An excellent concise and accurate statement of the interactive dualism theory of mind

[Laird]

Valmar,

I've selectively reread this thread to check and remind myself of everything you've said re this neutral substance.

In the process, I found that it was me who qualified it as "pure" potential (an unfortunate paraphrasing of your "infinite" potential), whereas, after rereading your descriptions, I see that you consider it as not just potential but also as being (existence), so it is perhaps better described as "unformed being with unlimited potential" than as "pure potential".

I take back, then, my claim that it lacks the capacity to be actualised: as a mixture of actual and potential, it can - at least in theory - self-actualise its latent potential.

I remain skeptical though that it qualifies as a genuine substance (in the philosophical sense). It seems to me better described as a proto-substance.

I also think that my original response stands or at least is a defensible interpretation: that this is just substance dualism with an origin story. It simply describes how the two substances - roughly conceived - of "mind" and "matter" come into being in the first place: via this formless proto-substance spontaneously(?) forming into the actual substances of one or the other.

Whether it is and remains fair for me to have described this proto-substance as transmuting into one or the other, as a different way of saying that it takes on their forms, is open to question, but I've put the question to you twice now with no answer.

I think it would be useful to get an answer, but I get that you're working on an intuitive and abstract level, so you might not want to commit to anything more specific. If you did, one of the questions that would be worth exploring is this:

Once it takes on a form, can that form be "taken back", returning to a state of "unformed being in potential", and then "reformed" into something else?

This would help to determine whether it is more of a substance proper (an actual being(ness) that is reformable) or, as I have suggested, more of a proto-substance (a sort of magic pot of potential beings out of which actual beings spring fully-formed, and to which, as an infinite source, it is meaningless for those beings to be returned for reformation).

In any case, I also think it seems fair to critique this position as not being a strict neutral monism, given that on a stricter neutral monism, the neutral substance wouldn't take on the forms of mind or matter, but would rather function or operate as one or the other depending on the conditions and context. This might seem like splitting hairs, but, especially in the context of the above, it's why I currently interpret it as "dualism with an origin story" as opposed to "neutral monism proper". Perhaps it's even more fairly described as something in between the two, a hybrid.

Finally, before responding to more specific parts of your reply, I want to make a broader point, by reminding you of something you wrote to nbtruthman early in the thread (editing note mine):

Eh, [idealism, monism and dualism are] not nearly as contrasting as I think you make them out to be. They have a lot of overlap in various ways

In that context, I'd like you to try to wrap your head around this:

The main difference between my dualistic framework and your framework is simply that whereas you provide an origin story for the substances of "mind" and "matter" (roughly conceived) - as forming out of a neutral proto-substance - I leave it unspecified how they form(ed) - i.e., where they came from - in the first place, albeit that it seems most likely to me that they have their origin in a personal, creative being, i.e., God.

Otherwise, they are similarly capable of coping with all of the nuances and variations of the different manifestations of form that you object to mine as being incapable of coping with: "mind" and "matter" on my dualistic framework are broad categories which allow for the same nuances and variations that your framework does.

From my perspective, the supposed problem of interaction (which, to reiterate, I don't see as a problem in the first place) is not particularly resolved by positing that mind and matter form out of a proto-substance: in that case, it can simply be said, "Well, OK, so that's where they came from, but now that they are what they are (have been formed into), the situation is not essentially different to that in which I simply take them for granted as they are without stipulating how they formed."

Given that I now better understand your neutral substance, I would no longer describe it as explanatorily irrelevant, but I can simply say, "I have no need of that hypothesis", or, rather, that I leave the question of origins more open. I am more interested, in this ontological context, in developing a coherent conceptual framework for the reality that I observe than in speculating as to how that reality came to be, although, of course, I do indulge in the latter too.

Does all of that make sense, and can you accept it?

Dualism cannot explain why God exists, frankly ~ because what is God, if not a substance-unto-itself? It is distinguished from matter and mind, making it a third substance, contradicting Dualism.

You still don't seem to understand the distinction I make between mind and matter, because, on my view, God is not a third substance, but simply an instance of one of the two substances: a mind. Just to add some nuance to that though: it is possible and considerable that God's mind is (perhaps was from the start) allied - as are ours when we are incarnated - with a body made of the other type of substance ("matter"). This might be interpretable as a type of panentheism.

