Form Of Dualism Research Articles

William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious Life

William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious Life

Christian physicalism and the biblical argument for dualism

This paper examines whether biblical descriptions of the intermediate state imply dualism of the sort that rules out physicalism. Certain passages in the Bible seem to describe persons or souls existing without their bodies in an intermediate state between death and resurrection. For this reason, these passages appear to imply a form of dualism. Some Christian physicalists have countered that the passages in question are in fact compatible with physicalism. For it is compatible with physicalism that, although we are necessarily constituted by physical bodies, we can continue to exist without our current bodies in the intermediate state by being constituted by replacement bodies. I argue that broadly Gricean considerations significantly weaken this response. In its place, I propose a new, linguistic objection to the biblical argument for dualism. The linguistic objection says that biblical descriptions of an intermediate state cannot imply dualism in the sense that contradicts physicalism because physicalism is defined by a concept of the physical derived from modern physics, and no term in the biblical languages expresses that concept. I argue that the linguistic objection is less vulnerable to Gricean considerations than the constitution objection. On the other hand the linguistic objection also makes concessions to dualism that some Christian physicalists will find unacceptable. And it may be possible to reinforce the biblical argument for dualism by appeal to recent research on ‘common-sense dualism’. The upshot for Christian physicalists who wish to remain open to the biblical case for an intermediate state is therefore partly good, partly bad. The prospects for a Biblical argument for dualism in the sense that contradicts physicalism are limited but remain open.

Medicine's metaphysical morass: how confusion about dualism threatens public health.

What position on dualism does medicine require? Our understanding of that question has been dictated by holism, as defined by the biopsychosocial model, since the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, holism was characterized at the start with confused definitions of ‘dualism’ and ‘reductionism’, and that problem has led to a deep, unrecognized conceptual split in the medical professions. Some insist that holism is a nonreductionist approach that aligns with some form of dualism, while others insist it’s a reductionist view that sets out to eradicate dualism. It’s important to consider each version. Nonreductive holism is philosophically consistent and clinically unproblematic. Reductive holism, however, is conceptually incoherent—yet it is the basis for the common idea that the boundary between medical and mental health disorders must be vague. When we trace that idea through to its implementation in medical practice, we find evidence that it compromises the safety of patient care in the large portion of cases where clinicians grapple with diagnosis at the boundary between psychiatry and medicine. Having established that medicine must embrace some form of nonreductionism, I argue that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is a stronger prima facie candidate than the nonreductive alternatives. Regardless of which form of nonreductionism we prefer, some philosophical corrections are needed to give medicine a safe and coherent foundation.

Madness and spiritualist philosophy of mind: Maine de Biran and A. A. Royer-Collard on a ‘true dualism’

ABSTRACT The exchange between the philosopher Pierre Maine de Biran and the psychiatrist Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard has been read either as an exemplary case of the influence of philosophy on medicine or as a “dialogue of the deaf” (Braunstein, Broussais et le matérialisme, 47). However, these two readings imply a clear distribution of roles between the philosopher and the doctor. This article instead examines the metaphysical nature of the discussion between the two spiritualists in their aim to establish a ‘true spiritualism’ from a common problem: the nature of madness. Based on a constellation analysis of Biran’s Nouvelles considérations sur les rapports du Physique et du Moral and Royer-Collard’s 1821 lecture on this manuscript, the article shows that both thinkers are concerned with the most appropriate form of dualism, and how it is possible to establish a relationship between the two fundamental aspects of man – the physical and moral – without denaturing each of them. Paradoxically, the analysis makes manifest a reversal of roles: whereas Biran has a static conception of dualism leading to an organic conception of madness, Royer-Collard demands a dynamic dualism that makes it possible to conceive a causal role for the mind in madness.

