What is Dualism - courtesy of A_Smoking_fox Options

What is dualism.

When we have established what we think dualism is, A_Smoking_Fox would like to branch off into and discuss different parts which will probably go into a new thread.

Which part of dualism are we interested to explore in this topic.

So any offers?

(deletable)

definition of duality and mind - Leibniz's Law of Identity?

from http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/dualism.htm

Dualists commonly argue for the distinction of mind and matter by employing Leibniz's Law of Identity, according to which two things are identical if, and only if, they simultaneously share exactly the same qualities. The dualist then attempts to identify attributes of mind that are lacked by matter (such as privacy or intentionality) or vice versa (such as having a certain temperature or electrical charge). Opponents typically argue that dualism is inconsistent with known laws or truths of science (such as the aforementioned law of thermodynamics), conceptually incoherent (because immaterial minds could not be individuated or because mind-body interaction is not humanly conceivable), or reducible to absurdity (because it leads to solipsism, the epistemological belief that one's self is the only existence that can be verified and known).

Dualists in the philosophy of mind emphasize the radical difference between mind and matter. They all deny that the mind is the same as the brain, and some deny that the mind is wholly a product of the brain. This article explores the various ways that dualists attempt to explain this radical difference between the mental and the physical world. A wide range of arguments for and against the various dualistic options are provided in the article.

Substance dualists typically argue that the mind and the body are composed of different substances and that the mind is a thinking thing that lacks the usual attributes of physical objects: size, shape, location, solidity, motion, adherence to the laws of physics, and so on. Substance dualists fall into several camps depending upon how they think mind and body are related. Interactionists believe that minds and bodies causally affect one another. Occasionalists and parallelists, generally motivated by a concern to preserve the integrity of physical science, deny this, ultimately attributing all apparent interaction to God. Epiphenomenalists offer a compromise theory, asserting that bodily events can have mental events as effects while denying that the reverse is true, averting any threat to the scientific law of conservation of energy at the expense of the common sense notion that we act for reasons.

Property dualists argue that mental states are irreducible attributes of brain states. For the property dualist, mental phenomena are non-physical properties of physical substances. Consciousness is perhaps the most widely recognized example of a non-physical property of physical substances. Still other dualists argue that mental states, dispositions and episodes are brain states, although the states cannot be conceptualized in exactly the same way without loss of meaning.

E.
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