Talk:Mind–body dualism

message: I want to note a problem brought out by an IP edit today.  The article currently contains the paragraph:
:Others such as Dennett have argued that the notion of a philosophical zombie is an incoherent, or unlikely, concept. In particular, nothing proves that an entity (e.g. a computer or robot) which would perfectly mimic human beings, and especially perfectly mimic expressions of feelings (like joy, fear, anger, ...), would not indeed experience them, thus having similar states of consciousness to what a real human would have. It is argued that under physicalism, one must either believe that anyone including oneself might be a zombie, or that no one can be a zombie - following from the assertion that one's own conviction about being (or not being) a zombie is a product of the physical world and is therefore no different from anyone else's. This argument has been expressed by Dennett who argues that "Zimboes thinkZ they are conscious, thinkZ they have qualia, thinkZ they suffer pains - they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!"
The IP editor understandably changed "zimboes" to "zombies", but that's wrong even if understandable, because Dennett actually used the term "zimbo", which he had invented to mean a "zombie with higher-order informational states".  The problem that needs to be solved is that this article doesn't explain what a zimbo is.  I don't have time to deal with that at the moment (even if I could), but I didn't want to leave it un-noted. Looie496 (talk) 19:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the "zimbo"sentence because if is meaningless without explanation.  There are at least three problems with it. 1) The use of the superscripted "Z" is unexplained.  2) The quote does not reference any source.  and 3) the use of Dennett's term "zimbo".  --Blainster (talk) 02:33, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  zimboes 

message: Hello, may I draw the discussant's attention to a new paper of mine, published in a volume on non-reductionist theories of consciousness: 
http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67 
I present a new argument for dualism named “The Bafflement Argument.” It is condensed into a succinct theorem in Section 12. 
Being biased re this debate I shall not put any input in the article itself. I hope this note in the discussion page does not infringe on Wiki's rules, otherwise let it be deleted. 
Sincerely,  
Elitzur (talk) 13:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Your approach is exactly correct, bringing up the idea here is fine.  I don't think this article should discuss a new argument until it proves its notability by getting attention from other writers, though. Looie496 (talk) 16:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with Looie.  Although your article appears to be published in a reliable source, it has not yet attracted the attention and commentary of your peers.  Until it becomes part of the debates within philosophy of mind as they relate to dualism (that is, until other philosophers start commenting on your chapter in reliable sources), it would be inappropriate to add it here.  Until then, including it (and any other of hundreds of philosophical papers) would be giving it undue weight. But, if it starts to garner attention and discussion within the philosophical community, then it would become appropriate to add it here.  Edhubbard (talk) 14:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new argument for dualism 

message: I am suggesting the possibility that this article has a weasling Materialist bias, in that it begins with a focus on Idealism and slides into Materialsm towards the end of the article, despite the fact that both Materialist and Idealist standpoints have existed since the beginning of the Mind-Body problem. True to the point that both are mentioned back and forth throughout the text, nonetheless I see a crunch of anti-idealism arguments at the end of the article, which causes me to speculate the bias. Though in my personal opinion the Materialist standpoint is a stronger argument, this does not mean that the Idealist concept of an immaterial mind is altogether a false concept. I'm new to editing and commenting on articles so I am not about to take on the dauting task of restructuring this article so that it maintains all the information, but in a way that gives each side of the debate equal value. But I figured i would at least make mention of this for anyone who chances to read comments for this article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.229.54.243 (talk) 17:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Bias Towards Materialism 

message: Is this a new argument for dualism?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tennenrishin (talk • contribs) 13:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The purpose of a talk page is to discuss possible changes to the article, and changes must be based on reputable sources, which that personal web page is not.  So this question does not belong here. Looie496 (talk) 15:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New argument for dualism 

