Dualism is true.

Thank you again to TheSkeptic - he provided some excellent objections. I agree with my opponent as well in that it's best to keep the arguments to a minimum so we can fully explicate and defend our arguments properly. ==================== Is disembodied existence and perception incoherent and/or inconceivable? ==================== I still do find this premise relatively uncontroversial - contra Everitt and Skeptic- and here's a couple of reasons why. First, there is a philosophical position called idealism [1] (a form of solipsism), which many agree is false, but not NECESSARILY so. Many agree that it is only contingently false, meaning the world could have been this way. Now if you grant that idealism is only CONTINGENTLY false and not NECESSARILY false then it seems the objection falls flat. For in idealism it is certainly possible for the mind to perceive without a body. In fact, the body is just a perception of the mind. So, if you grant that idealism and solipsism is coherent and logically possible this objection does not hold. Unless if you want to say that idealism and/or solipsism is incoherent - which would be quite a move! - I think this objection loses it's force. 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. In fact, there are some spatial accounts of the mind. Third, if you accept my contention that conceivability entails possibility then by arguing that it is inconceivable (in the same way that water =/= H20) to imagine a mind existing without a body you are saying it's not logically possible that a mind exist without a body. 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. For that, you'd have to make the argument that a necessary condition for perception is a body. "This relates to the modal argument for dualism in that "if the supposedly disembodied perceiver's experiences might all be hallucinations, there is no reason to think that the perceiver is located outside her erstwhile body." We have no reason to entertain the first premise of this argument." My opponent is referring to Everitt's argument in section "IV" here in which Everitt admits: "But if this circle is virtuous for normal embodied perceivers, there is no reason why it should not be virtuous for abnormal disembodied perceivers. And in that case, the argument from section IV fails." [2] Seeng as Everitt admits that that particular argument fails I see no need to respond to the hallucination argument. ===================== Am I begging the question? ===================== My opponent claims that the modal argument begs the question because I would first have to know I am not my body in order to know that I can become disembodied. Basically what the objection is saying is that this begs the question against physicalism/materialism because it already assumes dualism is true and argues from there. This would be a dualist assuming a hidden premise (dualism is true) that the opponent would not grant and would automatically rule out the opponent's position. What can I say to this objection? A lot of things. ;) First, there are reports of out of body experiences that could give a non-committed person (someone who has no particular position on the mind-body issue - there are many) some inclination toward dualism without them being convinced of the truth of dualism beforehand. Second, this argument does not beg the question as there are physicalist philosophers who grant that it is conceivable to become disembodied. Such as, David Lewis, David Armstrong, John Pollock, P.F. Strawson and Richard Boyd. These philosophers being physicalists are not committed to the prior truth of dualism. This would seem to refute the objection that one would have to be convinced of dualism in order to grant that the mind can be disembodied. Armstrong says, "But disembodied existence seems to be a perfectly intelligible supposition. . . . Consider the case where I am lying in bed at night thinking. Surely it is logically possible that I might be having just the same experiences and yet not have a body at all. No doubt I am having certain somatic, that is to say, bodily sensations. But if I am lying still these will not be very detailed in nature, and I can see nothing self-contradictory in supposing that they do not correspond to anything in physical reality. Yet I need be in no doubt about my identity." [3] P.F. Strawson, "within our actual conceptual scheme, each of us can quite intelligibly conceive of his or her individual survival of bodily death." [4] David Lewis even thought that the mind and the body are *identical* yet he thought that it's possible for the mind to existence in absence of the body. These are not philosophers are dualists in any shape, way, or form. In fact, I'd argue that a great many of non-dualist physicalists would grant that it's possible to conceive of and imagine disembodied existence so it's hard to see how the modal argument begs the question against the physicalist or materialist. ===================== Conclusion ===================== I have evaluated the arguments TheSkeptic presents and found them lacking. I find the modal argument for dualism to still be sound. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://www.infidels.org... [3] A Materialist Theory of Mind [London: Routledge, 1968], p. 19. [4] http://web.mac.com... (pg 24) [5] http://books.google.com...