Thursday, June 4, 2020

About Dualism & Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Dualism



“Dualism addiction? If you’ve never heard of this you better wake up and hide your children because it is far worse than workaholism (which might in fact be caused by dualism addiction), TVism, shopaholism or any drug addiction. It is caused by a strong attraction towards simple answers which, coupled with a risk-averse mindset, could lead to uncritical thinking and, if this goes unnoticed for a longer period of time, eventually dualism addiction. Dualism is, as is well-known, a useful heuristic for making sense of certain aspects of the world but when it becomes an addiction it gives rise to a state of intense reductionism which develops into blinkers. This means that the world, although generally not perceived without colours, in some sense becomes black or white. An either/or reality where finer nuances are blurred behind a comfortable feeling of knowing the world. Dualism addiction is also suspected of causing an increase in the subjective experience of time and a lack of sensitivity to mystery and the largeness of the universe. 


Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

Dualism

First published Tue Aug 19, 2003; substantive revision Mon Feb 29, 2016

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.


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