Dualism is true.

Since my opponent has recognized the need to localize the focus of our debate to the contentions that matter I will format my round the same he has to refer to the two main claims. ==================== Is disembodied existence and perception incoherent and/or inconceivable? ==================== A couple of things to say about your point about idealism - it would be a little suspect to use the fact that idealism may not be necessarily false as a contention, after all in the end I would want to see you prove this claim (or such a mention will have no effect on my argument). But rather, I will throw something back. You speak of idealism being at the very least a logically valid theory, which I would agree could give footing to your modal argument. However, you ignore the many other serious logical criticisms of idealism by the likes of Nietzsche and G. E. Moore who do mount a logically serious criticism -- they do realize the oddity in such a philosophy. If you wish, read about Moore's criticism of idealism[1], which is probably one of the first among analytic philosophers. And while I will agree his criticism itself isn't a solid knockdown of idealism, it is one of many (notably ones like Nietzsche) who do front a serious logical attack against idealism. As you can see, Moore employs informal modal logic in his criticism. "Second, Everitt talks of having to have a location in space in order to do the seeing (perceiving). Substance dualism itself is not necessarily committed to the idea of a non-spatial mind, so this objection would not really work against dualism per se. " ----> I would then be in confusion as to how you can support substance dualism, which is specifically deemed to purport to say that "if one thinks that the owner of these states is something quite over and above the states themselves, and is immaterial, as they are, one will be a substance dualist[2]. " "The argument against dualism from disembodied perception at best just shows that there are difficulties with accounting disembodied perception not that it is logically impossible to perceive without a body" ----> Now hold on, don't you yourself move from the step of conceivability to possibility? Therefore, is it not perfectly acceptable on my part to deem it to be inconceivable and thus impossible? Lastly, you quote Everitt to his supposed admission of a failed argument but I think it's a little more complicated than that. Obviously, for his purposes he does not need such an argument to succeed and he seemingly throws it away when considering some objections. All I want to point out is that he, and I in my argument, maintain "that our understanding of what perception is, is closely tied to the way in which human perception is dependent on facts about human bodies [3]. " This happens to come from section 3, and even if you throw away the fourth one the former stands in cogent opposition. ===================== Begging the question? ===================== Reports of out of body experiences do not constitute valid instances in which a person has a clear conception of a disembodied experience given that out of body experiences are not really out-of-body (which lends evidence to the idea that they are simply hallucinating such an experience, thus grounding it's seemingly realistic experience). And lastly, your argument is once again simply relying on authority. Simple look at how you introduce it: "Second, this argument does not beg the question as there are physicalist philosophers who grant. .. " I ask of you, do we really want to reduce a philosophy debate to points about who agrees with what? Let me demonstrate why I find such exclamations of the inconceivability of dualism true by an analogy: Now, the reason why I am interested in this argument isn't really because I find it convincing (I personally have yet to figure this out myself) but because it reminds me of Dennett's response to the problem of philosophical zombies, which as you should know follow very closely in vein with the modal argument for dualism. Read the following notes about Dennett[4], and his words about philosophical zombies which I just find incredibly intuitively true: "Daniel Dennett thinks those who accept the possibility of zombies have failed to imagine them thoroughly enough: ‘when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition . . . He compares health: Supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination you can remove consciousness while leaving all cognitive systems intact — a quite standard but entirely bogus feat of imagination — is like supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination, you can remove health while leaving all bodily functions and powers intact. … Health isn't that sort of thing, and neither is consciousness. " Taking in the same breathe, I would argue that such statements from philosophers are as what Dennett states - they are quite standard but entirely bogus feat of imagination; they are essentially fooling themselves. ===================== Conclusion ===================== Before I conclude, I would like to say that the article about zombies there is an interesting one about the link between conceivability of possibility, but nonetheless we both realize that I decided to focus on the former concept rather than the connection between the two :). As you can see, while my opponent's argument rests on the idea of conceiving disembodied perceivers, Everitt and Dennett points out that such a task is absurd. ---References--- 1. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 2. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. . http://www.infidels.org... 4. . http://plato.stanford.edu...