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

[Laird]

What makes a substance?

This is a good question. In philosophy, in this context, "substance" has a particular meaning: "a thing whose existence is independent of that of all other things, or a thing from which or out of which other things are made or in which other things inhere".

On monistic idealism, the singular substance (on this meaning) is the universal mind which is all of reality.

The more conventional meaning of a "substance" - which perhaps is a potential aspect of the philosophical meaning - is "that of which a thing consists; physical matter or material: form and substance" (see sense #1; sense #10 is again the philosophical sense referenced from a different source above). We might say in this thread's context that an appropriate synonym for this conventional sense of "substance" is "stuff".

On monistic idealism, the existence of any substance in this conventional sense is adamantly denied: mind is not comprised of stuff; rather, it is a subject undergoing experience, and experience itself is certainly not any type of stuff, neither "mind stuff" nor any other type of stuff.

The problem here is that despite this explicit denial, monistic idealism implicitly trades on the idea of stuff to explain how a plurality of minds "decombines" out of the singular mind: this decombination would not be possible unless mind was comprised of some sort of stuff, for experience itself - not being a type of stuff - cannot decombine (consider, for example, the absurdity of "the redness of red" splitting into a separate mind in virtue of its redness).

The implicit trading on substantial "stuff" can be seen again in monistic idealism's explanation of an intersubjectively consistent external world, at least on the account given in Analytic Idealism: the matter referenced by physics, conventionally assumed to be mind independent, is on monistic idealism (at least in the form of Analytic Idealism) simply encased within a giant mind and reframed as mental (experiential) rather than physical; for all intents and purposes, it is otherwise identical. Again, the existence of stuff is implicit, even while, again, it is - quite rightly, given that experience truly is not a type of stuff - explicitly denied.

There are other fatal problems with monistic idealism, but that's the most suitable one to draw out in the context of Sci's question.

We might then consider a truly pluralistic idealism: the existence of multiple minds not decombined out of a singular mind, but independently existent. I see two main problems here though. The first is the context in which those minds exist. It is hard - though perhaps not impossible - to conceive of multiple minds merely existing, and not existing in some sort of dimensional space, but once a mind-independent dimensional space is conceded, then it's unclear why a mind-independent physical reality - merely a type of dimensional space - would be denied, and thus what makes pluralistic idealism theoretically superior to dualism.

The second is again how to explain the intersubjectively consistent external world even if, hard as it is, we allow that minds do not exist in any sort of dimensional space. Advocates of idealism typically invoke the idea of parsimony to defend that idealism, but it seems to me that a more straightforward dualism - in which a mind-independent reality more or less (perhaps tending towards "less" given quantum weirdness) exists as perceived - is far more parsimonious than a pluralistic idealism, in which a set of minds, either via a singular "server" mind servicing "client" minds, or via a "peer-to-peer" network of minds, somehow maintains a coherent conceptual model of an external reality, which somehow is translated into an appropriate tangible perceptual experience for each mind.

This - and the peer-to-peer variant in particular - is also problematic in the sense that we are not personally (at least I am not) aware of any of this peer-to-peer or client-server networking-and-translating going on in our own minds, yet on idealism, experience is all that exists, so if we do not experience it, then how could it be said to exist in the first place? Too, even if it does exist, it's not clear how it came about: how these minds organised (decided to organise?) themselves and their perception in this way.

Pluralistic idealism also has other problems in common with monistic idealism, such as how to explain causally-efficacious brains and bodies in purely experiential terms, but I won't address them here.

Dualism, then, seems by far the most plausible candidate here. (I won't address physicalism, because we are all well aware already of the fatal problems that rule it out).

That leaves the other option canvassed in this thread: neutral monism.

It's not 100% clear to me what is intended by that term in this thread, but I get the sense that what is intended is that a fundamental ("neutral") substance in the conventional sense - some sort of stuff - somehow transmutes itself into one or the other substances of mind or matter. Given, though, that, as elaborated above, mind (at least as experiencing subject and especially its undergone experiences) is not stuff, it's not clear how this transmutation could work in that case.

