creatures can do all the science they want in the world, but they will never be able to figure out where their minds are, for they do not exist in their observable universe.[8]"
I'm sorry, why does this get special emphasis? This is the old "brain in a vat" thought experiment that existed for decades. Just because Chalmers used a popular tool (the movie) to demonstrate an idea in a paper recently does not mean that he invented it as the article seems to suggest. 15.195.185.83 ( talk) 20:57, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Denyse O'Leary and Mario Beauregard have a book that claims to make the neuroscientists argument for what I think amounts to dualism. I can think also of some arguments put forward by Dinesh D'Souza in his book on Life After Death (never mind ad hominem attacks on some of D'Souza's other endeavors, other beliefs, or reputation - I am talking about specific arguments that if they are true are true no matter who writes them down). I see in the Wikipedia article mostly philosophical/religious arguments for dualism and neurological/physics arguments against it. The article seems weak on the neurological arguments in favor of dualism. I am not the one to write the part I see as missing, but I hope someone in the know could include it, or that someone could be asked to research/contribute in this area. There obviously are ideas out there which are worth including in this article to be fair and well-rounded. Has anyone tried to include them only to have them deleted? Is this simply something overlooked? Could it be true that neurologists who find support of dualism deserve to be ignored on their published ideas? Shrommer ( talk) 22:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
My guess is that the most convincing things Dinesh D'Souza has to say in the Life after Death book would all be covered in a 2003 book caled The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley. Just a guess, but worth looking in to. Shrommer ( talk) 14:13, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Dualism (philosophy of mind). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://philosophybites.com/2011/05/david-eagleman-on-morality-and-the-brain.htmlDavid{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online1.html#materialismWhen you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.鈥 InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:46, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Move. C煤chullain t/ c 16:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Dualism (philosophy of mind) 鈫捖? 鈫
Mind鈥揵ody dualism 鈥 The current name is unwieldy and awkward, I don't feel it is restricted only to the "philosophy of mind" (it could refer to metaphysics and potentially other philosophical sub-fields), and personally the topic took me several minutes to finally find. Typically, I have heard it labelled in philosophy books as Metaphysical dualism, though Google results show that Mind鈥揵ody dualism is even more common. It certainly would have been easier to track down. Either name I've suggested seems preferable to me.
Wolfdog (
talk) 20:07, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Halfway down the page there is a diagram titled "Cartesian dualism compared to three forms of monism." But all the types of depicted are forms of ontologically dualistic and monism is not depicted. Monism does not divide the world into physical and mental and decide which is real. That division is the essence of Cartesian Dualism. Monists, in fact, argue that although we perceive epistemic differences between what are apparently physical and apparently mental qualities, these are both manifestations of a single underlying reality. No ontological separation can be made. This is the position of John Searle, for example. The diagram that is supposed to show monism, in fact shows several forms of lopsided dualism and one form of lopsided triplism. Jayarava ( talk) 09:03, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Would it overly annoy anyone to replace the special typographic character, and restrict the article title to characters available on a standard keyboard? In these talk pages, 'mind-body' with a hyphen outnumbers the variant with a mdash by a factor of six ... Scarabocchio ( talk) 19:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
On 21 March user Equilibrium103 added this content with this blog as a source. I removed it as unreliable. Today, user Equilibrium103 put the content back, pointing in the edit summary to Wikipedia:Citing self-published blogs or Wikipedia:Blogs_as_sources, the former being inactive and "no longer relevant", the latter being "a failed proposal", and in the edit summary requesting me to "Please refrain from unsolicited personal account DMs". As both the wp-guidelines are clearly irrelevant, and as i.m.o. the source is not reliable, I undid the edit again, also per, for now, wp:NOCONSENSUS: "In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Comments from others welcome, but pending consensus to keep the content with the blog source, let's adhere to wp:BRD. - DVdm ( talk) 13:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
The dualistic stance of human nature and analytical method determined the biomedical model in medicine. Accordingly, human beings were viewed as biological organisms (materialism), to be understood by examining their constituent parts (reductionism) using the principles of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and physics
鈥斺 PMC 3115289
The WP article is very detailed about the possible variants of materialism and recutionism, but it lacks of a clear summary about them. The permanence of the body-mind dualism is contexualized in the 17th century Copernican Revolution, which resized the Holy Scipture's scientific authority in favour to the other upcoming theologies. Infact, dualistic view is said to be compatible with most of them. 鈥斅燩receding unsigned comment added by 94.38.234.132 ( talk 鈥 contribs) 08:24, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
Everything in this article is indeed relevant to the article topic and was very well written. This article is about dualism (exactly what we have spoken about in class), the ideology that the mind and body are two different things that are completely separate and do not relate. All the sub-topics (types of dualism, dualist views, history of dualism, arguments for dualism and arguments against dualism) are all relevant and enhance the page.
Nothing distracted me; everything was neat and well spaced. There isn't an overload of pictures and the ones that there are relevant and help with understanding the stuff that was said.