Physicalism without identity

Abstract This paper presents and discusses the most influential attempts to characterize physicalism without postulating relations of identity between the physical and the prima facie non-physical. The first section deals with a possible criticism that these attempts are misguided, since they contradict the physicalist slogan “everything there is physical.” In the second section, I elucidate the different formulations of the physicalist supervenience claim, and argue that none of them consists in an adequate characterization of physicalism. Three reasons are given in favor of this conclusion: their compatibility with forms of dualism (or pluralism); the fact that the supervenience relation is left unexplained; and Kim’s causal exclusion argument, which asserts that merely supervenient entities (i.e., ones that are not in identity relations with strictly physical entities) must be epiphenomenal. The third section presents the general features of another identity-independent attempt to characterize physicalism, namely realization physicalism. According to this view, tokens of prima facie non-physical types are realized by tokens of strictly physical types performing functional roles that specify the nature of the former. The third section also shows how realization physicalism deals with the objections that make physicalist supervenience claims inadequate for characterizing physicalism.

Public sociology and southern European societies: a critical view

The aim of our paper is to analyze the role that a properly reformed public sociology can play in enhancing the perspective of southern European societies. The paper is organized in three parts. In the first part, we summarize the main aspects of Burawoy’s proposal, while in the second part we will focus on three dimensions (communication, ethical-political and epistemological dimensions), detecting the fundamental dualism that runs through them and which we will try to clarify. In the third part we emphasize the substantial analogy of the three forms of dualism that characterize Burawoy’s proposal and suggest hypotheses of the solutions that have been promoted in the international debate; we will introduce our work in progress hypothesis of solution in accordance with the solution proposed for the epistemological dimension.

Joan Cuscó. Subjectivitat i Creativitat. Temps, memòria i creació. Barcelona: Publicia, 2018, 392 p.

Joan Cusco’s work Subjectivitat i Creativitat. Temps, memoria i creacio (Subjectivity and Creativity. Time, memory and creation) is an attempt to comprehend creativity thruough the filter of subjectivity. The epigraph of the book already anticipates the trajectory and logic of the research presented by the author, who, in the form of an erratic movement—various authors, apparently heterogeneous—explores and discovers, as an explorer in an unknown land, a clear image, elaborated in a solid and disciplined project: the nature of human subjectivity. As the author tells us, subjectivity will be the way to approach or try to understand human creativity; and this approach will be done—as if it were a composition of a musical chord, constituted by four notes—through the comprehension and mutual relationship between mind, brain, consciousness and language. The research presented by Cusco is based on a plural and multifocal approach between scientific knowledge, philosophy and art, always avoiding reductionists views and encouraging unconditional dialogue between these disciplines or perspectives. Throughout his composition, the author progressively reveals a certain conception of human thought or of human nature in general terms. Human nature, Cusco defends, must be understood from the dialectic between necessity and possibility, that is, from the double perspective of understanding our existence as organisms attached to certain necessities and possibilities open up by our symbolic capacity. It is in this manner that the author tries to capture the space that separates biology from artistic creation; and he does this by avoiding at all times to fall into any kind of reductionism, mainly in the idealism that considers humans as singular beings in the bosom of creation; and also avoiding various forms of dualism, such as the one between biology and culture, between body and mind, and ultimately between philosophy and science. The whole work shows an extraordinary mastery of specialised literature on the issues addressed, from biology to philosophy, through art and artistic creation. Especially noteworthy is the attention to Catalan thinkers and scientists, often neglected by the academic research done in Spain itself—an element that shows how Cusco’s work has a clear international aspiration and remains rooted in the fruitful production of his homeland.