Even granting that it somehow could work, then it's not clear how the claim that the existence of this basic substance solves the supposed problem of mind-matter causal interaction (a pseudo-problem in my view) is substantiated: once this neutral substance transmutes itself into either mind or matter, then the (supposed) problem reasserts itself, because, whatever they might have been transmuted from, once transmuted into their final forms, mind and matter have the radically different natures that we know them for.

If that's not what's intended, then maybe it could be spelled out in more detail, but other conceptions of neutral monism anyway seem also problematic to me.

All of that is to say that I see no threat here to dualism as the most plausible ontology or position on the so-called mind-body problem, as advanced in the opening post of this thread by @nbtruthman.

This is a good question. In philosophy, in this context, "substance" has a particular meaning: "a thing whose existence is independent of that of all other things, or a thing from which or out of which other things are made or in which other things inhere".

On monistic idealism, the singular substance (on this meaning) is the universal mind which is all of reality.

The more conventional meaning of a "substance" - which perhaps is a potential aspect of the philosophical meaning - is "that of which a thing consists; physical matter or material: form and substance" (see sense #1; sense #10 is again the philosophical sense referenced from a different source above). We might say in this thread's context that an appropriate synonym for this conventional sense of "substance" is "stuff".

On monistic idealism, the existence of any substance in this conventional sense is adamantly denied: mind is not comprised of stuff; rather, it is a subject undergoing experience, and experience itself is certainly not any type of stuff, neither "mind stuff" nor any other type of stuff.

The problem here is that despite this explicit denial, monistic idealism implicitly trades on the idea of stuff to explain how a plurality of minds "decombines" out of the singular mind: this decombination would not be possible unless mind was comprised of some sort of stuff, for experience itself - not being a type of stuff - cannot decombine (consider, for example, the absurdity of "the redness of red" splitting into a separate mind in virtue of its redness).

The implicit trading on substantial "stuff" can be seen again in monistic idealism's explanation of an intersubjectively consistent external world, at least on the account given in Analytic Idealism: the matter referenced by physics, conventionally assumed to be mind independent, is on monistic idealism (at least in the form of Analytic Idealism) simply encased within a giant mind and reframed as mental (experiential) rather than physical; for all intents and purposes, it is otherwise identical. Again, the existence of stuff is implicit, even while, again, it is - quite rightly, given that experience truly is not a type of stuff - explicitly denied.

There are other fatal problems with monistic idealism, but that's the most suitable one to draw out in the context of Sci's question.

We might then consider a truly pluralistic idealism: the existence of multiple minds not decombined out of a singular mind, but independently existent. I see two main problems here though. The first is the context in which those minds exist. It is hard - though perhaps not impossible - to conceive of multiple minds merely existing, and not existing in some sort of dimensional space, but once a mind-independent dimensional space is conceded, then it's unclear why a mind-independent physical reality - merely a type of dimensional space - would be denied, and thus what makes pluralistic idealism theoretically superior to dualism.

The second is again how to explain the intersubjectively consistent external world even if, hard as it is, we allow that minds do not exist in any sort of dimensional space. Advocates of idealism typically invoke the idea of parsimony to defend that idealism, but it seems to me that a more straightforward dualism - in which a mind-independent reality more or less (perhaps tending towards "less" given quantum weirdness) exists as perceived - is far more parsimonious than a pluralistic idealism, in which a set of minds, either via a singular "server" mind servicing "client" minds, or via a "peer-to-peer" network of minds, somehow maintains a coherent conceptual model of an external reality, which somehow is translated into an appropriate tangible perceptual experience for each mind.

This - and the peer-to-peer variant in particular - is also problematic in the sense that we are not personally (at least I am not) aware of any of this peer-to-peer or client-server networking-and-translating going on in our own minds, yet on idealism, experience is all that exists, so if we do not experience it, then how could it be said to exist in the first place? Too, even if it does exist, it's not clear how it came about: how these minds organised (decided to organise?) themselves and their perception in this way.