On that panentheism, your subsequent proposal (which for brevity I haven't quoted) would be possible on a paraphrasing: that God's body is infinite, and that God creates within that body rather than in the emptiness of an external void.

To reiterate in the context of that which I asked you to wrap your head around above: "mind" and "matter" in this dualistic context are very broad categories, generally differentiating between the non-extended "thing"-substances of persons - who experience - and the extended "stuff"-substances of matter-energy-etc which does not, but with which, when formed into a body, a mind (experiencing person) can be allied (or "into" which that mind (experiencing person) can incarnate).

They do not need to specifically connote human-like minds and the physical matter-energy of this universe. There is scope for infinite variety and subtlety within those broad categories.

Do you see now that there is no reason after all to bemoan its lack of explanatory power?

I used to be Idealist

Fine, but that's not in itself a defence against the mentalism suspicion (where "mentalism" is here a synonym for "idealism"). The suspicion only strengthens with comments like this:

I hesitate to call "God" a "universal mind", as what does that even mean for an omni-infinity, beyond even the concept of an entity, perhaps?

Does God as you conceive of God experience? That's enough to qualify God as a mind for me, and if God as you conceive of God is also all of reality, then it seems to me that you're still an idealist after all.

It seems rather arbitrary to distinguish between minds and "stuff"... when minds happily contort themselves into the shape of form to express existence through that form. The ultimate identity of mind may not be matter ~ but mind can identify with the matter of the body so closely that they are indistinguishable, as perception has been so closely identified with.

I (have come to) see it differently than mind "contorting" itself. I don't see mind as extended in the first place, so it can't be contorted in that sense. Rather, its field of awareness can be extended, to the degree that it experiences a body as though that body was a true part of itself, via that extended field of awareness.

I consider the idea of dreams... especially lucid dreams, which occur entirely within our own consciousness, minds, as we sleep. We can create entire worlds filled with inhabitants in them, that range from robotic to curiously aware and intelligent. So... what is the nature of the lucid dream? Why can this physical reality not be akin to a dream, except that there are powerful rules in place, where instead of being the creation of the dreamer-creator of this reality, we inhabit avatars that exist made of dream-stuff? The dreamer being... souls, I guess, considering that there are higher levels of reality than this.

OK, let's for argument's sake say that this physical reality is akin to a dream. There must, then, be some mind which is dreaming it, and somehow our minds "hook in" to that mind's dream (presumably via some sort of telepathic or other psi or psi-adjacent means). We can't literally be "in" the dream because it's a virtual rather than a physical reality. We can only be "in" it in a similar sense as we can be "in" a computer game. So, the question then arises: where are we literally when we're participating in this dream?

There seem to be two options (ultimately, after any and all nested dream realities are resolved, assuming nesting is anyway coherent, which it might not be): firstly, that we are in a base physical reality; secondly, that there is no physical reality and we are all just minds. The first entails dualism, and the second entails pluralistic idealism, which I lightly critiqued in post #31: it seems hard anyway to avoid some sort of dimensional space within which these plural minds exist, which if not a "physical" reality at least invites the question as to why one would deny a physical reality. In summary: dualism seems the more plausible option of the two here.

I'm curious though what you mean by "dream-stuff". Do you mean literal stuff: some type of matter-energy in an extended (dimensional) space? If so, you seem to have a very different idea of what a dream is than I do.

You are using the meaning of substance in the sense of discrete objects. For me, substance is something implying beingness, existence, which doesn't demand that it be stuff that can be sensed. I consider my sense of self to be beingness and existence ~ it is substance in this regard.

I'm simply using "substance" in the philosophical sense that I thought we agreed on: roughly, that which exists independently and which can have properties, attributes, and states, but which is not itself a property, attribute, or state. That's compatible with what you describe, and I agree - and have said all along - that the self (a person aka mind) is a substance, except that I don't qualify "self" with "sense of" here.

Getting back to my point: experience can't be a substance because it is not independent; it is contingent (on the experiencer, who, we agree - though you with a qualifier - is a substance).

That it is contingent is to me self-evident, but it can also be affirmed on the basis that while an experiencer in the absence of experience can be conceived, an experience in the absence of an experiencer cannot. To put it another way, an experiencer (aka mind aka person) who is - at least temporarily - not undergoing any experience is conceivable, whereas an experience which is not being undergone by an experiencer is both inconceivable and incoherent.

