Understanding The Arguments In Theories Of Dualism Philosophy Essay
Dualism was believed to approach by Pythagoras nearly 6th Century B.C.E. Pythagoras believe on transmigration of soul-means that when a person died, the soul is immortal and bound to divide soul. However , Pythagoras’s theory is not likely famous during that time. Later, Plato shows the disjunctive between mind and body. Plato think that body is like a prison used to trap mind/soul. After death, the body decompose because it was made of material while soul/mind is immortal. This shows that body and mind is two separated things. Dualism that famously used nowadays came from the famous philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes.It is also known as the beginning of modern philosophy. Rene introduced two main subject for dualism which are substance and property.
In order to understand dualism,several argument were rised.One particular argument is dualistic interactionism which known as”common sense”.Descartes stated the point of interaction is something connected mind/soul to body is at pineal gland of brain.However,the soul is not likely trap at pineal glad,it only act as point of interaction.Mind is real but it is different from brain.. The brain is the major locus for the mind or consciousness of the soul, yet mind or consciousness is distributed throughout the whole body.But the function of pineal gland as point of interaction has been proved as wrong by scientifically method.Pineal gland function to secrete serotonin derivative melatonin(hormone use to modulate sleep and wake patterns and seasonal function).There are no evidence to associate mind/soul to body.This is making interactionism as a weak argument to defend dualism.
Another argument is mind is the immortal soul.Many religion like Islam and Christian teach that soul is different from our body.When we died ,the soul is immortal and will go to heaven or hell.This argument is similar to Plato’s approach.That’s why platonic dualism are well accepted in Christian .
The third argument is ,if dualism is false,we can reduce mind/mental states to physical matter or vice versa,or to neutral third substance.However,it was impossible to change your mental states to matter.For example if we feel anger towards someone,can you made your feeling into concrete object?of course not.That's why this argument is commonly used to convince people about dualism.However,this argument can be critise for the lackness of imagination.In imagination we think about something then we made it into some physical things.
The last argument is mental states(mind) and physical(body)have different and irreconcilable properties. First point for this judgement is mental states cannot be publically observable.For example ,I fall from stairs and hurt my head.We can see the effect of fallness because the bump in my head but you cannot feel the pain I suffered.That’s why mental states is private unlike physical things such as fireworks and cannot be publically observable.
Next is mental states is not spatially located .Many experiment been conducted but scientist still cannot proved where mind located ,either inside or outside of the brain.Pretending that you are feeling happy.Does you feel happy in your head or the happiness is spread throughout your body?So,where exactly your mind?Third point is mental states does not have properties as physical.As example our body have mass and can do physical motion.We can not weigh a thought and we cannot measure how far our feeling can go.Some people stated that they have depthness of feeling but,how can they measure the depthness?Fourth,mental states have subjective properties(Qualia)that physical do not have.Qualia is raw feels .It is a subjective or qualitative properties of our experience.It is like how to know what is red color or how to differentiate musical notes heard from piano or violin. It is impossible to reduced Qualia into physical properties.
So there are at least four major differences between the mental and the physical, which make it difficult, to say the least, to understand how one might reduce the mental to the physical. That seems to give us considerable reason to think that the mind and the body are two totally different categories of being. So,this is a good argument for dualism.
In this philosophy of mind, dualism is different kinds of mental events and physical events in a set of beginning of belief in which they were claimed. Instead of that, the dualist in the philosophy of mind had identified the big difference between mind and matter. They all disagree that the mind is the same as the brain. While others also deny that the mind is the only one the product of the brain. The concept of this dualism is that our mind is more than our brain. It can contain everything in our surrounding. This concept tells us that our mind has a non-material which is spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal attribute or we can call that as motivation. In order to understand this concept is we have to consider ourselves first as a container which is including our physical body and physical brain together with a separate non-physical mind, spirit, soul, motivation and so on. The mind, spirit, or soul is considered the conscious part that manifests itself through the brain. In a similar way where the picture and sound waves manifest themselves through a television set. These waves of picture and sound are also known as no -material just like the mind, spirit, or soul.
There are many types of dualism that are distinguished based on if and how mind and matter are thought to each other together with its own functionality. Thus, this dualism can be divided into two which is substance and property dualist.