message: I was surprised by the simplistic interpretation of Plato's metaphysics and Aristotle's discussion on Plato's theory of forms.  It is true that Plato postulated that the forms were immaterial.  However, this is an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one.  There need not be a strict soul/body or mind/body dualism in order for there to be a soul that has knowledge of the forms.  In fact, other accounts of Plato [see for example http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/] argue that Plato was a monist and therefore it would be wrong to lay Descartes mind/body dualism at his feet.  Furthermore, Hegel and Spinoza, among other monist philosophers, trace much of their thought to Platonic thinking.  This too would seem to undermine the claim that Plato gave rise to modern dualistic thinking.  As Whitehead stated, "All of Philosophy is footnotes to Plato."  In this limited sense, we could use Plato as a precursor to dualistic thought, but it would only be insofar as he laid the foundation of all the important questions that lead to the mind-body problem.  Many have argued, and will continue to do so, that Plato was in fact a monist and that his personal views are closer to the monistic or holistic thinking represented in modern thinking by the likes of Bohm in "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" who deal with wholes and aspects of wholes.  That is, the whole is in the part and the part is in the whole. Thus, while Plato located the knowledge of the forms in the soul, this did not require the soul to be separate from the body.  For Plato, the soul has multiple aspects and is an aspect of the human being; so, it not necessarily separate, although we may like to try to draw simple distinctions when it suits are arguments--as I believe the author(s) of this article have done.  
Cloninge (talk) 16:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, but Plato did consider the soul to be distinct from the body, didn't he?  I'm not an expert on Plato, but I'm pretty sure I remember a passage where he describes the soul as being a prisoner within the body.  He also used the metaphor of the body as a ship and the soul as its pilot, which is pretty much the epitome of dualism. Looie496 (talk) 17:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias in the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics 

message: For such an important topic in philosophy, not only in epistemology but in philosophy of mind as well, it seems as though the coverage of substance dualism is severely lacking. I'd personally recommend that a new article be made to cover the topic more in depth. I'm sort of shocked this is an issue! Come on Wiki-Philosophers! --74.137.217.154 (talk) 05:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Substance Dualism Under-covered? 

message: Hi,
I would like to know the rationale for why my contribution has been subjected to deletion. It does not follow that though brain imaging devices observe causal-relative activities between mind and body, that mind-body distinction is logically dispelled. LaRouxEMP (talk) 20:14, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The line you added was "Though it can be conceded that this does not logically dispel the feasibility of mind-body distinction.".  What does that even mean?  Anything you could possibly say can be conceded by somebody who is determined to concede it.  What you are really trying to say is that this does not logically dispel the feasibility of mind-body distinction, but since that is only your personal opinion, you have added some weasel words (see WP:WEASEL) at the front to mask it. Looie496 (talk) 00:11, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion called into question 

message: Is the claim that during C.S. Lewis' time, quantum determinism hadn't yet been resolved, but now is, a correct claim? There's an entire article in Wikipedia on quantum indeterminacy so I'd like to check the validity of this claim as suggested here in "Causal Interaction". Appreciate it.Ronsword (talk) 02:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Causal Interaction

message: Can I respectfully ask that people contributing to this page give some structure to it?  The mega-section above makes things really difficult for anybody who doesn't want to spend hours trying to parse it. Looie496 (talk) 17:06, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, this is a little ridiculous. —wing gundam 00:52, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use sections, please 

message: If somebody is going to edit the article to make the extraordinary claim that "dualism isn't true because science. and facts." I think it would be appropriate to back that claim up with the actual facts. From what I can tell from the sources, those authors aren't making any claims about monism that haven't already been made for hundreds of years. While the editor is at it, they may want to hop on over to empiricism and update that as well, since it also seems to be lacking references to these alleged revolutionary breakthroughs.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.9.145.227 (talk) 14:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What "Findings?" 

message: The editor who summarized Breuer's thesis regarding self-measurement has misstated Breuer's conclusions, in my opinion. Breuer is talking to the operational reality of performing measurements on a quantum system which includes the observing system, not a human brain, or anything larger. The context of Breuer's thesis regards quantum systems and operational validation of quantum theories. Furthermore, the summary states that the inability to validate a theory proves that it is false. This is a fallacy. I propose that all of this be deleted because it has nothing to do with dualism to begin with, and because it is asserting 'facts' not present in the source.50.147.26.108 (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're confident about that, go ahead and do it. Looie496 (talk) 16:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to wait a bit and see if any objections arise. I'm not going to read through the whole thesis (as I would probably be the first besides Breuer to do so ;) ), but from what I read, it doesn't appear to address a system like the brain or imply anything important regarding the analysis of a brain-like system.50.147.26.108 (talk) 18:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Breuer and quantum measurement 