JACstudent (
talk) 00:17, 5 February 2022 (UTC) JACstudent
As a non-expert, it's difficult for me to understand the difference between the articles Mind鈥揵ody problem and Mind鈥揵ody dualism. As far as I can see, it's the difference between Nature-nurture dichotomy and Nature-nurture debate. I'm very happy to accept there is a difference, but it would be good to have a hatnote that summarises the differences between them. Or, if they are the same (or substantially the same), then it may be worth merging the articles. -- Xurizuri ( talk) 08:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Dualism has been described in terms of ideal & atomic, then (after Descartes) mental & material, now (aftern modern (meta)physics) spiritual & physical (,and IIRC, life & unlife) but some schools of thought (various ancient/Classical Greek, Kabbalah, far Eastern, German Idealism) don't consider each historical pair synonymous (some do) rather than more than three or four to seven or more levels, which has been called polyism. Though I'm a rationalist idealist (so monist), should polyism be redirected here (as discusses ideas, mind, and spirit) or get its own article? Tertium quid also has been used to critique dualism.-- dchmelik ( t| c) 01:51, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
This article states that 鈥淪ubstance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent realm of existence distinct from that of the physical world.鈥 I doubt this. Cartesian dualism may be in conflict with the Chalcedonian Definition accepted by most Christians, and is completely incompatible with Buddhism. Furthermore, Descartes鈥 view of the soul has little in common with the views of most Hindu theologians throughout history. 73.73.127.102 ( talk) 22:49, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
When the body dies, does the mind live on since they are separate? Kim Brunelle ( talk) 01:49, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Here is an article claiming that Cartesian dualism is not compatible with Christian theology ( https://equip.sbts.edu/publications/journals/journal-of-theology/a-chalcedonian-argument-against-cartesian-dualism/). 66.99.95.140 ( talk) 13:27, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
I found this article to be very interesting. We have touched on many of these topics in class and reading it here helped me understand it better. I found it to be on track (nothing distracting) also, talked well on the sub-subjects and described them well. It was not bias and provided good reliable information with proof and history to them. It provided good links and nothing seems to be outdated. This article is nicely diverse in means of authors and philosophers.
Overall, this article was well written and sparks up many discussions and theories.
- Wildflower12 ( talk) 22:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Article fails the B-class criteria (#1) since joining the "Articles with unsourced statements from Jan 2018 club. -- Otr500 ( talk) 22:55, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
Minimize the number of links. -- Otr500 ( talk) 22:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Ciao fellow Wikipedia Editors: For your pleasure I have added objections raised by Colin Murray Turbayne to the Cartesian Mind-body dualism and the concepts of " substance and "substratum" upon which it is based, along with links to George Berkeley and metaphor. This is clearly a "substanitive" objection (no pun intended) so I hope that I have not "muddied the waters! Enjoy and happy editing. 160.72.80.178 ( talk) 22:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)NHPL
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Mind鈥揵ody dualism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources:聽 Google ( books聽路 news聽路 scholar聽路 free images聽路 WP聽refs)聽路 FENS聽路 JSTOR聽路 TWL |
Archives: Index, 1 |
Mind鈥揵ody dualism was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This 聽
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
I want to note a problem brought out by an IP edit today. The article currently contains the paragraph:
The IP editor understandably changed "zimboes" to "zombies", but that's wrong even if understandable, because Dennett actually used the term "zimbo", which he had invented to mean a "zombie with higher-order informational states". The problem that needs to be solved is that this article doesn't explain what a zimbo is. I don't have time to deal with that at the moment (even if I could), but I didn't want to leave it un-noted. Looie496 ( talk) 19:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. The article has a lot of good qualities, but there are some issues, in particular one major one, that I believe prevent it from meeting the criteria.
These are just some examples, if anyone wants to go to work on this I can do a more thorough review. I will wait for seven days, if anyone has started a thorough revision of the article by then, I will extend the waiting period, so the article can remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it will be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Lampman ( talk) 16:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello, may I draw the discussant's attention to a new paper of mine, published in a volume on non-reductionist theories of consciousness: http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67 I present a new argument for dualism named 鈥淭he Bafflement Argument.鈥 It is condensed into a succinct theorem in Section 12. Being biased re this debate I shall not put any input in the article itself. I hope this note in the discussion page does not infringe on Wiki's rules, otherwise let it be deleted. Sincerely, Elitzur ( talk) 13:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I am suggesting the possibility that this article has a weasling Materialist bias, in that it begins with a focus on Idealism and slides into Materialsm towards the end of the article, despite the fact that both Materialist and Idealist standpoints have existed since the beginning of the Mind-Body problem. True to the point that both are mentioned back and forth throughout the text, nonetheless I see a crunch of anti-idealism arguments at the end of the article, which causes me to speculate the bias. Though in my personal opinion the Materialist standpoint is a stronger argument, this does not mean that the Idealist concept of an immaterial mind is altogether a false concept. I'm new to editing and commenting on articles so I am not about to take on the dauting task of restructuring this article so that it maintains all the information, but in a way that gives each side of the debate equal value. But I figured i would at least make mention of this for anyone who chances to read comments for this article. 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by 155.229.54.243 ( talk) 17:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that the non-reductionist physicalism diagram is correct, as it seems to imply that mental and physical are reducible to each other (which seems more likely to be true of reducible physicalism (monist)than non-reducible physicalism.) If the point being made is more complicated (such as being about ontology rather than property) could the text be modified to reflect that. Heligan ( talk) 14:07, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Is this a new argument for dualism? 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by Tennenrishin ( talk 鈥 contribs) 13:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I dont think its a new argument either, the subjective/private argument has been around for a while. I dont think it proves anything that the person/body that contains the brain has privilidged interaction with it. 鈥擯receding unsigned comment added by Heligan ( talk 鈥 contribs) 20:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I was surprised by the simplistic interpretation of Plato's metaphysics and Aristotle's discussion on Plato's theory of forms. It is true that Plato postulated that the forms were immaterial. However, this is an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one. There need not be a strict soul/body or mind/body dualism in order for there to be a soul that has knowledge of the forms. In fact, other accounts of Plato [see for example http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/] argue that Plato was a monist and therefore it would be wrong to lay Descartes mind/body dualism at his feet. Furthermore, Hegel and Spinoza, among other monist philosophers, trace much of their thought to Platonic thinking. This too would seem to undermine the claim that Plato gave rise to modern dualistic thinking. As Whitehead stated, "All of Philosophy is footnotes to Plato." In this limited sense, we could use Plato as a precursor to dualistic thought, but it would only be insofar as he laid the foundation of all the important questions that lead to the mind-body problem. Many have argued, and will continue to do so, that Plato was in fact a monist and that his personal views are closer to the monistic or holistic thinking represented in modern thinking by the likes of Bohm in "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" who deal with wholes and aspects of wholes. That is, the whole is in the part and the part is in the whole. Thus, while Plato located the knowledge of the forms in the soul, this did not require the soul to be separate from the body. For Plato, the soul has multiple aspects and is an aspect of the human being; so, it not necessarily separate, although we may like to try to draw simple distinctions when it suits are arguments--as I believe the author(s) of this article have done. Cloninge ( talk) 16:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
For such an important topic in philosophy, not only in epistemology but in philosophy of mind as well, it seems as though the coverage of substance dualism is severely lacking. I'd personally recommend that a new article be made to cover the topic more in depth. I'm sort of shocked this is an issue! Come on Wiki-Philosophers! -- 74.137.217.154 ( talk) 05:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
...I searched the terming of bore it is through wikipedia that bore is of boredom. I can relate straight off in this article about the fifth line what bore is established with. Could we have that representation bore as an agreement or an affiliation towards something, you know an article discribing what this means. I realize it is seldom used, such as an expression like this one. "I bore the thought but after awhile bordom sunk in and I had to realize that I must conclude or go thus somewhere else". Perfect example of both terms spelled the same way. I shall now go and study, "spell"; dang it.
