Dualism is probably not correct about the relationship between mind and matter.

My apologies for missing a round. I was in New York City helping my girlfriend look for an apartment. So... while running about the Big Apple, I must confess DDO was not foremost in my mind =( The meat of my opponent's response is contained in this one statement: "I argue that fundamentally, the predicates of a red apple is still the same type or 'medium' as the processes of perception - namely in some sort of physical data." Let's see if I can break down my argument a bit more... I think there's still some misunderstanding at play here... ********************************************** Let's say that in the process of perception, reaction to the presence of the apple causes a situation wherein predicates ABC of the apple cause reaction XYZ in the brain. However, as a simple thought experiment will demonstrate, reaction XYZ cannot be described as belonging to the stimuli. Look at the object nearest you. Predicates ABC of that object have just caused reaction XYZ to take place in your brain. Now close your eyes. Imagine that object. Reaction XYZ just took place again without the object, and without predicates ABC. Of course, one may object on the grounds that imagining the object delivers an imaginary set of predicates, but this is easily shot down by the response that you can perform the same sort of "imaging" (or imagining) process as you read a book or think about a fictional object. In other words, your brain has the ability to create a list of predicates for an object. However, at the end of the day, ESPECIALLY with non-existent items, we are forced to agree that whatever predicates we created in our head were NOT those of the actual object. Thus, it is very clear that there is a disconnect between what we perceive and what actually is. However, my opponent argues that these are still the same type of "data" - physicality. I suppose what he wants of me is the assertion that there is both a physical and non-physical component to reality. There are a couple of good positions to back this position up. The best of these arguments is below: It is usually held that perception conforms to objects (i.e. if we perceive a red apple, it is because a red apple is there). However, in certain instances, one can say that it is objects that conform to perception. Kant explored this theory in his "Copernican Revolution" in "The Critique of Pure Reason," holding that certain truths about perception grant us license to make synthetic, a priori judgments about reality. For example, we perception is ordered spatially - this is why we say things like "The water bottle is ON the desk" or "The CD is three meters TO THE SOUTHEAST of the chair." However, this truth allows one to say things like, "If there are objects in the next room, they are spatially organized." Such a claim involves describing one aspect of the nature of these objects without actually interacting with them. Thus, it can be shown that there is a fundamental disconnect between perception and reality. In the case of the red apple, data is delivered to the brain via the physical processes responsible for perception. In the case of describing things spatially, data is created in the brain via the employment of perceptual processes alone.. Another example: Everyone acknowledges that 1+2=3. However, there is nothing about the predicates of 1 and the predicates of 2 that suggest anything about the predicates of 3. The expression does not deliver any new information - it is self-evident, giving us the distinction between: 1) That which delivers information 2) That which is self-evident. And if we think about this for only a very short time, one can see that this could easily be interchangeable with: 1) The predicates of the apple 2) Appleness qua Appleness *********************************************************************** Why does The Skeptic (ha! a play on words) need to demonstrate a predicative equality and not merely an identical equality? Easy... because it is begging the question to say that that which is involved in perception is in and of itself a predicate of appleness. NEGATED.