message: "David Chalmers recently developed a thought experiment inspired by the movie The Matrix in which substance dualism could be true: Consider a computer simulation in which the bodies of the creatures are controlled by their minds and the minds remain strictly external to the simulation. The creatures can do all the science they want in the world, but they will never be able to figure out where their minds are, for they do not exist in their observable universe.[8]"
I'm sorry, why does this get special emphasis? This is the old "brain in a vat" thought experiment that existed for decades. Just because Chalmers used a popular tool (the movie) to demonstrate an idea in a paper recently does not mean that he invented it as the article seems to suggest. 15.195.185.83 (talk) 20:57, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right - Chalmers' Matrix paper is not an important or new contribution to debates about dualism. --David Ludwig (talk) 04:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superfluous text  

message: Denyse O'Leary and Mario Beauregard have a book that claims to make the neuroscientists argument for what I think amounts to dualism. I can think also of some arguments put forward by Dinesh D'Souza in his book on Life After Death (never mind ad hominem attacks on some of D'Souza's other endeavors, other beliefs, or reputation - I am talking about specific arguments that if they are true are true no matter who writes them down). I see in the Wikipedia article mostly philosophical/religious arguments for dualism and neurological/physics arguments against it. The article seems weak on the neurological arguments in favor of dualism. I am not the one to write the part I see as missing, but I hope someone in the know could include it, or that someone could be asked to research/contribute in this area. There obviously are ideas out there which are worth including in this article to be fair and well-rounded. Has anyone tried to include them only to have them deleted? Is this simply something overlooked? Could it be true that neurologists who find support of dualism deserve to be ignored on their published ideas?  Shrommer (talk) 22:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Spiritual Brain and other books 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Halfway down the page there is a diagram titled "Cartesian dualism compared to three forms of monism." But all the types of depicted are forms of ontologically dualistic and monism is not depicted. Monism does not divide the world into physical and mental and decide which is real. That division is the essence of Cartesian Dualism. Monists, in fact, argue that although we perceive epistemic differences between what are apparently physical and apparently mental qualities, these are both manifestations of a single underlying reality. No ontological separation can be made. This is the position of John Searle, for example. The diagram that is supposed to show monism, in fact shows several forms of lopsided dualism and one form of lopsided triplism. Jayarava (talk) 09:03, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dualism vs Monism image 

message: Would it overly annoy anyone to replace the special typographic character, and restrict the article title to characters available on a standard keyboard?  In these talk pages, 'mind-body' with a hyphen outnumbers the variant with a mdash by a factor of six ...  Scarabocchio (talk) 19:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The mdash should be replaced with a hyphen. --ChromePlated (talk) 05:05, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of non-standard keyboard characters in the article title 

message: On 21 March user  added this content with this blog as a source. I removed it as unreliable. Today, user Equilibrium103 put the content back, pointing in the edit summary to Wikipedia:Citing self-published blogs or Wikipedia:Blogs_as_sources, the former being inactive and "no longer relevant", the latter being "a failed proposal", and in the edit summary requesting me to "Please refrain from unsolicited personal account DMs". As both the wp-guidelines are clearly irrelevant, and as i.m.o. the source is not reliable, I undid the edit again, also per, for now, wp:NOCONSENSUS: "In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Comments from others welcome, but pending consensus to keep the content with the blog source, let's adhere to wp:BRD. - DVdm (talk) 13:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The articles were provided because they the only extant guidelines on the topic of sourcing blogs at all. They are no longer maintained for the sole reason that sourcing of blogs is no longer controversial and considered a non-issue. In their absence there are no guidelines regarding blogs at all. Therefore your objection was based on a policy that you imagined. The citation is the uncontroversially owned and operated public venue of an Ivy League PhD of the relevant field of inquiry, whose commentary is non-redundant with and directly relevant to those made by his peers. The likes of Brian Leiter and Bryan Caplan are frequently and uncontroversially cited on identical mediums. "IMO" is not a sufficient grounds for deletion of reliable and notable sources. Unless a policy against blogs is assertively produced, I will consider the matter closed and revert to the previous the edit. Equilibrium103 (talk) 03:34, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Without comments from others and consensus, reverting the edit again will get you a third level warning. The blog is a wp:primary source and as such not a wp:reliable source. Also, keeping our policy about wp:edit warring in mind, have another look at wp:BRD. - DVdm (talk) 08:24, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

text: , you can read the policy on using blogs as a source at WP:BLOGS. Schazjmd (talk) 14:15, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academic blog as a reliable source? 