Nihilism, Existentialism, – and Gnosticism? Reassessing the role of the gnostic religion in Hans Jonas’s thought

Late antique Gnosticism and Heidegger’s Existentialism are usually counted among the main theoretical targets of Hans Jonas’s philosophy of life and responsibility, since they are supposed to share the dualistic and nihilistic attitude the philosopher deemed most mistaken and pernicious. In particular, Gnosticism is commonly understood as the exact opposite of what Jonas strove to accomplish in his work. However, I think it is simplistic to relegate Gnosticism to a merely antagonistic role in the development of Jonas’s philosophy. My claim is that Gnosticism, being a non-nihilistic form of dualism, might have been a relevant source of inspiration – although not the only one – for amending the flaws of Heidegger’s Existentialism. By taking a closer look at the essay Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism, this article aims to clarify the critical and constructive role that Gnosticism might have played in shaping some of the major traits of Jonas’s thought. The first part of this essay deals with Jonas’s ‘gnostic reading’ of Heidegger’s Existentialism and highlights the positive insights drawn from such interpretative strategy. The second part focuses on three main motives in Jonas’s philosophy that may be traced back to the gnostic narrative: value objectivity and vulnerability, human responsibility and involvement in the history of being, and the sense of belonging to a wider dimension capable of providing orientation and meaning to human life.

What Do We Need to Know?

Abstract How We Know is intended as a summary (and a modest extension) of Objectivist epistemology. Binswanger's treatment of a wide range of epistemological issues is examined. Because his theory of propositions is inadequate and his philosophy of mind is an extreme form of dualism, Binswanger has added little to previous efforts by “official” Objectivists. As a work of epistemology in the broad sense, Binswanger's effort is fatally impaired. It is undone by his bifurcation between consciousness and the physics of the brain, which, if accepted, would largely deprive psychology and even computer science of their subject matter.

Dualism and its place in a philosophical structure for psychiatry

It is often claimed in parts of the psychiatric literature that neuroscientific research into the biological basis of mental disorder undermines dualism in the philosophy of mind. This paper shows that such a claim does not apply to all forms of dualism. Focusing on Kenneth Kendler’s discussion of the mind–body problem in biological psychiatry, I argue that such criticism of dualism often conflates the psychological and phenomenal concepts of the mental. Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that there are different varieties of dualism, and so overlooks the important metaphysical insights of contemporary dualist philosophers. I argue that while the neuroscientific research underpinning biological psychiatry challenges the traditional dualism of René Descartes, it does not pose any problem for the more modern dualism of David Chalmers. It is possible to take seriously the scientific claims of biological psychiatry while holding that this latter form of dualism is true. This has implications for the positioning of the mind–body problem in psychiatry. While the “easy” problem of explaining psychological processes is relevant to the aims of biological psychiatry, psychiatrists need not worry about the “hard” problem of consciousness.

Disintegrating Particles, Non-Local Causation and Category Mistakes: What do Conservation Laws have to do with Dualism?

The single most influential and widely accepted objection against any form of dualism, the belief that human beings are both body and soul, is the objection that dualism violates conservation laws in physics. The conservation laws objection against dualism posits that body and soul interaction is at best mysterious, and at worst impossible. While this objection has been both influential from the time of its initial formulation until present, this paper occupies itself with arguing that this objection is a fleeting one, and has successful answers from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. It is to this end that I provide three groups of responses to the conservation laws objection. First, I outline responses which take the ‘laws of nature’ as the proper entry point into the discussion. Secondly, I provide an analysis of those who argue that contemporary quantum physical data requires that the objection itself involves scientifically unjustified premises. Finally, I layout a philosophically oriented answer which argues that the objection is linguistically problematic since its demands on the dualist are categorically fallacious. From these groups of answers, I conclude that while the conservation laws objection has been arguably the most widely accepted objection against dualism, the objection is without philosophical justification.

Metaphysical necessity dualism

A popular response to the Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that mental events depend on their physical bases in such a way that the causation of a physical effect by a mental event and its physical base needn’t generate any problematic form of causal overdetermination, even if mental events are numerically distinct from and irreducible to their physical bases. This paper presents and defends a form of dualism that implements this response by using a dispositional essentialist view of properties to argue that the psychophysical laws linking mental events to their physical bases are metaphysically necessary. I show the advantages of such a position over an alternative form of dualism that merely places more “modal weight” on psychophysical laws than on physical laws. The position is then defended against the objection that it is inconsistent with dualism. Lastly, some suggestions are made as to how dualists might clarify the contribution that mental causes make to their physical effects.

