Dualism – The human brain and mind are separate. Known formally as Cartesian Dualism after it’s originator, the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes. Physical matter, including the body and brain, behaves according to the laws of nature, and is thus suitable for scientific investigation. The human mind (soul, self, or spirit), which controls human behavior, lacks physical substance--a...

The purpose of this review is to clarify and demystify a set of ideas and assumptions, which pervade the field of psychiatry and cause confusion and unfortunate consequences for the practice and teaching of psychiatry. These crystalize in the so-called mind/body problem or mind/body dualism. Mind/Body dualism has adverse consequences for psychiatry, such as stigmatization of mental illness, res...

The well-known and seductive idea of being a dual entity composed of a body with emotions and a mind with reason, with only tentative and uncertain connections between them, has been considered an instrinsic human feature in many academic fields. Decartes’ (i.e., Cartesian) dualism, which associates reason with mental and rational processing and emotion with body and feelings has influenced tho...

In his book The Emergent Self, William Hasker outlines his theory of emergent dualism. Here, I will attempt to prove that Hasker’s emergent dualism and certain phenomena involving hiatuses in consciousness are inconsistent. As I will show, even the best resolution of this inconsistency is highly problematic and calls into question the coherence of Hasker’s emergent dualism. According to Hasker,...

For many, Cartesian dualism has lost the battle owing to the blows struck by the neurosciences and, in particular, functional cerebral imaging. In an article (Dualism Persists in the Science of the Mind)coauthored by Steven Laureys from the Coma Science Group at ULg, he reports on the conclusions of a vast survey he initiated: despite all, dualist conceptions still remain popular. Journey to th...

ions from the overall psychology of a person. Thus, for instance, the notion of a will without an intellect, or of a language module in the absence of belief and desire, is just plain nonsense. Finally, it will not do to speak of the self ’s psychological states and processes themselves—its beliefs, intentions, experiences, and so forth—as being ‘parts,’ much less as being substantial parts, of...

It is a matter of common sense that the world is composed of a multiplicity of discrete, separable objects. Indeed, this worldview of perceptual objects is practical and essential for everyday life. As the atomic theory of matter emerged, it was rather natural to assume that atoms were small-scale counterparts of everyday objects. Indeed, such a simplistic, philosophical atomism became an accep...

Physicalism (P) entails minimal physicalism (MP), MP entails minimal supervenience (MS), and MS is the thesis that there is covariance between the supervenient and the subvenient stuff. Therefore, if the (alleged) supervenient and subvenient stuff do not covary, then MS is false, and if MS is false then MP is false, and if MP is false then P is false. Put differently: if MS is false then P is f...

Implicit theories and biases continue to be large obstacles in the attainment of adequate mental health services for those with mental illness. Mind-body dualism is a theoretical construct which claims the independence of the mind from the body and which may influence some of these biases. We hypothesized that dualistic views may lead people to hold greater stigma toward those with mental illne...

Let us begin by summarizing what we have covered in the first 2 lectures, and then set the task for today's lecture. We have covered the following 4 issues: 1. Is dualism a necessary part of a Christian view of humankind? In Lecture 1, I suggested (without going deep enough to prove the point) that body/soul dualism has extra-Christian roots and is not a necessary presupposition for understandi...