Aside from the conceivability of an experiencer absent experience, I can think of two items of empirical evidence for it being an actuality as well:

1. When under a general anaesthetic, it very much seems that experience temporarily ceases. I've been in this state several times myself, so I can confirm this. Some argue that experience doesn't truly stop, it simply isn't remembered. Well, maybe that's true, but it doesn't seem that way to me.
   
2. In the case of Annika and Tristan, during Tristan's absence from the body for several years (to which he refers as death), he did not experience anything. Again, it might be argued that he simply didn't remember his experiences, but, as with me and general anaesthetic, that's not how it seems to him.
   

Thus, I disagree with this (editing note mine):

There is, in a sense, no distinction [between (experiencer-independent) matter and (experiencer-contingent) experience]... because we take on the shape of our experiences, mentally.

I disagree with the first part of that for two reasons. Firstly, because the one (experience) is contingent whereas the other (matter) is not, and secondly because the one (matter) is extended whereas the other (experience) is not. Therefore, there certainly is a distinction.

Perhaps re the first reason you think that matter, too, is contingent on mind (an experiencer), but then the mentalist suspicion becomes even more pressing: it is not clear in that case how your position actually differs from idealism.

Re the second part of that quote of yours: this is an idea that I have toyed with too, but I am not sure that it is meaningful, and certainly not to the extent that experience is the same as matter just contained within the experiential field of the experiencer, because experience is not extended as matter is, and to claim that it is, it seems to me, is to mistakenly materialise the immaterial (in a sense to reify experience).

Without experience, there is no experiencer

See above as to why I explicitly disagree with this. (Temporarily) non-experiencing experiencers are not just conceivable but appear based on empirical evidence to be actual too.

The experiencer creates its own form through experience

As above: I am skeptical of this idea, but have entertained it too. Since you asked me to poke you on it, perhaps read my toying with it at the link I shared above (and the few posts prior at that link if it's of interest) - consider that to be my poke.

Not for Neutral Monism or Idealism ~ the Creator is existence itself.

You miss the point: in that case, the problem can simply be restated as that of why "the Creator; existence itself" exists in the first place.

Finally, re a personal God: you point to people having experiences ("mystical experiences of an infinite light, of the godhead") which do not involve a personal God as evidence that a personal God does not exist. This is a non sequitur. A mystical experience not involving a personal God doesn't in any way demonstrate that a personal God cannot be experienced at other times.

I have instead provided positive evidence. There is an asymmetry then in the evidence we have each provided. You need a good reason to counter the positive evidence I've provided. In that respect, you essentially claim that people misidentify the being they encounter as God, including on the basis that you have experienced a Jesus entity which confessed to being merely an egregore, etc. Well, maybe that's true, but it's also merely a claim, and one which conveniently supports your position.

You differentiate Krishna from Brahman, but, in fact, Krishna is the personal aspect of Brahman, not a distinct entity, thus nor is Brahman the "source" of Krishna.

There are also philosophical arguments for a personal God, but, as Sci points out, this thread isn't the place to explore this topic in depth.

[Laird]

could there be a reconciliation via Animism?

I'm not sure about reconciliation, but for me, dualism is already compatible with animism in the sense that it is conceivable that a mind (person) could incarnate into (animate; intimately interpenetrate with its field of awareness) any type of matter, not just organic bodies.

Could Everything just be Persons? This doesn't have to mean the chair or car is a Person, but rather it is made up of "Persons".

The key difference from Panpsychism is that there is no combination of smaller conscious "bits" since my Person is distinct from the agents (Persons really) making up the experience of my body. Similarly I may constitute a part of Gaia's body (assuming She exists as a Person) but She is a distinct Person as well.

I've considered this possibility too, as distinct from combinatorial panpsychism as you suggest, and to an extent I think it is probably true: I think it's plausible, for example, that the individual cells in our bodies are (independently) conscious.

Beyond that, though, it seems otherwise potentially to suffer from problems of arbitrariness and redundancy.

By arbitrariness, I mean that other than for those bits that seem to demonstrate agency (like cells), there seems to be no clear way to demarcate them. While cells seem plausible candidates, what about sub-atomic particles? How about collections of cells? Organs? The random subset of your body comprising 12.729% of your liver and 3.68% of the region beyond? Obviously, the last question is facetious, but it illustrates the broader question: where and how do we demarcate those bits which are animated?

