Mind

How persuasive or otherwise do you find the dualist position on the mind-body relationship and, in your opinion, do you think it's possible for us to have an immortal 'soul'/mind?

Comments

Just a brief answer -- but to me (anyway) the idea of there being a property-dualism, closely related to a concept-dualism, is more plausible (and even more intelligible) than the idea of there being a substance-dualism, as implied by the phrasing of your question. Certain kinds of properties (such as being a sensation, or a thought, or some aspect of consciousness) may well be non-identifiable or non-reducible to standard physical properties (such as being a brain state/event/property) -- but to go from there to the conclusion that "there exist non-physical souls or minds" seems like a very large, hard to defend, and unnecessary leap .... (and then from there to "immortal" -- well that brings in a whole extra set of religion-related issues that probably are best left out of discussions of dualism itself, IMHO) ....

As you probably know, the locus classicus of substance dualism is Descartes -- though my own feeling is that the substance part of it is a little overblown by his subsequent interpreters, and that he may be more cautiously read as a property dualist ... But in the 21st century you might want to begin by exploring the work of David Chalmers on this subject (if you haven't already) ...

hope that's a useful start ...

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