Dualism

[luckyme]

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To be clear, I agree that "seems" is a bad argument, but I dont think it's a bad place to start. Materialists havent provided much motivation (other than wishful thinking) to shift my ground.

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Material things interact with their environment in a lot of different ways. A rock will split by ice, or roll downhill. A sunflower will turn to the direction of the sun, it seems like it knows where the sun is and can feel it's rays. A rock and a sunflower are very different types of material things ( or do you have a dualist view of any of those also?
The fact that the brain/mind is different than a rock or a sunflower ( ok, not very different in the flowers case) hardly demands we create a new 'ether' to encompass it.

I realize every advance in neuroscience detracts from dualism but moving up from rocks and flowers to sponges and sea cucumbers and fruit flies .. at which change in the evolutionary tree did 'mind' show up and take over? Or do chimps or Neanderthals not have minds?
Seems like they do ;-)

luckyme

[luckyme]

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I'm still prodding for some counters to the evolution problem with dualism.

luckywe

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Could it be related to the creationist's "Evolution cant be right because we cant run faster than cheetahs and that would be an evolutionary advantage?" ie "Dualism cant be right because we would evolve to have tiny brains as small is an evolutionary advantage"

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It's interesting because the flaw in that argument is the same as other creationist thinking. They only can think of one thing at a time.

Small is an advantage unless big is a greater advantage and not necessarily for the same situation. Running is not the only way to contend with cheetahs, and not the most cost effective way for a primate species. The fact that cheetahs try to catch prey by running is their problem, no need to make it ours.

luckyme

[vhawk01]

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It may be lazy, but you really can't disagree that it SEEMS obvious.

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Well, unless the railroad tracks are really joining in the distance, I was forced to give up on "seems' as an argument a long time ago.

I'm still prodding for some counters to the evolution problem with dualism.

luckywe

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Of course. But you aren't exactly in the majority on that. And bunny isn't arguing with you, I don't think.

[Silent A]

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It sure feels like there is a "Me" making the decisions, and that things happen to "My" body. I use my brain to think things, I use my legs to move me. I'm with you, once you really start to put in the legwork, dualism becomes fatally flawed, but I think I'd have to agree with bunny that it is the default position.

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Being the default position before any real research has been done doesn't mean you can justify holding on to it when almost all the evidence we've collected over the years points in the other direction, even if we haven't conclusively proved anything yet.

I also don't understand this apparent reluctance to accept that this "Me" who makes all the decisions is my brain.

[Philo]

Philosophers distinguish between substance dualism, the variety of dualism that Descartes championed, and property dualism.

According to substance dualism, there are two fundamentally different types of entities in the world, material entities and mental entities. Very few philosophers today are avowed substance dualists.

According to property dualism, on the other hand, there are two different sorts of properties that things can have, viz., material properties and mental properties. I suspect that most philosophers of mind agree with some basic version of property dualism.

There is also such a thing as predicate dualism, which assets that our language contains two basic types of predicates, mental and physical predicates, and that mental predicates are not reducible to physical predicates.

[m_the0ry]

Dualism is a convenience for classification of concepts that can't currently be reduced. This is an inherently flawed model because the two sets are dynamically and overlap greatly. For example a type of psychosis is considered to be a mental disease until the biological mechanisms for it derived.

[Kaj]

hardware vs. software

[Kaj]

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Doesn't the record show an enlarging human brain? Why? what would it need to do different than when it was digging grubs and running from sauri's?

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I don't know what you are getting at. Obviously, bigger-brained animals do more/faster/better computations and thus can be more intelligent. Intelligence is a wonderful survival tool, whether in pre-historic, ancient, or modern eras. So what's the issue?

[Kaj]

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...I find myself believing that "mind" is not-physical. What can I do about that?

In my atheist moments, I would prefer to be disabused of this belief. When I'm a theist I guess I'm logically bound to accept dualism.

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What does dualism have to do with atheism?

[bunny]

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...I find myself believing that "mind" is not-physical. What can I do about that?

In my atheist moments, I would prefer to be disabused of this belief. When I'm a theist I guess I'm logically bound to accept dualism.

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What does dualism have to do with atheism?

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Not much, but it has a lot to do with theism. My remark was more a personal preference - as an atheist I'd like to be a materialist because it seems neater but that's not much of an argument.