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

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.


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.

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...

Yeah I can see all of this as live possibilities...save for the idea that Time is illusory. To me this is a claim made due to interpertations of physics and/or momentary "timeless" experiences...which of course occurred at a particular moment in time.

These seem like erroneous interpretations of either the maths or one's own experience. Admittedly it can seem unfair for someone who hasn't had the experience to critique it, but I think the vast amount of experience that occurs within a sense of Time weighs against these claims?

Yeah I can see all of this as live possibilities...save for the idea that Time is illusory. To me this is a claim made due to interpertations of physics and/or momentary "timeless" experiences...which of course occurred at a particular moment in time.

These seem like erroneous interpretations of either the maths or one's own experience. Admittedly it can seem unfair for someone who hasn't had the experience to critique it, but I think the vast amount of experience that occurs within a sense of Time weighs against these claims?

It occurs in time for the incarnate self, who must necessarily experience as part of a flow of time, so we have no other basis. Even the mystic who experiences the godhead, the meditator who experiences timelessness, the psychedelic user who experiences a seeming eternity in a minute... their body and mind must still experience a flow of time, even if their transcendent state does not.

During Rick Strassman's set of experiments involving DMT, one man experienced 1,000 years in that 15 minute timespan. It shows just how subjective the flow of time is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Dz8UzFNwQ

The takeaway? That time is subjective in flow and experience ~ never illusory.

We all have a flow of time, whether linear or non-linear, slow or fast, or whatever else it can be ~ but that does not make it illusory. Just subjective. Mental. Spiritual?

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 feel that you fundamentally misunderstand both Idealism and Neutral Monism.

For Objective Idealism, God is the ultimate substance. For Neutral Monism, I consider Spirit to be the neutral, ultimate substance. God and Spirit are not "things" ~ they are infinities that exist prior to form, which is inherent limitation. An infinity is as it seems ~ it is infinite potential, with all possibilities, known and unknown, undetermined. Form imposes limits on infinity, granting it qualities, perhaps quantities, granting it existence.

For Objective Idealism, God is the Universal Mind, albeit composed of pure infinities, thus having none of the qualities of any mind we can conceive of. Thus "mind" is just a label, albeit perhaps with connotations that invite confusion. For Neutral Monism, there is no issue, despite having many similarities with Objective Idealism ~ the ultimate substance is not "Mind". It is something beyond the usual definitions. Spirit can compose all things ~ it is infinite, without definition, thus to define it is to limit it, to grant it quality, form, purpose.

If this physical reality is simply a manifestation within the Mind of God, of Spirit, then it simply a form of existence. The higher spiritual realities are also a form of existence, albeit just much less dense and of a different character. Mind, as a form, a limitation, has no issue interacting with matter, another sort of form, limitation.

How does incarnate mind interact with matter? Through resonance, through attraction, through emotion, perhaps. The mind, the aura, the slice of soul that it is, organizes the material elements in such a way that resonates with that form. Perhaps the inspiration here is Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance...

Consider also that how we know of the physical world is purely through the mental senses. So we never bear witness to the true underlying, perhaps quantum nature of the physical, which itself must have an origin in Spirit.

Consider how matter exists as being form, limitation. with particular qualities that define it. Infinity defined by boundaries. Like mind is.

The problem of interaction is thus purely a lack of understanding between what the actual nature of the different substances are.

To put it in Daoist terms... Yang, Heaven, limitlessness, only comes into being when Yin, Earth, limitation, is defined. Thus, two distinct substances arise from the same origin, Taiji, which are also the other's origin ~ Heaven comes from Earth, and Earth from Heaven, because before Earth existed, Heaven was simply Taiji, infinity without distinction, thus without defined existence.

I feel that you fundamentally misunderstand both Idealism and Neutral Monism.

For Objective Idealism, God is the ultimate substance. For Neutral Monism, I consider Spirit to be the neutral, ultimate substance. God and Spirit are not "things" ~ they are infinities that exist prior to form, which is inherent limitation. An infinity is as it seems ~ it is infinite potential, with all possibilities, known and unknown, undetermined. Form imposes limits on infinity, granting it qualities, perhaps quantities, granting it existence.

For Objective Idealism, God is the Universal Mind, albeit composed of pure infinities, thus having none of the qualities of any mind we can conceive of. Thus "mind" is just a label, albeit perhaps with connotations that invite confusion. For Neutral Monism, there is no issue, despite having many similarities with Objective Idealism ~ the ultimate substance is not "Mind". It is something beyond the usual definitions. Spirit can compose all things ~ it is infinite, without definition, thus to define it is to limit it, to grant it quality, form, purpose.