By redundant, I mean that where we don't have good evidence of agency, we gain no explanatory power - especially as to our own personhood - by positing it.

Moving on to a later post:

Though I increasingly suspect whether one is a Monist or a Pluralist is tied to how we demarcate the "physical" and "mental".

Personally, I don't think pluralism applies here, because it seems to me that we're really talking about the so-called mind-body problem, for which there are only two live possibilities - monism or dualism - given that there are only two (very broad in this sense) potential substances: mind versus body (aka matter). They are either of or derived from the same type (monism) or they are of different types (dualism).

(Technically, there is another possibility - nihilism, the position that there are no substances, or, in other words, that neither ontological category of mind nor body aka matter exists - but since none of us in this conversation takes that position, we can ignore it).

It's in this context that, ontologically, I identify as a dualist.

It's possible I suppose that one might conceive of substances beyond "mind" and "matter" (or the neutral substance from which they are derived), but that seems to go beyond the mind-body problem. It's also possible I suppose that one might carve up into multiple substances "mind" and/or "matter". Those could result in a pluralism.

Beyond substances, we can consider ontological categories more broadly.^[1]

In that more general context I am most definitely a pluralist.

The rest of your post nicely introduces that more general context and some of the considerations involved.

A while back, inspired by the discussion in the tabulation of mind-body possibilities thread, I drafted a basic ontological taxonomy for discussion and refinement, but I never got around to sharing it.

Maybe that would be interesting to explore in a new thread.

To answer the key question you asked though:

So then does the distinction end up separating Persons from everything else, including feelings/thoughts/reasoning?

In my opinion, yes. As I argued in my post to Valmar above, the experiencer (person) is distinct from his/her experiences (feelings/thoughts/reasoning); the latter are contingent on the former.

The question then arises: well, what exactly is a person then if (s)he is comprised neither of stuff nor experience?

My answer is closest to the third (c) given in the SEP article on dualism under 5.2.2 Unity and Substance Dualism, the ‘no-analysis’ account, which is:

The view that it is a mistake to present any analysis. This is Foster’s view, though I think Vendler (1984) and Madell (1981) have similar positions. Foster argues that even the ‘consciousness’ account is an attempt to explain what the immaterial self is ‘made of’ which assimilates it too far towards a kind of physical substance. In other words, Descartes has only half escaped from the ‘ectoplasmic’ model. (He has half escaped because he does not attribute non-mental properties to the self, but he is still captured by trying to explain what it is made of.)

Foster (1991) expresses it as follows:


…it seems to me that when I focus on myself introspectively, I am not only aware of being in a certain mental condition; I am also aware, with the same kind of immediacy, of being a certain sort of thing…

It will now be asked: ‘Well, what is this nature, this sortal attribute? Let’s have it specified!’ But such a demand is misconceived. Of course, I can give it a verbal label: for instance, I can call it ‘subjectness’ or ‘selfhood’. But unless they are interpreted ‘ostensively’, by reference to what is revealed by introspective awareness, such labels will not convey anything over and above the nominal essence of the term ‘basic subject’. In this respect, however, there is no difference between this attribute, which constitutes the subject’s essential nature, and the specific psychological attributes of his conscious life…

Admittedly, the feeling that there must be more to be said from a God’s eye view dies hard. The reason is that, even when we have acknowledged that basic subjects are wholly non-physical, we still tend to approach the issue of their essential natures in the shadow of the physical paradigm. (243–5)

I qualify this by adding that for me the mistake is not that it's necessarily the case that no analysis is possible, but rather that, if one is, I simply don't know how to provide it using the conceptual tools at my disposal.

[1] Even more broadly, it really depends on what is being counted, and especially whether that is categories or instances: types versus tokens. The SEP article on monism covers this in detail. Interestingly, regarding token monism, it distinguishes between existence monism and priority monism. These might be the technical terms to describe the distinction you seem to want to make between One True Self idealism (an existence monism?) and One and the Many idealism (a priority monism?). It might be that Itay Shani's defence of cosmopsychism against the decombination problem in his paper Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience (which I analysed in my thread The decombination problem, related arguments, and potential solutions: an analysis) could be summarised as affirming cosmopsychism as a priority monism rather than an existence monism. It might be worth asking him whether he'd be comfortable with that characterisation. Personally, I'm not convinced that this distinction is all that meaningful (on idealism), but it seemed worth drawing those terms to your attention anyway.