Substance dualists typically argue that there are difference matters in our mind and body where the mind is a thinking thing is less exposed to the physical of an object. The physical objects are including size, shape, location, volume, speed and direction in movement, adherence to the laws of physics, and so on. However, substance dualists fall into several groups depending on how they think the connection of mind and body are related. For instances, interactionists believe that minds and bodies can affect to each other. Occasionalists and parallelists, generally motivated by a concern to their curiosity of physical science. But this is denied because all apparent interaction to God is ultimately attributing.Epiphenomenalists offer a compromise theory, asserting that bodily events can have mental events as effects at the same time denying that the reverse is true. This can be done by avoiding any threat to the scientific law of conservation of energy at the expense of the common sense notion that we act for reasons. The occasionalism and parallelism are another two types of substance dualist. These theories are largely preserved or are taken from the original of history. The occasionalist mentioned that there are no interactin between mind and body mind. They may seem to when, for example, we put our hand above the hot kettle then the hot and distressing sensation occurs. Occassionalists, like Malebranche, assert that the sensation is caused by God where God create appropriate experiences and feeling by using the occasion of environmental happenings.
Furthermore, according to the parallelist, our mental and physical histories are coordinated so that mental events appear to cause physical events (and vice versa) by virtue of their temporal conjunction, but mind and body no more interact than two clocks that are synchronized so that the one chimes when hands of the other point out the new hour. Since this fantastic series of harmonies could not possibly be due to mere coincidence, so it is advanced in explanation of religion. In creation God does not appeared continuously, just like the occasionalist had mentioned, but builds into creation a pre-established harmony which is we programmed ourselves that maximally removes the need for future impact.
Next, another dualism is property dualism which is that mental states are irreducible attributes of brain states and it holds that mental phenomena are non-physical properties of physical substances. Consciousness is the most widely known as an example of a non-physical property of physical substances. However, other dualists hold that mental states, characteristic and episodes are brain states, even the states cannot be conceptualized in exactly the same way without loss of meaning. According to epiphenomenalism, mental events can build bodily events or processes, but bodily events or processes cannot caused by mental phenomena (McLaughlin, p. 277) whether an epiphenomenalist thinks these mental epiphenomena are properties of the body or properties of a non-physical mental storage determines whether the epiphenomenalist is a property or substance dualist.
They are many psychology principle that had been discuss today. For example, functionalism, dualism, mongolism. All this principle had their own explanations and their own believe about the life and the things that related to life. But, for my group opinion, the most suitable and the nearest principle that can get along with life. human body actually had two things, that is body and mind. This \two things react with each other simultaneously to create the most complicated and perfect things, that is life to run smoothly. Dualism can be prove to be nearly correct because it has implications that related to life after death issues. This is because, after we die, we will going to had our life after death, and many religion in this world was practicing the same things. After we die, our soul will separated from our body, and will live the life after the death. So, the life after death is based on judgment on how we operate or run our life before. Besides that, nobody in this world can retain or can resist death. Everybody will die, and nobody had the immortal. So, this prove that dualism concept was the most or nearly precise principle that can be related to life. Apart from that, human rationality in the terms of thinking was also an implication that can be used to prove that dualism principle was true. Physical forces was something that play an importance role in people’s thought judgment. If there is no soul, instead, there is only had body, they will be no believe or not believe for something that is not real-abstract. For example, the galaxy had seven layer, and god is actually exist . on the other hand, if our body had only self-refuting left, there will be no room for rational beliefs. British study had published that there is evidence that consciousness continues after a person’s brain stopped. The most shocking prove was that actually death support the dualism . the brain still run the function of lucid thought with formation and reasoning of memory. Besides, there are also patience that admit that they had gain information that they had never knew it before. Brain was also being proved that had no place where electric stimulation can cause a person to believe or decide. This was proved by doing interviewed to sixty three heart attack victims who were declared death. Roger sperry and hiks team had studied difference between right and left hemisphrere of the brain, and they had founf that mind had causal power independent of the brain activities. This is why, materialism was concluded to be false by sperry. Actually, thought had two component, that is mind and brain. This can be said to be true because thoughts can be true or false, however, brain staes itself cannot be true or false. So, how on earth can we think in our everyday life about right or wrong? This can be the obvious prove to prove that dualism was the most precise principle exist-yet. Besides that, by measuring brain waves, nobody can tell we what are we thinking. Instead, we must been ask about what had been thinking first, then everybody will knows. That is why the dualism principle was chosen to be most or nearest precise principle that can be adapt to our life as it had two component that work and react simultaneously to complete the cycle that we called life and it was also true to be said that life or mind body actually had two component, that is body and soul.
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