David George DeLancey (
talk) 21:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
An argument was given by a Christian [1], and a similar type argument was given by Mark Goldblatt [2]. They basically claim that though the mind is non-physical ("the soul", since they are theists), it still needs the brain to function properly so it can manifest in the physical world. The first link actually uses the analogy of the mind being software, the brain being hardware. (My own interpretation of their claims:) So basically, the non-physical mind is like the driver of a car. When something is wrong with the car, the driver can't control it the way he or she wants to. To be clear, this is as a reply on behalf of substance dualism. I'm not trying to advocate my own view (that shall remain personal) or whatever, I just thought that section could have used a reply. 99.255.50.214 ( talk) 05:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
I would like to know the rationale for why my contribution has been subjected to deletion. It does not follow that though brain imaging devices observe causal-relative activities between mind and body, that mind-body distinction is logically dispelled. LaRouxEMP ( talk) 20:14, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Good day to you kind sir,
You are in the wrong for accusing me of inserting weasel words. I used the expression "Though it can be conceded" as a lead in to not a personal opinion, but a logical fact that an observed causal-relation between the mind and body does not necessarily imply that mind-body distinction is a false assertion. But I do see why you might label my addition as weasel words. I guess I could have rewrote it "However, it does not necessarily follow..." I hold a Masters in Philosophy with an emphasis on logic. Do not mistake me for a fool. LaRouxEMP ( talk) 05:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Is the claim that during C.S. Lewis' time, quantum determinism hadn't yet been resolved, but now is, a correct claim? There's an entire article in Wikipedia on quantum indeterminacy so I'd like to check the validity of this claim as suggested here in "Causal Interaction". Appreciate it. Ronsword ( talk) 02:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry to revert so many edits, I really am, and I've saved what I could but there's an NPOV/OR problem. From the edit history, I notice the user doesn't customarily edit philosophy articles and I'd encourage them not to take it personally or professionally because this is a topic in philosophy, not science. Just as scientists are the judge of what they take to be good science, philosophers are the judge of what they take to be good arguments... I'll try to give a run down here of material I didn't incorporate back in:
the mind and body are not identical 鈫 the mind is not wholly contained by the brain
physicalism 鈫 scientific physicalism
Descartes...was the first to formulate 鈫 Descartes...expressed
Dualism is contrasted with with various kinds of
monism, including
physicalism and
phenomenalism.
Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of
materialism, but
property dualism may be considered a form of
emergent materialism or
non-reductive physicalism in some sense.
This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the arguments which have been made both for and against this thesis. 鈫 Modern neuroscience strongly discredits all forms of dualism in favor of physicalism <ref>, but the various historical forms of dualism and the arguments that have been made both for and against them are given below.
(revert back to the more chronological section ordering for Parallelism and Occasionalism)
A very important argument against physicalism (and hence in favor of some sort of dualism) consists in the idea that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different and perhaps irreconcilable properties. 鈫 One observation is that mental states and physical phenomena seem to have different properties; this is because minds perceive intramental states differently than phenomena they experience through senses. Dualists take this as supporting evidence, although it is true notwithstanding the physicality of the mind.
Although, by hypothesis, Mary had already known everything there is to know about colours from an objective, third-person perspective, she never knew, according to Jackson, what it was like to see red, orange, or green.
If Mary really learns something new, it must be knowledge of something non-physical, since she already knew everything there is to know about the physical aspects of colour. 鈫 From the setup, although Mary already knows everything there is to know about colours from an objective, third-person perspective, she has never known what it is like to see red, orange, or green. If Mary learns something new, it must be knowledge of something non-physical, since she already knew everything there is to know about physical colour.
However, this and other arguments only shows that experiences are intrapsychic, and that Mary obtains knowledge of a new intramental state (visual perception of color); it doesn't show that whatever contains these intramental processes is nonphysical.
Daniel Dennett and others also provide arguments against this notion, see Mary's room for details. 鈫 Daniel Dennett and others also provide arguments refuting this notion; see Mary's room for details.
This argument says that, if predicate dualism is correct, then there are special sciences which are irreducible to physics. These irreducible special sciences, which are the source of allegedly irreducible predicates, presumably differ from the hard sciences in that they are interest-relative. If they are interest-relative, then they must be dependent on the existence of minds which are capable of having interested perspectives. Psychology is the classic example of special sciences; therefore, it and its predicates must depend even more profoundly on the existence of the mental.