Pluralistic idealism also has other problems in common with monistic idealism, such as how to explain causally-efficacious brains and bodies in purely experiential terms, but I won't address them here.

Dualism, then, seems by far the most plausible candidate here. (I won't address physicalism, because we are all well aware already of the fatal problems that rule it out).

That leaves the other option canvassed in this thread: neutral monism.

It's not 100% clear to me what is intended by that term in this thread, but I get the sense that what is intended is that a fundamental ("neutral") substance in the conventional sense - some sort of stuff - somehow transmutes itself into one or the other substances of mind or matter. Given, though, that, as elaborated above, mind (at least as experiencing subject and especially its undergone experiences) is not stuff, it's not clear how this transmutation could work in that case.

Even granting that it somehow could work, then it's not clear how the claim that the existence of this basic substance solves the supposed problem of mind-matter causal interaction (a pseudo-problem in my view) is substantiated: once this neutral substance transmutes itself into either mind or matter, then the (supposed) problem reasserts itself, because, whatever they might have been transmuted from, once transmuted into their final forms, mind and matter have the radically different natures that we know them for.

If that's not what's intended, then maybe it could be spelled out in more detail, but other conceptions of neutral monism anyway seem also problematic to me.

All of that is to say that I see no threat here to dualism as the most plausible ontology or position on the so-called mind-body problem, as advanced in the opening post of this thread by @nbtruthman.

I would agree that One True Subject is problematic, not sure any other kind of Idealism is. I don't see the exact problem with not existing in dimensional space - especially if Space-Time itself is born of some more fundamental level in physics - or how this would help Dualism unless Dualism includes extension. And then we get to the issue with interactions between the seeming mental and the physical, which then just leads us back to some kind of overarching Designer. 

Does said Designer create two realities out of...Nothing? That would be  illogical. So Dualism, unless one wants to posit some kind of non-Design parallelism, seems to need a Designer who makes two realms from some preceding substance. 

But Parallelism is a bizarre position even with a Designer, as it is unclear to me a physical substance can be maintained without some mental concurrent cause which then yet again suggests the Designer is of a substance that is not physical yet produces and interacts with the physical. But then how can there be a "physical" that is distinct from what is mental?

Beyond that the evidence just points to a Monism over Dualism, even if one doesn't think the Interaction Problem as fatal. PK needs mental and physical to interact, seeing or hearing or feeling apparitions/spirits again shows interaction, synchronicities seem to arrange events to accord with mental life, reincarnation can imprint past physical wounds of a prior life into a new body, etc...

edit: I will say I am not sold on Neutral Monism either, at least if we're thinking of it as a fundamental substance that divides into two distinct substances. The truth is we are probably just not able to fully grasp the exact nature of our own being...at least not from the embodied vantage point we are currently in...

All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things. 
-Nagarjuna

Science can handle such issues using statistics! If it couldn't it would be impossible to test drugs that don't work well on everybody.

David

Problem is that statistics are ultimately reductive. They are data points that strip away the inherent meaning in something to turn it into something that can "measured".

Another problem with them is their fatal limitations with description and categorization... which comes ultimately back to their necessity to reduce something to an over-simplified so as to "measure".

Drugs are physical measurable substances not innately immeasurable paranormal entities and abilities...

[Laird]

I would agree that One True Subject is problematic, not sure any other kind of Idealism is.

As I see it, the two, mutually exclusive, kinds of idealism are monistic idealism and pluralistic idealism, and monistic idealism and idealism of the One True Subject kind are two ways of referring to exactly the same thing. Do you see it that way too? If not, how do you see it?

(Incidentally, I've read that some philosophers have denied that idealism can be anything other than monistic. I haven't investigated why, but I suspect and intuit that they've made that claim given the sort of problem for pluralistic idealism to which I referred in my last post: that those plural minds would seem to have to exist in some sort of dimensional space, which means that there is more to reality than just minds and their experience(s).)