If this physical reality is simply a manifestation within the Mind of God, of Spirit, then it simply a form of existence. The higher spiritual realities are also a form of existence, albeit just much less dense and of a different character. Mind, as a form, a limitation, has no issue interacting with matter, another sort of form, limitation.

How does incarnate mind interact with matter? Through resonance, through attraction, through emotion, perhaps. The mind, the aura, the slice of soul that it is, organizes the material elements in such a way that resonates with that form. Perhaps the inspiration here is Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance...

Consider also that how we know of the physical world is purely through the mental senses. So we never bear witness to the true underlying, perhaps quantum nature of the physical, which itself must have an origin in Spirit.

Consider how matter exists as being form, limitation. with particular qualities that define it. Infinity defined by boundaries. Like mind is.

The problem of interaction is thus purely a lack of understanding between what the actual nature of the different substances are.

To put it in Daoist terms... Yang, Heaven, limitlessness, only comes into being when Yin, Earth, limitation, is defined. Thus, two distinct substances arise from the same origin, Taiji, which are also the other's origin ~ Heaven comes from Earth, and Earth from Heaven, because before Earth existed, Heaven was simply Taiji, infinity without distinction, thus without defined existence.

Lets reason through this step by step starting with going back to the basic definitions of the terms Idealism and Monism.

Idealism in philosophy is a metaphysical perspective that asserts that reality is fundamentally equivalent to mind or spirit. It emphasizes the role of the ideal or spiritual in interpreting experience. Idealism is opposed to materialism, which holds that the world is made of matter and is known through material forms and processes.

Monism is a philosophical belief that all things are part of a single, unified whole, or oneness. Monists believe that all things, despite their different forms, originated from the same source.
Monism is often contrasted with dualism, which is the belief that there are two distinct kinds of things, like mind and matter. Monism is also opposed to pluralism, which is the belief that there are many things.

I still say that interactional dualism, once the interaction problem is addressed, is unbiasedly examined it becomes the most likely true theory of mind in our reality.  This is primarily due to the principle and argument of Occam's Razor, which is admittedly only a guide to the most likely explanation for a given set of facts or phenomena, but is not an absolute rule. It however has proved to be a very good guide in the formation of scientific theories.

The interaction problem is the problem of how can immaterial spirit interact with physical matter (primarily of the brain) in order to allow human embodiment and manifestation in the physical world. Leaving alone the issue of what really is matter, since in  our reality (which is the physical world) matter is very obstinately existent, and stubbornly pushes back when we give it a push - it automatically interacts with our bodies and mind in our de facto physical reality.

The solution to this interaction problem is in my opinion the existence of Designers or a Designer of our reality (the "powers that be"), an existence that is evident from the discovery of ultra-intelligent and creative design in our reality - things like the fine-tuning for life of the laws of physics, and the problem that biological evolution must mostly involve Intelligent Designers since undirected semi-random walk Darwinism is a bankrupt theorey. The existence of innumerable massively complicated biological irreducibly complex systems within systems had to have an origin  in Intelligence, the "powers that be". Above all, massive amounts of complex specified information must absolutely have an origin in intelligent creative acts. Something does not come from nothing.

This gets back to the interaction problem of interactional Dualism. I think the solution is that the the obvious interaction that exists in order to allow our embodiment is a simple brute force fiat creation by the creators of our physical reality, the way our reality has to work so as to acheive their purposes. The fact of spirit-matter interaction in the brain is obviously necessary for embodiment and experience of spirits in the physical world, and the experience of embodied spirits negotiating and solving problems and spiritually growing mainly due to the hardships of the physical world is evidently the purpose of the creation of this physical system by the "powers that be".

Then, finally, the issue becomes how do Idealism and Monism compare with interactional Dualism in terms of the number and complexity of the auxiliary complicating hypotheses necessary for these philosophy of mind theories to explain certain paranormal phenomena which on the face of it seem to take place exactly according to interactive Dualism.

Let's look at some actual case data in a little detail. A good rule is that actual evidence trumps theory every time. The following is the beginning of Pam Reynolds' NDE OBE in her own words. It is unequevocal that her direct experience was of literally separating from and leaving her physical body (which she was evidently previously "inhabiting") to then temporarily remain in the physical world, float above her body and observe it and the physicians working on it, followed sometimes by travel through some sort of tunnel into a spiritual realm, only to return. There are many other cases of veridical NDE OBEs like it, although Reynolds' is especially detailed and complete. The experiences speak for themselves of the immaterial human spirit and consciousness manifesting in the physical world via inhabiting and somehow interacting with the physical body especially the brain, and then under extraordinary circumstances usually of trauma, leaving the body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness.  Such experiences with confirmatory veridical features are a direct demonstration of the interactional Dualist theory of mind. 