Physics, at least ideally, sets out to tell us how the world is in itself, to carve up the world at its joints and describe it to us without the interference of individual perspectives or personal interests. On the other hand, such things as the patterns of the weather seen in meteorology or the behavior of human beings are only of interest to human beings as such. The point is that having a perspective on the world is a psychological state. Therefore, the special sciences presuppose the existence of minds which can have these states. If one is to avoid ontological dualism, then the mind that has a perspective must be part of the physical reality to which it applies its perspective. If this is the case, then in order to perceive the physical world as psychological, the mind must have a perspective on the physical. This, in turn, presupposes the existence of mind.<ref name="Rob" /> 鈫
Predicate dualism claims that there are "special sciences" that are irreducible to physics. Robinson claims that these allegedly irreducible subjects, containing irreducible predicates, differ from hard sciences by being interest-relative. He defines interest-relativity as depending on the existence of minds that can have interested perspectives.<ref name="Rob" />
Psychology is one such science, completely depending on and presupposing the existence of the mind.
Unfortunately presuppositions of the mind's existance do not require the mind to be irreducible; this is an unproven premise of the argument. One can equivalently view these special sciences as studying the behavior of complex, aggregate systems (i.e. the mind). In fact many sciences including
chemistry,
evolutionary biology, and
physiology concern such complex, aggregate systems. While they could be rewritten verbosely in terms of
quantum field theory, it is much more convenient to use layers of abstraction, like
molecules,
cells, entire
organisms, or
minds). These systems are so complex that they can't feasibly be rewritten without tremendous analysis <ref> and computational power. <ref> Nonetheless it can be done, and given a mind reducible to physics, "special sciences" are alo reducible to physics, denying the dualist premise.
In short the argument holds that if, as thoroughgoing naturalism entails, all of our thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then we have no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground. Knowledge, however, is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it鈥攐r anything else not the direct result of a physical cause鈥攁nd we could not even suppose it, except by a fluke.<ref name=Reppert />
By this logic, the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid" is self-referentially incoherent 鈫 The argument claims that if our thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then we cannot assume that they are the consequent of a reasonable ground. However knowledge is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it鈥攐r anything else not the direct result of a physical cause鈥攁nd we could not even suppose it, except by a fluke.<ref name=Reppert /> However Lewis later conceded to
Elizabeth Anscombe that the first claim is a
non sequitur (see
criticism).
Through this logic, Lewis attaches self-referential incoherence to the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid"...In the latter two cases...
he stated the logical possibility that 鈫 he stated that
However quantum mechanics was later shown to be
deterministic, and demonstrated (among other things) in the
Bell test experiments.
<ref>{{cite web|title=Arguments against Dualism|url=
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil100/argsagainstCD.html%7Caccessdate=14 November 2012}}</ref>
etc.鈥 Machine鈥奅lf鈥1735 20:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
First of all, thanks for reviewing these edits. Some were terribly NPOV. I do think some have validity, and I've discussed them below.
physicalism 鈫 scientific physicalism
the mind and body are not identical 鈫 the mind is not wholly contained by the brain
Reordering of views of mental causation.
Through this logic, Lewis attaches self-referential incoherence to the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid"...In the latter two cases...
<ref>{{cite web|title=Arguments against Dualism|url=
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil100/argsagainstCD.html%7Caccessdate=14 November 2012}}</ref>
Modern neuroscience strongly discredits all forms of dualism in favor of physicalism
Although discredit is probably too strong a word, my searches through neuroscience literature suggest that the prevailing model is physicalist, and has been for several decades. From a 1980 review in Neuroscience (a verifiable source), [8]: "Reasons are advanced to show that our latest mind-brain model is fundamentally monistic and not only fails to support dualism, but serves to further discount fading prospects for finding dualist forms or domains of conscious experience not embodied in a functioning brain." A 2009 letter in Science (a verifiable source) suggests that dualism is not at all favored [9].
These and other articles [1] [2] establish the physicalism of neuroscience in its methodologies and its discoveries. Cognitive science and neuroscience are exploring a frontier of knowledge, and discoveries in these fields can directly challenge philosophies of mind. When they do so, whether philosophers like it or not, the validity of philosophical theories will be affected. From another letter in Science, 2009, [10],
"However, philosophers deal in belief systems and personal opinions, not in natural laws and facts. They ask interesting questions and pose challenging dilemmas, but they have an unimpressive historical record of prognostication. August Comte, father of positivism, wrote in 1835 that we shall never know what stars are made of (2). A few decades later, the chemical composition of stars was deduced by spectral analysis of their light (3). Francis Crick, a scholar with a far better track record of prediction, stated in an interview in 1996, 鈥淚t is very rash to say that things are beyond the scope of science"
By no means should philosophical articles be made into non-philosophical articles, and they obviously shouldn't all hang disclaimers saying "Warning, subject to scientific refutation!". Most are so unrelated to science, they don't even need to contain the word "science". But given that there is a scientific field that:
I do think that the Dualism article should mention (somewhere) that neuroscience is at odds with it. Regards,
鈥 Wing gundam ( talk) 00:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Dualism should mention the same.
Well, no. Bell's theorem does limit the philosophical discretion of a non-physical entity ("He") who is acting to create probable/improbable events. Its verification requires that "His" interventions appear perfectly random under any observational conditions. This is, obviously, a strong restriction on "His" discretion. But I'll ignore your lack of Good Faith through complete reversions, and continue trying to find a more explicit source than Ch. 7. Wing gundam ( talk) 13:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
- The neutral monists happily acknowledge that 鈥渢houghts ain't in the head:鈥 (Holt 1914, 153) ...
- Avenarius was the most outspoken advocate of this idea. The original epistemic sin, as he sees it, is the 鈥渋ntrojection鈥 of mental states into the brain. He spends considerable time providing a genetic analysis of how the intellectual catastrophe of introjection could have happened. But he also presents straightforward arguments that are supposed to show the falsity of introjection:
- The brain has ganglia and nerve fibers, has neuroglia and vessels, has different colors (is colored this way or that) and so on. But neither the most detailed anatomical dissection, nor an arbitrarily powerful microscope would reveal thoughts qua components of thinking, much less thinking itself as part or property of the brain. (Avenarius 1891, 67)
- Considerations of this sort lead him to summarize his views about introjection in a remarkable paragraph:
- The brain is not the dwelling-place, seat or producer of thought; it is not the instrument or organ, it is not the vehicle or substratum, etc., of thought. Thought is not an indweller or command-giver, it is not a second half or aspect, etc., nor is it a product; it is not even a physiological function of the brain, nor is it a state of the brain at all. (Avenarius 1891, 76)
- Mach approvingly quotes this passage and tells us that Avenarius conception seems 鈥渢o approximate very nearly to my own.鈥 (Mach 1886, 28) ...