I don't see the exact problem with not existing in dimensional space - especially if Space-Time itself is born of some more fundamental level in physics

Wait, wait - how does the reference to physics fit here? We have only minds and their experience on pluralistic idealism, not physics, certainly not a physics (logically or causally) prior to those minds. If you need to posit physics prior to - either logically or causally - the plurality of minds, then nevermind dimensional space as a problem: that's a fatal problem in itself, because that's not idealism; that's dualism (of some description).

- or how this would help Dualism unless Dualism includes extension.

Yes, dualism includes extension, because it includes matter, which is extended. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. I feel like I must be missing your point.

And then we get to the issue with interactions between the seeming mental and the physical

Can you clarify what the issue is that you're referring to here? I think you've said previously that you don't think that the so-called interaction problem is fatal - with which I agree: that the physical and mental could not interact seems to me to be a bare assertion lacking a logical basis - so maybe you're referring to something like the idea of psycho-physical harmony?

which then just leads us back to some kind of overarching Designer.

Yes, psycho-physical harmony (assuming I've understood you aright) does seem like a good argument for a Designer, among others.

Does said Designer create two realities out of...Nothing? That would be  illogical.

A Designer is a Something (Someone), not a Nothing, so, no.

So Dualism, unless one wants to posit some kind of non-Design parallelism, seems to need a Designer who makes two realms from some preceding substance. 

I don't see the need for a preceding substance. If the substance (and Designer) can simply be assumed, then I see no reason why a capacity to create that substance can't equally simply be assumed - but we've been through this before elsewhere, and it's probably unproductive to go over it again.

But Parallelism is a bizarre position even with a Designer, as it is unclear to me a physical substance can be maintained without some mental concurrent cause

Equally, it's unclear to me why such a cause would be necessary - but, again, we've been through this before with no resolution, and it's unlikely we'll find one this run through.

which then yet again suggests the Designer is of a substance that is not physical yet produces and interacts with the physical. But then how can there be a "physical" that is distinct from what is mental?

That seems like a strange question given that that's exactly what dualism proposes to be the case, so how could a proponent of dualism find anything problematic to answer for in the first place? It's in this sense almost a question-begging question.

You'd need to explain why this would be a problem if you want to ask something more meaningful.

Beyond that the evidence just points to a Monism over Dualism, even if one doesn't think the Interaction Problem as fatal. PK needs mental and physical to interact, seeing or hearing or feeling apparitions/spirits again shows interaction, synchronicities seem to arrange events to accord with mental life, reincarnation can imprint past physical wounds of a prior life into a new body, etc...

I really don't see how any of this could be better explained on monism than dualism. It all seems to me to be a perfect fit for (interactionist) dualism.

edit: I will say I am not sold on Neutral Monism either, at least if we're thinking of it as a fundamental substance that divides into two distinct substances.

Good to know.

The truth is we are probably just not able to fully grasp the exact nature of our own being...at least not from the embodied vantage point we are currently in...

Certainty might be unachievable, but I think we can at least better approximate the truth via inquiry.

All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things. 
-Nagarjuna

That's a nice philosophical doctrine. More seriously, I'm not sure what "entering the true essence of things" even means.

[Laird]

I thought it was important to add a clarification in a new response to this in particular:

So Dualism, unless one wants to posit some kind of non-Design parallelism, seems to need a Designer who makes two realms from some preceding substance. 

In the philosophical sense of "substance", the Designer already is a substance: a person aka soul. The Designer, then, only needs to create one further type of substance (and corresponding "realm"): matter. (S)he can then also create new persons aka souls with the same type of substance as Him/Herself, but they need not have their own "realm". Of course, evidence suggests that there is a variety of realms, but on dualism, they are different varieties of "matter" - at least, as very broadly conceived, and allowing for such a thing as "spiritual matter".