message: The WP article is very detailed about the possible variants of materialism and recutionism, but it lacks of a clear summary about them. The permanence of the body-mind dualism is contexualized in the 17th century Copernican Revolution, which resized the Holy Scipture's scientific authority in favour to the other upcoming theologies. Infact, dualistic view is said to be compatible with most of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.38.234.132 (talk • contribs) 08:24, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Materialism and reductionism 

message: Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
Everything in this article is indeed relevant to the article topic and was very well written. This article is about dualism (exactly what we have spoken about in class), the ideology that the mind and body are two different things that are completely separate and do not relate. All the sub-topics (types of dualism, dualist views, history of dualism, arguments for dualism and arguments against dualism) are all relevant and enhance the page. 
Nothing distracted me; everything was neat and well spaced. There isn't an overload of pictures and the ones that there are relevant and help with understanding the stuff that was said. 
JACstudent (talk) 00:17, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment: statement above is an optional task for this course. Schazjmd (talk) 00:24, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evaluation on the article 

message: As a non-expert, it's difficult for me to understand the difference between the articles Mind–body problem and Mind–body dualism. As far as I can see, it's the difference between Nature-nurture dichotomy and Nature-nurture debate. I'm very happy to accept there is a difference, but it would be good to have a hatnote that summarises the differences between them. Or, if they are the same (or substantially the same), then it may be worth merging the articles. --Xurizuri (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it's unclear why these are separate articles and what the relationship between the two is. Dualism was created in 2003, problem in 2007. I went through the talk page archives for both articles and couldn't find any discussion on splitting the dualism article. I found one brief suggestion (never discussed) of a merge. From this article's history, an editor copied some of the dualism article then copied a bunch more from :Interactionism (philosophy of mind) to create this article, but no explanation for "why". Schazjmd (talk) 15:59, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mind-body dualism vs mind-body problem 

message: Dualism has been described in terms of ideal & atomic, then (after Descartes) mental & material, now (aftern modern (meta)physics) spiritual & physical (,and IIRC, life & unlife) but some schools of thought (various ancient/Classical Greek, Kabbalah, far Eastern, German Idealism) don't consider each historical pair synonymous (some do) rather than more than three or four to seven or more levels, which has been called polyism. Though I'm a rationalist idealist (so monist), should polyism be redirected here (as discusses ideas, mind, and spirit) or get its own article?  Tertium quid also has been used to critique dualism.--dchmelik (t|c) 01:51, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  life, mind, spirit, polyism 

message: This article states that “Substance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent realm of existence distinct from that of the physical world.”
I doubt this. Cartesian dualism may be in conflict with the Chalcedonian Definition accepted by most Christians, and is completely incompatible with Buddhism. Furthermore, Descartes’ view of the soul has little in common with the views of most Hindu theologians throughout history. 73.73.127.102 (talk) 22:49, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Cartesian Dualism really compatible with “most theologies”? 

message: When the body dies, does the mind live on since they are separate? Kim Brunelle (talk) 01:49, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  separation of the mind and the body  

message: Here is an article claiming that Cartesian dualism is not compatible with Christian theology (https://equip.sbts.edu/publications/journals/journal-of-theology/a-chalcedonian-argument-against-cartesian-dualism/). 66.99.95.140 (talk) 13:27, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cartesian dualism may not be compatible with most theologies 

message: I found this article to be very interesting. We have touched on many of these topics in class and reading it here helped me understand it better. I found it to be on track (nothing distracting) also, talked well on the sub-subjects and described them well. It was not bias and provided good reliable information with proof and history to them. It provided good links and nothing seems to be outdated. This article is nicely diverse in means of authors and philosophers. 
Overall, this article was well written and sparks up many discussions and theories. 
-Wildflower12 (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Evaluation 

message: Article fails the B-class criteria (#1) since joining the "Articles with unsourced statements from Jan 2018 club. --  Otr500 (talk) 22:55, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Article issues and classification

message: :There are eleven entries in the "External links". Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to add for four. The problem is that none is needed for article promotion. Section needs trimming.
*ELpoints #3) states: 
*LINKFARM states: 
*WP:ELMIN: . -- Otr500 (talk) 22:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: Ciao fellow Wikipedia Editors: For your pleasure I have added objections raised by Colin Murray Turbayne to the Cartesian Mind-body dualism and the concepts of "substance and "substratum" upon which it is based, along with links to George Berkeley and metaphor. This is clearly a "substanitive" objection (no pun intended) so I hope that I have not "muddied the waters! Enjoy and happy editing.160.72.80.178 (talk) 22:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added [[Colin Murray Turbayne]] to the Arguments against dualism section