- And Petzoldt celebrates Avenarius for having done away with
- the barbaric quid pro quo that lets the psychological sensations get into the brain together with the physiological stimulations, and which then have to be moved back out again, of course. (Petzoldt 1906, 170)
- The radical externalism about the mental evidenced by these passages stands in the service of overcoming 鈥渢he problem of the external world鈥 by making it into the immediate object of our thought, or better, by making our thoughts be portions of it. That neutral monism allowed for this nonidealistic fusion of mind and world, thereby opening our cognitive doors onto the world, was what attracted most neutral monists to this doctrine in the first place.
- Russell's Internalism
- Finally, it must be emphasized that Russell's versions of neutral monism never did deliver the direct perceptual grasp of the external physical object that the standard versions of the mainstream doctrine were designed to achieve. ...
- Considerations about the causal theory of perception persuade him to place the percept into the percipients brain. And the proximal model of construction (see the section 鈥淩eduction of the Physical鈥) allows him to understand the 鈥渋ntrojected鈥 percept as a constituent of the matter that forms the percipient's brain. Hence he can proclaim that 鈥淚 know about what is happening in the brain exactly what na茂ve realism thinks it knows about what is happening in the outside world.鈥 (Russell 1927b, 104) A slightly longer version of this goes as follows:
- I maintain an opinion which all other philosophers find shocking: namely, that people's thoughts are in their heads. The light from a star travels over intervening space and causes a disturbance in the optic nerve ending in an occurrence in the brain. What I maintain is that the occurrence in the brain is a visual sensation. I maintain, in fact, that the brain consists of thoughts鈥攗sing 鈥榯hought鈥 in its widest sense, as it is used by Descartes鈥hat I maintain is that we can witness or observe what goes on in our heads, and that we cannot witness or observe anything else at all. (Russell 1959, 18鈥19)
- This position is still realistic in the minimal sense guaranteed by neutral monism: there can be no objectless experience, because the object and the experience of it are one鈥攖here is one neutral element (an event or percept) that plays this double role. But in all other respects Russell's internalistic version of neutral monism is the antithesis of the realist spirit that informed the versions of the doctrine we find in Mach, James, and the American New Realists. Perceptual contact with external objects becomes as indirect and as inferential as in the representative theories of perception鈥攅.g., the sense-datum theory鈥攖hat neutral monism was designed to overcome.
- The pervasive externalism of mainstream neutral monism makes Russell's radical turn towards internalism particularly disorienting. The point here is not to assess Russell's reasons for this disturbing conclusion. The point is to demonstrate, one final time, how accommodating the neutral monist framework is, and how little of that which may seem most characteristic about the neutral monist doctrines on record is really part of neutral monism. Neither the externalism of Mach, James, Avenarius, Holt, etc., nor the internalism of Russell have anything to do with neutral monism.
鈥斺Leopold Stubenberg, "Neutral Monism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It is the idea, in brief, that conscious phenomena as emergent functional properties of brain processing exert an active control role as causal determinants in shaping the flow patterns of cerebral excitation. Once generated from neural events, the higher order mental patterns and programs have their own subjective qualities and progress, operate and interact by their own causal laws and principles which are different from and cannot be reduced to those of neurophysiology, as explained further below. Compared to the physiological processes, the conscious events are more molar, being determined by configurational or organizational interrelations in neuronal functions. The mental entities transcend the physiological just as the physiological transcends the molecular, the molecular, the atomic and subatomic, etc. The mental forces do not violate, disturb or intervene in neuronal activity but they do supervene. Interaction is mutually reciprocal between the neural and mental levels in the nested brain hierarchies. Multilevel and interlevel determinism is emphasized in-addition to the one-颅level sequential causation more traditionally dealt with. This idea is very different from those of extra-颅physical ghostly intervention at synapses and of indeterministic influences on which Eccles and Popper had earlier relied. The question at issue is whether this form of psychophysical interaction is fundamentally monistic as I interpret it or whether it is dualistic as presented by Popper and Eccles.
鈥斺R.W.Sperry, "Mind-brain interaction: mentalism, yes; dualism, no" in Neuroscience Vol.5, (1980) pp.195-206
A traditional working hypothesis in neuroscience holds that a complete account of brain function is possible, in principle, in strictly neurophysiological terms without invoking conscious or mental agents; the neural correlates of subjective experience are conceived to exert causal influence but not mental qualities per se.
鈥斺R.W.Sperry, "Mind-brain interaction: mentalism, yes; dualism, no" in Neuroscience Vol.5, (1980) pp.195-206
Hume criticised the whole conception of substance for lacking in empirical content: when you search for the owner of the properties that make up a substance, you find nothing but further properties. Consequently, the mind is, he claimed, nothing but a 鈥榖undle鈥 or 鈥榟eap鈥 of impressions and ideas 鈥 that is, of particular mental states or events, without an owner. This position has been labelled bundle dualism, and it is a special case of a general bundle theory of substance, according to which objects in general are just organised collections of properties. The problem for the Humean is to explain what binds the elements in the bundle together. This is an issue for any kind of substance, but for material bodies the solution seems fairly straightforward: the unity of a physical bundle is constituted by some form of causal interaction between the elements in the bundle. For the mind, mere causal connection is not enough; some further relation of co-consciousness is required. We shall see in 5.2.1 that it is problematic whether one can treat such a relation as more primitive than the notion of belonging to a subject. ... His bundle theory is a theory about the nature of the unity of the mind. As a theory about this unity, it is not necessarily dualist. Parfit (1970, 1984) and Shoemaker (1984, ch. 2), for example, accept it as physicalists. In general, physicalists will accept it unless they wish to ascribe the unity to the brain or the organism as a whole. Before the bundle theory can be dualist one must accept property dualism...