I think the original Materialism was based in qualia, in the sense that we should only take as given what we perceive in this world. Of course, as a matter of necessity, this conception of the material had to give way to Physicalism. Yet now Physicalists have accepted a variety of oddities as live possibilities, and this in turn has led to a distancing from the experienced world.

What is Tegmark's idea that Everything is really Math but a strange Platonism, if not a bizzare almost-Idealism?

Even if one doesn't go that far we still have ideas like Space-Time is emergent, that other universes are out there and/or this universe has more than three spatial dimensions, and of course all the challenges to Physicalism that physics brings via the mysterious of the quantum level.

When we try to measure the macro-scale we find Finely Tuned constants, and we try to explore the quantum level we find the live possibility that Consciousness has some causal role to play.

Indeed so...

Well both Light and Darkness figure into mystic visions, and Myers posited a spectrum that would extend from the visible illumination into higher realities. And as the alchemical text Hermetic Recreations notes:

“Life, such as we wish to consider it, is but a struggle between two substances, or a continual exchange of light and darkness. One of these substances alternatively takes the place of the other, sometimes taking the male function and sometimes the female. And in a manner pleasing to the divine author, everything either changes into a pure light, or returns to the Cimmerian darkness, which shows that light and darkness are but one and the same thing, changing in form and value by the expansion or contraction of the substance”

Almost like Yin and Yang...

There are some odd NDEs, but yes it seems that perhaps NDEs show places our type of spirits would go to, whereas DMT - based solely on reading for me! - seem to at times point to realms that are more "alien".

To supplement with experience from Ayahuasca... they do indeed take us to realms that are alien... though Ayahuasca grounds this in the mundane more, slowing the DMT down, making it more comprehensible, also being shaped by the psychedelic properties of the Caapi vine or Syrian Rue.

Oddly, there's nothing quite more alien than experiencing parallel realities that feel as grounded as this one... probably because the familiar can feel almost... uncanny valley-ish when it's not quite the same as this brand of familiarity.

I have to admit I'm a bit perturbed by Absolute Idealists who seem to want Faggin to agree with their ideas of illusory selves and lack of individual volition. There's enough room for different kinds of Idealism, and Faggin seems to be much more aligned with someone like Edward Kelly who believes in Personal Survival.

I know Kelly even got into an argument with Kastrup, noting the latter was choosing a philosophical belief contrary to the vast amount of Survival evidence.

I am worried about the amount of influence that Zen Buddhism has been having on the West... the whole idea of "killing the ego", the "self is illusory", the "world is illusion / Maya" and all that nonsense, when it seems to me that there is simply different layers of reality, all real per merely existing and being perceived.

A slice of reality is still reality.

Not sure about Physicalists being naive realists, as noted above it seems they are leaning toward our observed reality being born from some other processes that underlie space-time....though this IMO will only lead people back to outlets such as Physics to God...

I've run into a few on social media forums, and they're the types who think that we must see the world as it really is because survival advantage... and that mental processes are identical to physical processes, that minds are just what brain processes amount to. But they're obviously not the philosophical types, else they would realize how far behind they are ~ philosophy of mind has left them far behind. Even actual proper philosophers of Physicalism and Materialism don't buy into any of them anymore.

Yeah, even the NDEr sees the physical world & and is sometimes seen having in their OOBE body. Which suggest causal continuity between the physical world and the spiritual...and this seems best resolved by saying the physical is an odd corner of the vaster spiritual continuum.

Odd corner seems a bit curious... especially when this reality seems almost... tailored for spiritual growth, in ways I still barely understand. But... it does seem, from reviewing the progress I've made, that the challenges of this life really have fueled my spiritual, emotional and psychological growth. Perhaps in ways that not being here would make impossible.

Well I think there are problems with the idea, but some of the arguments do have merit. I think the Classical Theists are ultimately wrong, but the Proofs of God do lead to metaphysical issues that I am not sure are easily addressed without some "God".

