Comments on Lake Effect Philosophy: Dualism and the Problem of Interaction

Adam, responding to your Reasons:1: The obvious ex...

2008-10-03T18:11:00.000-05:00

Adam, responding to your Reasons:

1: The obvious existence of a strong connection between mind and body does nothing to show that mind and body are two substances. Minds exist, physicalists (not all, I'm sure) just claim that they are physical, just as gravity and electromagnetism and quantum superposition are physical, despite being quite unlike normal material things. That's before we point out that many minds (damaged through accident or birth defect or just ordinary fatigue) have quite a hard time working the body that you find so amiable.

2: Who have you encountered who claims that a state of absence of physical isotopes isn't a physical state? It sounds like the epitome of physical stuff to me.

3: Your theist argument only holds water if God must be non-physical. I know plenty of theists hold to that line, but surely there are some who don't, or we could imagine some who didn't.

For myself, when I see this argument, I just beg #3. When I say "physical thing" I mean "my hand, plus everything causally connected to my hand". If that gets me minds, and spooky forces, and incomprehensible quantum stuff, so be it. And I'll happily grant that minds are a peculiar kind of physical thing. Won't you agree to quit sawing the physical world in two, along "mind/other"? As added inducement, I'll agree to quit sawing the world in two, along "Me/everything else".

Adam Taylor is trying to show a solution to a dual...

2008-09-19T18:30:00.000-05:00

Adam Taylor is trying to show a solution to a dualist problem. I suppose the point of the previous poster might be something like, "Well, just assume monism and it goes away," even though he seems try to use an indivisible thing that was divided to support some sort of monism! While it's true that the problems of dualism "go away," or rather, can be ignored, one goal of philosophy is to try to answer various questions from different points of view, rather than beg the question by assuming one metaphysical stance and ignoring other possibilities.

What about Humpty Dumpty who, sitting on the wall ...

2008-08-14T21:12:00.000-05:00

What about Humpty Dumpty who, sitting on the wall was the indivisible Cosmic egg in and as which everything was/is totally inter-related.

Then Humpty fell and broke into fragments on the ground. And as we all know all the kings horses and all the kings men could never ever put Humpty back together again.

Which is to say that if you begin your "philosophy" from the point of view of a fragment your "philosophy" will always be a reflection and/or extension of your fragmented "vision", or brokenness.

Dualities multiplied infinitely in all directions---a checker-board "world" which goes on and on forever, until you wake up from the dream.