Monoism vs Daosim (not Taoism)

Monism is the belief that the variety of existing things in the universe are reducible to one substance or reality, perhaps leading one to a view of unity among all things that exist. However, where harmony amongst society and a political interpretation of a metaphysics concept came, I have no idea. I would like to rebut my opponent's case before I raise my own, as I believe it good manners to address another before introducing oneself. First of all, my opponent chooses to refer to society naturally dividing if it were to take the view of dualism. This is absolute lie to the point of pure and utter dishonesty. To believe that we exist in two planes; mental and physical is not going to cause people to naturally divide in a society since they are in fact united amongst both mental and physical attributes of existence. In terms of a society's harmonious nature, there is no doubt in my mind, and hopefully none in yours, that a monistic society would be equally capable of being harmonious or unharmonious as a dualistic society and the harmony of a society should not at all be considered relevant to this debate. Instead, the practicality of the running of a society, based on how productive or efficient they would be in the world perhaps would be a better line of argument for this debate. Secondly, neither monism or dualism is a religion as my opponent likes to discuss and talk about. It is si philosophical outlook totally unrelated to how one chooses to live or view God. In fact, I myself am an agnostic atheist believing in dualism so this is evidence that one can be both. I would also like to disregard religion form this debate as it is not the area of philosophy being discussed. We are discussing what existence truly is, not the way to live one's life and set one's morals as would be suggested in a debate where religion is raised. On another note, the concept of monism offering people one clear path to take in life and dualism offering people two is absolute nonsense. People have unlimited paths to take in life whether or not they believe we exist in one plane or two, thus I would also like to remove this argument from debate due to both relevance and validity. Finally for my rebuttals, I do not wish to repeat my second point regarding religion but want to aso highlight what exactly was said in the closing of my opponent's speech. It is mentioned that dualism offers soe sort of negative interpretation of it. I'm afraid to say that both monism and dualism offer only one interpretation of either philosophy and that there is not more than one way to interpret either philosophical outlook and that the negativity which my opponent seems to attach to dualism is not any more or less negative than the one attached to monism since neither discusses anything to do with positivity or negativity in how one leads their life. Now, to being my constructive I wish to reiterate exactly what the view of dualism is. I already defined dualism as the view that there are just two mutually irreducible substances, typically refered to as mind and matter. However, upon further endeavour into the philosophic aspect of dualism I realise that an alternative interpretations could be the assumption that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not one entity as such. Elaborating from this, it is clear that what dualism claims is that one's mental experience of life is perhaps linked but of an entirely different nature than his/her physical experience. Meaning that what one's body has to offer to the universe (or on a smaller scale, their society) is quite independent of the mind. I believe that this view is correct and the monistic view is very blinkered in its way of viewing reality and causes people to be blinkered in seeing potential in members of their society too. Dualism is further explanatory of what makes the mind of a human, or of a thinking animal with the intelligence to think independent of surroundings, unique form other forms of life and other physical entities. All physical entities follow the basic laws of physics, for example gravity and energy transfer. All living entities involve a nutritive source of growth and metabolism. Specifically living entities with a brain have a perceptive soul of pain, pleasure and desire but only humans and perhaps some high IQ animals such as dolphins, orangutans, chimpanzees and others have a far more unique gift; the faculty of reason. There is something very unusual about the way a human saw wood, metal and cloth and thought of building tools and later to build a house with the tools, then to build machines with other tools, to build tools with those machines and to then build better houses after all. If existence is purely physical and thinking, or thought, is purely just the mind physically making effort and working why is it that there seems to be a will to understand? A will to invent, to teach, to build, to build better and why do humans have morality at all? These questions are easily answerable if one wishes to twist it and say it simply is the brain functioning accordingly to the environment and circumstances in which the body is put but there is something completely non physical about consciousness, linked to physicality indeed mentality is but different in nature, it is indeed too. To claim that all that exists is purely physical might seem a reasonable attempt at truth but there is something blatantly different about the way one imagines, one dreams, one comes up with a thought such as the theory of relativity or game theory. What would even drive us to have this debate if not the purely mental need to find truth in all that is, to understand absolutely what is and what is not aside form any physical needs or requirements. A genius is not an athlete,, they do not train hard to do the same thing again and again. They try many different things for no apparent reason and suddenly spark that beautiful flame named success and with the crackle named "Eureka!" with the smoke named satisfaction and the radiation named intelligence. That is what mentality is all about, it is not physical it is something so completely different in nature from the physical side of life and of existence and should not, in my opinion and hopefully an intelligent person's opinion, be seen as merely a part of the physical plane of existence. Sources. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org...(philosophy_of_mind)