I think this kind of description runs into similar issues that the Classical Theist God does. What does it mean to be both Simple *and* Complex, or "outside of Time"?

I'm more comfortable with the relation between Form and Formlessness than God, as per Scott Robert's Nondual Logic site:

"...Having seen all four horns of the tetralemma fail, what next? The way forward, as I see it, is to treat the unresolvability of the polarity from being a problem to being the solution. That is, to describe fundamental reality as this never-resolving opposition of the two poles. The way to do this is to think of the two poles as forces (what makes things happen) rather than states of being, or as partial descriptions of reality. Reality is not fundamentally just formless, or form, or both, or neither, rather it is formlessness and form in action, constituting each other as they work against each other. To say that experiencing is the tetralemmic polarity of formlessness and form provides a basis for developing a complete and coherent metaphysics -- given the idealist stance that there is nothing outside of experiencing. No more is needed, and any less cannot produce an explanation of awareness of forms..."

I guess I mean "God" in the senses that Christian theologians have trapped the concept in. It limits the concept of "God" in such a way that remains in alignment with Christian religion.

My experiences have left me... wanting, honestly, for something that isn't so bound.

Yeah I've long wondered about this, even as a child having "weird" experiences - some of which that if my memory is correct were undoubtedly paranormal and also suggesting the divide between the realm of dreams and this reality is not as distinct as the Physicalists might want.

Eric Weiss has suggested reality itself actually changed, taking us from the Mythic to the Modern. I am not sure this is absolutely correct, it might instead be the case that there were more paranormal incidents in the past but not to the point dragons & unicorns were around...

(Sadly Weiss passed away and his website is gone. Wanted to link to his work.)

I think it merely our frameworks of reality that have shifted, and thus, our mental conceptions of the world are what grant us access through resonance with particular ideas and forms. Without resonance... there can be no connection. Like... a radio whose dial can't tune into a station, because the station just isn't a concept on that meter.

I makes me think about the idea that language shapes our reality... though I don't think it is nearly as literal as some might suggest.

Sadly in agreement. There is enough Evil in humanity to feed all of Hell's demons...if there is a Hell or demons...

[I should note I don't think any government has alien technologies.]

Supposedly, leaks suggest that they might... the military has the power to do almost anything under "national security" laws...

As I see it, the two, mutually exclusive, kinds of idealism are monistic idealism and pluralistic idealism, and monistic idealism and idealism of the One True Subject kind are two ways of referring to exactly the same thing. Do you see it that way too? If not, how do you see it?

(Incidentally, I've read that some philosophers have denied that idealism can be anything other than monistic. I haven't investigated why, but I suspect and intuit that they've made that claim given the sort of problem for pluralistic idealism to which I referred in my last post: that those plural minds would seem to have to exist in some sort of dimensional space, which means that there is more to reality than just minds and their experience(s).)

Honestly philosophers use these terms so much it gets confusing. I figure Monisitic Idealism means the One is the generator of the Many, Absolute Idealism is there is only the wholly mental One True Subject, and Subjective Idealism is that there are only the Many who somehow (subconsciously?) create consensus reality.

There's arguably even more "Idealisms" like Kantian & Monadic Idealism but I think this gets a bit deeper into the weeds than currently necessary.

Wait, wait - how does the reference to physics fit here? We have only minds and their experience on pluralistic idealism, not physics, certainly not a physics (logically or causally) prior to those minds. If you need to posit physics prior to - either logically or causally - the plurality of minds, then nevermind dimensional space as a problem: that's a fatal problem in itself, because that's not idealism; that's dualism (of some description).

My point was that it would be odd to insist that anything real has to have spatial extension if - as according to some physicists - space & time are themselves generated by some lower level of reality. So if physical entities can be extensionless or non-spatial it isn't clear why it would be a problem for mental entities.

Yes, dualism includes extension, because it includes matter, which is extended. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. I feel like I must be missing your point.