In defense of dualism: Competing and complementary frameworks in religious studies and the sociology of religion

The term “dualism” is used in quite divergent connotations across religious studies, sociology, theology, anthropology, and other academic fields. This paper characterizes the differing usages of the term, and uses them to explore the sometimes-converging and sometimes-orthogonal relationship between academic fields, with a focus on religious studies and the sociology of religion. I argue that although the two fields have mutually benefited from insights originating on either side of their divide—and thus converged in important ways—substantive differences remain. Their differing understandings of “dualism” represents important theoretical and analytic divergence, and the justified critique of certain forms of dualism has been used to reject all versions of the concept, including some—here termed “embodied dualism” or “experiential dualism”—that remain analytically crucial to the study of social life generally and religion particularly.

Endurance, Dualism, Temporal Passage, and Intuitions

Endurantism, as opposed to perdurantism, is supposed to be the intuitive view. But the ‘endurantist intuition’ – roughly, that objects persist through time by being numerically identical and wholly located at all times at which they exist – is behind more than just endurantism. Indeed, it plays an important role in the motivation of some theories about the passage of time (namely, a family of A-theories), and some theories about the nature of the subject (namely, some forms of dualism, and some conceptions of the Self). As we shall see, the endurantist intuition is often taken in these cases to be a reason, or at least a motivation, to endorse one or the other of these metaphysical theories. Sometimes, it is even said to constitute a basis for an argument in their favour. In this article, I show that such an appeal to this ‘endurantist intuition’ is misleading and wrong. I do not deny that there is an intuition of this kind, but I deny that it can play any philosophically significant role as a reason – and even less as a basis for an argument – in defending metaphysical theories such as endurantism, dualism, or the A-theory.

Emptying Śūnyatā: a Critical Reading of Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness

Abstract In this article, invoking some terms of phenomenology and general principles of structural semiotics, I critically examine and reveal some aporetic aspects of Nishitani’s interpretation of Buddhist concept of sūnyatā presented in his seminal work Religion and Nothingness. My critics are directed to deeply ingrained claims among scholars of a “rejection of any form of dualism” and “non-substantial philosophy” as unique characteristics of the Kyoto school or “logic of the East”. My arguments are based on examining how linguistic differentiating articulation and narrative rendering that perform a fundamental role in human cognition are at work in definition of “emptiness” (sūnyatā) too. Thus emptiness is not completely empty; being certain philosophical identity it can be articulated only by differentiation from other identities, and thus different is included in it. Nishitani needed logocentric modes of thought, as a dialectical (m)other for constructing his sūnyatā ontology. Accordingly, the realms that are considered to be secondary or derivative (i.e. sensual and rational, or linguistic representations) appear to be the condition for constituting the primary (suchness of things, sūnyatā). Considering universal mechanisms of the articulation of values I am also asking whether sūnyatā paradigm indeed is so fundamentally different from Western paradigms centered on idea, God, or a rational subject as Nishitani wants to think. Since we find a clear hierarchical differentiation into truth and illusion, authentic and inauthentic modes of thought and time, and initial and derivative ontological realms, features of “strong thought” (in sense of Vattimo) are evident in his work. I am also suggesting, that possibly by considering not sūnyatā or “idea” but human languages as a universal “house of being”, we would be able to “empty” discourses of radical difference and uniqueness, and in this way become post-nationalistically modern. Philosophy, in order not to turn into a onesided ideology, should reflect on its mythological and narratological conditions, i.e. dances on certain semiotic axes. From such a perspective, the gravitational trajectory of human thought, longing for conjunction with the absolute, defined either as God or as sūnyatā, will seem similar rather than different.

