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Compare And Contrast The Theory Of Substance Dualism

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Dualism is not the most widely held view in the current philosophical and scientific community, but it is the most common theory of mind in the public at large. Substance Dualism states that each mind is a distinct non-physical substance, a thing, an individual “package” of non-physical substance, a thing whose identity is independent of any physical body to which it may be temporarily “attached”. Property Dualism states that there is no substance to be dealt with here beyond the physical brain, the brain has a special set of properties possessed by no other kind of physical object.
Dualists think that the mind and brain are one and the same substance. So, the better term for this approach may be “Neutral Monism”. The views for this approach are:
• No complete physical explanation of the brain is possible.
• The mind is the brain, the brain itself is not physical.
According to Descartes, the mind is right there in contact with the brain and their interaction can perhaps be understood in terms of their exchanging energy. The mind is the brain. But the brain has special mental properties that don’t reduce to physical properties.
A property Dualist could …show more content…

Argument from irreducibility: Here, once points to a variety of mental phenomena where it seems clear that no purely physical explanation could possibly account for what is going on. Descartes has already cited our ability to use language in a way that is relevant to our changing circumstances, and he was impressed also with our faculty of Reason, particularly as it is displayed in our capacity of mathematical reasoning. These abilities, he thought, must surely be beyond the capacity of any physical system. Consider, for example, seeing the color or smelling the fragrance of rose. A physicist or chemist might know everything about the molecular structure of rose, and of the human brain, argues the dualist, but the knowledge would not enable him to predict or anticipate the quality of these inexpressible

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