Is the mental/spiritual extended in your version of Dualism? Because Descartes said Res Cogitans in not extended.

Can you clarify what the issue is that you're referring to here? I think you've said previously that you don't think that the so-called interaction problem is fatal - with which I agree: that the physical and mental could not interact seems to me to be a bare assertion lacking a logical basis - so maybe you're referring to something like the idea of psycho-physical harmony?

Yes, psycho-physical harmony (assuming I've understood you aright) does seem like a good argument for a Designer, among others.

I think the Interaction Problem is not fatal because all Causality is mysterious. However if we insist that there are two substances then AFAICTell there is either interaction or parallelism. In the first case how do we demarcate interacting "mental" and "physical" stuffs if causal interaction is the very way in which we'd define what a substance is?

In the second, parallelism would have a variety of conditional checks that ensure the physical does what the mental wants and the mental is affected by physical changes of state. So really parallelism has to have some kind of means of interaction through some third "stuff" or some entity that interacts with both. Essentially a "concurrent cause" through some third stuff that is possibly God.

A Designer is a Something (Someone), not a Nothing, so, no.

But a pot maker needs clay, a painter needs paint. Is the Designer using its own body to make these two different substances? If so it seems this is just a kind of Neutral Monism.

I don't see the need for a preceding substance. If the substance (and Designer) can simply be assumed, then I see no reason why a capacity to create that substance can't equally simply be assumed - but we've been through this before elsewhere, and it's probably unproductive to go over it again.

If the argument is the Designer has the power to will the two substances into being then this runs into the Something from Nothing issue that intellectually kills off Physicalism.

As you say we've debated this in the past. For me the problem is insurmountable, and so Dualism that wants God distinct from the substances She/He/It creates out of nothing but Will is a dead end.

Equally, it's unclear to me why such a cause would be necessary - but, again, we've been through this before with no resolution, and it's unlikely we'll find one this run through.

Yeah I don't think it's an outright fatal problem, but I find it hard to imagine how causal relations hold without a mind. But this could probably be debated in a thread specifically about how the only valid metaphysics for Causation involve mental causation (aka the Volitionary Theory of Causality).

That seems like a strange question given that that's exactly what dualism proposes to be the case, so how could a proponent of dualism find anything problematic to answer for in the first place? It's in this sense almost a question-begging question.

You'd need to explain why this would be a problem if you want to ask something more meaningful.

It goes back to my issue with this supposed physical causation. I don't get how it works as even if God made physical stuff with particular natures what keeps those natures from changing? Unless God is continuously intervening, and thus interacting, as the concurrent cause. But this then takes us back to God as the "third substance" that supports parallelism...which really just looks like Neutral Monism again.

The alternative, I guess, is to say God has interaction with the physical and mental, but the physical & mental don't interact with each other. But then is God physical *and* mental in some partial way but also neither in some other way? Not sure that even makes sense?

Also unclear what the "physical" is given it seems to always be experienced mentally and modeled via the mentally proof-backed apparatus of maths. (It can't just be stuff outside one's sense of Self because that would include apparitions.)

I really don't see how any of this could be better explained on monism than dualism. It all seems to me to be a perfect fit for (interactionist) dualism.

How does ectoplasm, for example, make sense in interactionist dualism?

Or PK, which seems to defy parallelism by requiring some exertion?

Good to know.

Certainty might be unachievable, but I think we can at least better approximate the truth via inquiry.

That's a nice philosophical doctrine. More seriously, I'm not sure what "entering the true essence of things" even means.

I'd say the true essence is whatever is the genuine relation between Matter & Mind, this life, the afterlife, varied paranormal phenomena, the contextless truths of maths & logic, qualia, and so on.

We can throw out Physicalism and cast severe doubt on Bottom-Up Panpsychism. Tegmark's Everything-is-Math metaphysics can probably also be thrown away. Dualism to me seems highly unlikely, but I can accept its possible. Idealism also seems unlikely for some of the reasons you gave and some other issues.