Dépasser le dualisme

The Augustinian definition of the concept of natura rules out any form of dualism : all nature depends on God, it is what God wanted ; but, in the case of man, nature changes according to the actual relation to God, just as the image of God in the soul can be distorted by sin or reshaped by grace. This historical conception of nature sets Augustine against the Manichaean and Pelagian conception of nature as a static datum.

La monarchia dans les Homélies clémentines et l’origine du Mauvais

As the most rigorous upholder of monotheism, the pseudo‑Clementine homilist is at strife with the Marcionite dualism. More precisely, he comes up against the Apelles’ doctrine, which is all the more dangerous as it establishes the unicity of God and reduces the demiurge of the world and author of the Law to a created power. The theory of the «false pericopes» of the Scriptures is specially directed against Apelles, in order to protect the identity between the supreme God and the Creator of the world. It seems that the conjectures about the origin of the Evil One, which attempt to avoid a new form of dualism, are also directed towards the refutation of Apelles : to the obedient demiurgical angel is opposed the providential function of the Evil One, who has to put the human beings’ piety to trial ; and against Apelles who maintains the severance between corporeal reality and God’ being, the homilist makes use of the audacious theory of the mixing of the elements to settle both the connaturality of the Evil One and of the body of God and the blamelessness of God with reference to the will of the Tempter, which is contingent.

A linkage of mind and brain: towards translational validity between neurobiology and psychiatry

Aim: There are prominent discrepancies in the general approaches of psychology and psychiatry, many of them due to diverse and incompatible tacit positions on the mind-brain debate (MBD). For this reason we need to enhance the dialogue with neurosciences and other human sciences relevant to the problems of psychopathology. To achieve such goal we can reduce the level of diversity of mind-brain problem project-solutions as implied in different theoretical models and practices. Arguments: I shall trace the MBD to the one of the most relevant for the modern psychopathology areas: the group of neurosciences. We seek the interference of the philosophical assumptions, the evidence of neuroscience and the development of psychopathology. We prove by a post rem analysis that the reduced group of predominant project-solutions of MBD excludes genuine forms of dualism and extreme forms of physicalism (like epiphenomenalism or eliminative materialism). Conclusion: A predominant group of project-solutions is adopted including complementary combination of contemporary forms of physicalism: identity theory of mind applied to mental events and brain processes; supervenience principle applied to other mental phenomena. Biomedical Reviews 2011; 22: 65-76.

Haikonen's View on Machine Consciousness: Back to the Engineering Stance

Machine consciousness is a young research field, yet inspired by oldest intellectual disciplines like philosophy of mind. Specifically, the mind–body problem has been approached since ancient times and different accounts have been proposed along the centuries. While none of these accounts, like different forms of dualism, have been seen as useful working hypotheses in the domain of machine consciousness, their influence might have shaped the orientation of this research field towards a frantic search for an illusory and unachievable bridge for the explanatory gap. In his book, Consciousness and Robot Sentience, Haikonen seems to claim back the predominant position that engineering should have in a domain, where we are supposed to deliver pragmatic solutions. In this regard, Haikonen is actually bridging the gap between the philosophical discourse and the practical engineering approach. This is a remarkable movement as Haikonen is essentially claiming that his cognitive architecture is a proof of the inexistence of such a thing as a mind–body problem. In this book review, I analyze the implications, limitations, and prospects of this engineering stance, looking at the main contributions and those aspects that might require further explanation.

Vygotsky’s idea of Gestalt and its origins

The origins of Vygotsky’s conception of Gestalt in Goethe, Hegel, and Marx is traced, demonstrating how this concept not only forms a methodological foundation for Vygotsky, but also is the key concept through which this series of thinkers has overcome various forms of dualism. Vygotsky’s use of the concept in his unfinished work on child development is reviewed and it is shown how this conception of Gestalt sheds new light on the concept of the zone of proximal development.