A crisis in the history of dualism came ... with the growing popularity of mechanism in science in the nineteenth century. According to the mechanist, the world is, as it would now be expressed, 鈥榗losed under physics鈥. This means that everything that happens follows from and is in accord with the laws of physics. There is, therefore, no scope for interference in the physical world by the mind in the way that interactionism seems to require. According to the mechanist, the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon (a notion given general currency by T. H. Huxley (1893)): that is, it is a by-product of the physical system which has no influence back on it. In this way, the facts of consciousness are acknowledged but the integrity of physical science is preserved. However, many philosophers found it implausible ... It is very largely due to the need to avoid this counterintuitiveness that we owe the concern of twentieth century philosophy to devise a plausible form of materialist monism. But, although dualism has been out of fashion in psychology since the advent of behaviourism (Watson (1913)) and in philosophy since Ryle (1949), the argument is by no means over. Some distinguished neurologists, such as Sherrington (1940) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles (1977)) have contined to defend dualism as the only theory that can preserve the data of consciousness. Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century.鈥斺Howard Robinson, "Dualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
References
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite web}}
: |access-date=
requires |url=
(
help); External link in |work=
(
help); Missing or empty |title=
(
help); Missing or empty |url=
(
help)
Hi, I know I haven't been involved in these discussions which seem to have been going on for quite some time, but I have to say, Machine Elf, you're being pretty uncharitable. If you are facing sources you can't access, the proper response is to ask people who can access them, not assert that they are worthless. Nature is a preeminent scientific journal, and you can't just ignore it because it turns a profit.
In particular, the article in Neuroscience is pretty much the most specific, notable, and respected source on the matter you could ask for. Assuming you don't intend to systematically purge all science from the article, you have to at least admit that peer-reviewed articles from widely-available sources directly addressing the question at hand must be acceptable.
I'm very troubled when I see you saying things like "[saying neuroscience investigates the mind-body problem] fails WP:V". How can this even make sense? One can easily verify that scientists in the field are investigating the problem simply by checking the very source he cited. The conclusions might be harder to verify, but surely the investigation itself is unequivocal.
You make a number of even stranger claims, like stating that thought ID is "begging the question," as if testing the predictions of a model is equivalent to assuming it is true to prove itself. Making predictions and testing them against reality is precisely how scientific models are falsified. And the suggestion that because philosophy incorporates more modes of thought than science, science cannot impact philosophical conclusions is clear sophistry.
In fact, neuroscience and related fields are the only direct, falsifiable investigations into the mind-body problem, so excluding them is beyond incomplete, it is blatantly dishonest. If you think there is a better way to structure their inclusion, then you should work toward that. But don't make this a power struggle over what evidence is allowed inclusion and what is not. That in itself is the heart of POV.
I'm not going to go through every point, and to be honest I don't even have a position on them all, but I do think you have to change your attitude here. Dualism is not a purely speculative question, and has not been for decades. Scientific facts will bear on this article if it is to ever make GA criteria again.24.93.180.3 ( talk) 21:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help) Posted March 17, 2009:
International Psychoanalysis - Neuroscience and the Soul.
I think the way this is supposed to work is that you can't continue editing the article and talk page without at least addressing my objections. I've reverted your last edit.
Eebster the Great (
talk) 07:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
#re_09 This has nothing to do with the religious beliefs of particular scientists, nor an individual's comfort with a non-scientific explanation of the mind. The methodology of science is physicalist, in that inquiry assumes phenomena can be described physically. Segueing to #re_10, your last sentence is incorrect. Numbers, algebras, and other mathematical structures are obviously different from both the physical mind and a non-physical concept of the mind. For one, math is rigorously axiomatized, in contrast to dualist theories of the mind. Furthermore even a physicalist assumption doesn't imply the mind has spatial extent or location. By analogy, the internet is certainly physical yet has neither of these; at best one could point to the network infrastructure, the wires, and the hardware of every connected object, but that's superfluous: it's some subset of the configurations of these HW devices that define it. That's all I mean.
#re_10 non-"identity" is not the most appropriate way to define dualism. Even neutral monism doesn't assert that the mind and body exactly alike, the same, or identical, rather than at most both composed of the third substance. Physicalism certainly goes further. For instance, the spleen is undeniably part of the body and not part of the mind. If "the mind is not contained by the body" is intolerable, then why not a third possibility like "the mind is not exclusively a function of the brain."
#re_11 clearly I didn't notice. On my first two reads of the article, I found the relationship between these two sections confusing. It's still not ideal, but this article has general flow issues. While historical order works for the Historical Overview section, the preceding two are thematic overviews, and they're more readable when organized as such.
#re_12 You're cherry picking. Anscombe's recounts no feeling of humiliation on Lewis's part, Lewis's biographer disagrees. His biographer also states Lewis told him, '... that he had been proved wrong, and that his argument for the existence of God had been demolished'. Sayer himself describes Lewis humiliated. But regardless he lost the debate, and apparently made alterations to his book.
#re_13 You're encouraged to search for better citations for any material incorrectly cited. You may not know this, but edit reversion is seen only as a last resort.
#re_14 Your brick is difficult to follow. I agree with Eebster on several points.
All citations are valid, regardless of whether the publisher turns a profit. I encourage you to read Murphy (2009). [1] Francis Crick's article is good too, [2] as is Dehaene's book. [3]
Extended content
|
---|
|
Wing gundam ( talk) 10:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
1. A broad accusation, and false accordingly: I certainly didn't "reverted all of your changes back into the article, in whatever way you saw fit," primarily because I conceded several in agreement. In other cases, I addressed NPOV/OR/w/e concerns for every point you listed. Perhaps you're confused because I never spelled this out for you:
2. I have no association with 70.194.0.185. If you have a problem, take it up with a Steward.
3. So, (Finally), your concern is that the claim "Neuroscence is operating under a Physicalist assumption" stands Not Verified, as that would be SYN on Sperry? (Y/N)
鈥 Wing gundam ( talk) 09:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I've stricken "all" to read "whichever" in order to more clearly convey all that you saw fit, which was not meant as an accusation.