Neutral Monism could work, depending on what this special substance is and how exactly it becomes the experienced reality...

I thought it was important to add a clarification in a new response to this in particular:


In the philosophical sense of "substance", the Designer already is a substance: a person aka soul. The Designer, then, only needs to create one further type of substance (and corresponding "realm"): matter. (S)he can then also create new persons aka souls with the same type of substance as Him/Herself, but they need not have their own "realm". Of course, evidence suggests that there is a variety of realms, but on dualism, they are different varieties of "matter" - at least, as very broadly conceived, and allowing for such a thing as "spiritual matter".

This seems to almost go back to the religious Christian and Jewish ideas that God is a person, with a, as written, human personality, desires, wants, ego, judgement, wrath, love, forgiveness, etc.

Taoism, Hinduism and the Kabbalah all have extremely different conceptions of "God" to this ~ Reality and God are One and the same. The multiplicity within Reality is simply part of God's nature ~ we exist within God.

Thus, mind and matter are just different manifestations of God, of Reality, being both of the same essential substance.

The problem these philosophies perceive is why would God need to create a separate substance outside of God?

It's less parsimonious than God just being Reality itself ~ One and Many, One and All, everything being variations of God-stuff.

This seems to almost go back to the religious Christian and Jewish ideas that God is a person, with a, as written, human personality, desires, wants, ego, judgement, wrath, love, forgiveness, etc.

Taoism, Hinduism and the Kabbalah all have extremely different conceptions of "God" to this ~ Reality and God are One and the same. The multiplicity within Reality is simply part of God's nature ~ we exist within God.

Thus, mind and matter are just different manifestations of God, of Reality, being both of the same essential substance.

The problem these philosophies perceive is why would God need to create a separate substance outside of God?

It's less parsimonious than God just being Reality itself ~ One and Many, One and All, everything being variations of God-stuff.

Yeah my current feeling is some kind of Panentheism is correct, though this arguably blends the notions of Tao/Brahman and God as Person...

Admittedly an alternative might be the Many are immortal & interconnected "in the deep" and have no need for a Creator to make them.

Also possible that the One and Many are not exactly distinct but also not equivalent. We could have always been here alongside God, because we are God in some sense but also not-God...

Yeah my current feeling is some kind of Panentheism is correct, though this arguably blends the notions of Tao/Brahman and God as Person....

It depends on the definition of "God". Taoism and Brahman are both Panentheism, and do not anywhere define God as person. If God is All, then does it not become truly redundant for God to be an individual within God? It's what I do not understand about the whole idea of "son of God" or what-have-you ~ we're all already aspects of God, quite directly. It just doesn't appear like it because we're like fish in water. When everything is God, we can point to nothing in particular.

Admittedly an alternative might be the Many are immortal & interconnected "in the deep" and have no need for a Creator to make them.

In an essentially eternal infinity, creation itself is redundant... there is no beginning, and no end. That is merely an artifact of our physically-incarnate conception of linear time, where things begin and end. At the very top, all has been created, and yet never were, because they always were... when there's no concept of time, all happens at once, and yet has progression... like a fractal ever-growing.

Ah, I'm rambling... but after... reaching the spiritual ceiling of... *something* earlier, the words just come. So, take with a grain of salt, heh.

Also possible that the One and Many are not exactly distinct but also not equivalent. We could have always been here alongside God, because we are God in some sense but also not-God...

The Many are distinct from each other, because at the perspective of the Many, they are of different forms and kinds. But they also are One, in the sense that Oneness is the both their origin and yet innate and full existence, the infinite potential having taken on limitation so as to differentiate.

Taiji has no meaningful existence without Yin, Earth, upon which Yang, Heaven, simultaneously comes into being, Yin and Yang thus springing from the same root, creating each other, yet having always existed.

My intuition is slipping, but at least I can transcribe what I am... receiving at this moment. The understanding and comprehension also rapidly slips away. It is what it is...