I see you were not still making changes at the time after all: your last edit prior to reverting the IP was at 04:40, 30 November 2012鈥, but I replied on 15:30, 30 November 2012. I was not trying to "give [you] grief", I was trying to respond to the demands/accusations that I must take action or stop preventing you from making edits when, in fact, I was merely objecting to edits that you had already made, and only one of which I've pressed... I'd like to think you'd regret having endorsed it: "...excluding them is beyond incomplete, it is blatantly dishonest. If you think there is a better way to structure their inclusion, then you should work toward that. But don't make this a power struggle over what evidence is allowed inclusion and what is not. That in itself is the heart of POV."
I objected, but I didn't stop you from replacing "Though it can be conceded that this does not logically dispel the feasibility of mind-body distinction." with less philosophical WP:OR/ WP:SYNTH, i.e., "strong empirical evidence" for a "physical basis"... at the end of this section. A "non-material neuroscience" advocate might beg to differ, but no physical evidence could falsify physicalism, much less dualism. Physicalism and dualism are not competing scientific theories.鈥 Machine鈥奅lf鈥1735 15:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Well I know grief when I see it.
There is a preponderance of physicalist neuroscientists, and reviews in Nat Rev Neuro advance this view when explicitly discussing philosophical implications (rarely). I cited several papers by Murphy, Koch, Francis Crick, and Dehaene, but Laurence Tancredi's book may also be a relavent. Dropping Sperry...
"...physical basis in the brain." 鈥 It was probably too strong given the source. I added Dehaene's review from Cognition, wherein he explicitly describes empirical consequences of the current model of neurophysiological consciousness, and consequently which results would yield positive verification.
As Koch writes several times (as do the 4 authors mentioned above), topics like free will and the mind-body problem that were once the domain of theology and philosophy are no more so. It's been an uphill battle to wrestle them from their philosophical ancestry, but it's done. (see Churchland's Studies in Neurophilosophy).
Dualism, physicalism, etc, are no longer speculative issues. Work to demonstrate that the mind may be accounted for solely by neuroscientific processes is ongoing and successful. In fact that section's title is oddly specific, and should probably be "Argument from neuroscience." (done)
鈥 wing gundam 13:00, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
References
{{
cite journal}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help); Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help)
{{
cite book}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite journal}}
: Check |doi=
value (
help); Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help); Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)
Can I respectfully ask that people contributing to this page give some structure to it? The mega-section above makes things really difficult for anybody who doesn't want to spend hours trying to parse it. Looie496 ( talk) 17:06, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
If somebody is going to edit the article to make the extraordinary claim that "dualism isn't true because science. and facts." I think it would be appropriate to back that claim up with the actual facts. From what I can tell from the sources, those authors aren't making any claims about monism that haven't already been made for hundreds of years. While the editor is at it, they may want to hop on over to empiricism and update that as well, since it also seems to be lacking references to these alleged revolutionary breakthroughs. 鈥 Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.9.145.227 ( talk) 14:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
The editor who summarized Breuer's thesis regarding self-measurement has misstated Breuer's conclusions, in my opinion. Breuer is talking to the operational reality of performing measurements on a quantum system which includes the observing system, not a human brain, or anything larger. The context of Breuer's thesis regards quantum systems and operational validation of quantum theories. Furthermore, the summary states that the inability to validate a theory proves that it is false. This is a fallacy. I propose that all of this be deleted because it has nothing to do with dualism to begin with, and because it is asserting 'facts' not present in the source. 50.147.26.108 ( talk) 15:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
"David Chalmers recently developed a thought experiment inspired by the movie The Matrix in which substance dualism could be true: Consider a computer simulation in which the bodies of the creatures are controlled by their minds and the minds remain strictly external to the simulation. The creatures can do all the science they want in the world, but they will never be able to figure out where their minds are, for they do not exist in their observable universe.[8]"
I'm sorry, why does this get special emphasis? This is the old "brain in a vat" thought experiment that existed for decades. Just because Chalmers used a popular tool (the movie) to demonstrate an idea in a paper recently does not mean that he invented it as the article seems to suggest. 15.195.185.83 ( talk) 20:57, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Denyse O'Leary and Mario Beauregard have a book that claims to make the neuroscientists argument for what I think amounts to dualism. I can think also of some arguments put forward by Dinesh D'Souza in his book on Life After Death (never mind ad hominem attacks on some of D'Souza's other endeavors, other beliefs, or reputation - I am talking about specific arguments that if they are true are true no matter who writes them down). I see in the Wikipedia article mostly philosophical/religious arguments for dualism and neurological/physics arguments against it. The article seems weak on the neurological arguments in favor of dualism. I am not the one to write the part I see as missing, but I hope someone in the know could include it, or that someone could be asked to research/contribute in this area. There obviously are ideas out there which are worth including in this article to be fair and well-rounded. Has anyone tried to include them only to have them deleted? Is this simply something overlooked? Could it be true that neurologists who find support of dualism deserve to be ignored on their published ideas? Shrommer ( talk) 22:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
My guess is that the most convincing things Dinesh D'Souza has to say in the Life after Death book would all be covered in a 2003 book caled The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley. Just a guess, but worth looking in to. Shrommer ( talk) 14:13, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Dualism (philosophy of mind). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://philosophybites.com/2011/05/david-eagleman-on-morality-and-the-brain.htmlDavid{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online1.html#materialismWhen you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.鈥 InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:46, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Move. C煤chullain t/ c 16:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Dualism (philosophy of mind) 鈫捖? 鈫
Mind鈥揵ody dualism 鈥 The current name is unwieldy and awkward, I don't feel it is restricted only to the "philosophy of mind" (it could refer to metaphysics and potentially other philosophical sub-fields), and personally the topic took me several minutes to finally find. Typically, I have heard it labelled in philosophy books as Metaphysical dualism, though Google results show that Mind鈥揵ody dualism is even more common. It certainly would have been easier to track down. Either name I've suggested seems preferable to me.
Wolfdog (
talk) 20:07, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Halfway down the page there is a diagram titled "Cartesian dualism compared to three forms of monism." But all the types of depicted are forms of ontologically dualistic and monism is not depicted. Monism does not divide the world into physical and mental and decide which is real. That division is the essence of Cartesian Dualism. Monists, in fact, argue that although we perceive epistemic differences between what are apparently physical and apparently mental qualities, these are both manifestations of a single underlying reality. No ontological separation can be made. This is the position of John Searle, for example. The diagram that is supposed to show monism, in fact shows several forms of lopsided dualism and one form of lopsided triplism. Jayarava ( talk) 09:03, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Would it overly annoy anyone to replace the special typographic character, and restrict the article title to characters available on a standard keyboard? In these talk pages, 'mind-body' with a hyphen outnumbers the variant with a mdash by a factor of six ... Scarabocchio ( talk) 19:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
On 21 March user Equilibrium103 added this content with this blog as a source. I removed it as unreliable. Today, user Equilibrium103 put the content back, pointing in the edit summary to Wikipedia:Citing self-published blogs or Wikipedia:Blogs_as_sources, the former being inactive and "no longer relevant", the latter being "a failed proposal", and in the edit summary requesting me to "Please refrain from unsolicited personal account DMs". As both the wp-guidelines are clearly irrelevant, and as i.m.o. the source is not reliable, I undid the edit again, also per, for now, wp:NOCONSENSUS: "In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Comments from others welcome, but pending consensus to keep the content with the blog source, let's adhere to wp:BRD. - DVdm ( talk) 13:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
The dualistic stance of human nature and analytical method determined the biomedical model in medicine. Accordingly, human beings were viewed as biological organisms (materialism), to be understood by examining their constituent parts (reductionism) using the principles of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and physics
鈥斺 PMC 3115289
The WP article is very detailed about the possible variants of materialism and recutionism, but it lacks of a clear summary about them. The permanence of the body-mind dualism is contexualized in the 17th century Copernican Revolution, which resized the Holy Scipture's scientific authority in favour to the other upcoming theologies. Infact, dualistic view is said to be compatible with most of them. 鈥斅燩receding unsigned comment added by 94.38.234.132 ( talk 鈥 contribs) 08:24, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
Everything in this article is indeed relevant to the article topic and was very well written. This article is about dualism (exactly what we have spoken about in class), the ideology that the mind and body are two different things that are completely separate and do not relate. All the sub-topics (types of dualism, dualist views, history of dualism, arguments for dualism and arguments against dualism) are all relevant and enhance the page.
Nothing distracted me; everything was neat and well spaced. There isn't an overload of pictures and the ones that there are relevant and help with understanding the stuff that was said.
JACstudent (
talk) 00:17, 5 February 2022 (UTC) JACstudent
As a non-expert, it's difficult for me to understand the difference between the articles Mind鈥揵ody problem and Mind鈥揵ody dualism. As far as I can see, it's the difference between Nature-nurture dichotomy and Nature-nurture debate. I'm very happy to accept there is a difference, but it would be good to have a hatnote that summarises the differences between them. Or, if they are the same (or substantially the same), then it may be worth merging the articles. -- Xurizuri ( talk) 08:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Dualism has been described in terms of ideal & atomic, then (after Descartes) mental & material, now (aftern modern (meta)physics) spiritual & physical (,and IIRC, life & unlife) but some schools of thought (various ancient/Classical Greek, Kabbalah, far Eastern, German Idealism) don't consider each historical pair synonymous (some do) rather than more than three or four to seven or more levels, which has been called polyism. Though I'm a rationalist idealist (so monist), should polyism be redirected here (as discusses ideas, mind, and spirit) or get its own article? Tertium quid also has been used to critique dualism.-- dchmelik ( t| c) 01:51, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
This article states that 鈥淪ubstance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent realm of existence distinct from that of the physical world.鈥 I doubt this. Cartesian dualism may be in conflict with the Chalcedonian Definition accepted by most Christians, and is completely incompatible with Buddhism. Furthermore, Descartes鈥 view of the soul has little in common with the views of most Hindu theologians throughout history. 73.73.127.102 ( talk) 22:49, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
When the body dies, does the mind live on since they are separate? Kim Brunelle ( talk) 01:49, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Here is an article claiming that Cartesian dualism is not compatible with Christian theology ( https://equip.sbts.edu/publications/journals/journal-of-theology/a-chalcedonian-argument-against-cartesian-dualism/). 66.99.95.140 ( talk) 13:27, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
I found this article to be very interesting. We have touched on many of these topics in class and reading it here helped me understand it better. I found it to be on track (nothing distracting) also, talked well on the sub-subjects and described them well. It was not bias and provided good reliable information with proof and history to them. It provided good links and nothing seems to be outdated. This article is nicely diverse in means of authors and philosophers.
Overall, this article was well written and sparks up many discussions and theories.
- Wildflower12 ( talk) 22:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Article fails the B-class criteria (#1) since joining the "Articles with unsourced statements from Jan 2018 club. -- Otr500 ( talk) 22:55, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
Minimize the number of links. -- Otr500 ( talk) 22:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Ciao fellow Wikipedia Editors: For your pleasure I have added objections raised by Colin Murray Turbayne to the Cartesian Mind-body dualism and the concepts of " substance and "substratum" upon which it is based, along with links to George Berkeley and metaphor. This is clearly a "substanitive" objection (no pun intended) so I hope that I have not "muddied the waters! Enjoy and happy editing. 160.72.80.178 ( talk) 22:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)NHPL