From Rivas, Titus; Dirven, Anny; Smit, Rudolf. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 152). International Association for Near-Death Studies Kindle edition:

"I literally feel myself rip out of my body, and I’m standing next to the EKG unit. Next to me, on the other side, is Grace Lim, the only doctor who flagged my file. Actually, . . . I wasn’t standing. I was floating a few inches above the floor. Then, amazingly, I floated out of the OR and down the back hallways to see Adina with Tessie, the nanny, in the Labor and Delivery Room.

I was hoping that the brutality about to happen to my body was over, but I came back too soon. My listless body, with eyes open, was still on the table just waiting for them to start the operation. I could see that my spirit wasn’t planted on the ground. And I could feel it. It felt as if I was as light as a feather. My spirit was actually floating, and I knew my spirit wasn’t in my body. I felt the opposite when I looked at my body on the table. I could feel the heaviness of my body on the operating table as life was getting sucked out of me. My body was just dying."

Another prominent paranormal phenomenon indicative of interactive dualism is the well-researched and verified reincarnation evidence.

The best statement of Occam's Razor is that it is the principle of parsimony, that the simplest explanation of a given phenomenon is most likely to be correct, or in other words that the fewer complicating additional unsupported assumptions you have to add to the philosophy or theory to  make it work, the closer is the explanatory theory likely to be to the truth. And it turns out, if you make enough unsupported assumptions, you can prove basically anything. Auxiliary hypotheses is another name for unsupported assumptions. Do you deny that Monism and Idealism (as defined above) have to have a number of auxiliary hypotheses or unsuppported assumptions added to them in  order to explain the data of the above sort of paranormal cases, and that interactional Dualism has to have nearly none, except questionably the proposed likely solution that such interaction was a brute force act of creation by fiat of the Designers or Designer?

Lets reason through this step by step starting with going back to the basic definitions of the terms Idealism and Monism.

Idealism in philosophy is a metaphysical perspective that asserts that reality is fundamentally equivalent to mind or spirit. It emphasizes the role of the ideal or spiritual in interpreting experience. Idealism is opposed to materialism, which holds that the world is made of matter and is known through material forms and processes.

Monism is a philosophical belief that all things are part of a single, unified whole, or oneness. Monists believe that all things, despite their different forms, originated from the same source.
Monism is often contrasted with dualism, which is the belief that there are two distinct kinds of things, like mind and matter. Monism is also opposed to pluralism, which is the belief that there are many things.

I still say that interactional dualism, once the interaction problem is addressed, is unbiasedly examined it becomes the most likely true theory of mind in our reality.  This is primarily due to the principle and argument of Occam's Razor, which is admittedly only a guide to the most likely explanation for a given set of facts or phenomena, but is not an absolute rule. It however has proved to be a very good guide in the formation of scientific theories.

The interaction problem is the problem of how can immaterial spirit interact with physical matter (primarily of the brain) in order to allow human embodiment and manifestation in the physical world. Leaving alone the issue of what really is matter, since in  our reality (which is the physical world) matter is very obstinately existent, and stubbornly pushes back when we give it a push - it automatically interacts with our bodies and mind in our de facto physical reality.

The solution to this interaction problem is in my opinion the existence of Designers or a Designer of our reality (the "powers that be"), an existence that is evident from the discovery of ultra-intelligent and creative design in our reality - things like the fine-tuning for life of the laws of physics, and the problem that biological evolution must mostly involve Intelligent Designers since undirected semi-random walk Darwinism is a bankrupt theorey. The existence of innumerable massively complicated biological irreducibly complex systems within systems had to have an origin  in Intelligence, the "powers that be". Above all, massive amounts of complex specified information must absolutely have an origin in intelligent creative acts. Something does not come from nothing.

This gets back to the interaction problem of interactional Dualism. I think the solution is that the the obvious interaction that exists in order to allow our embodiment is a simple brute force fiat creation by the creators of our physical reality, the way our reality has to work so as to acheive their purposes. The fact of spirit-matter interaction in the brain is obviously necessary for embodiment and experience of spirits in the physical world, and the experience of embodied spirits negotiating and solving problems and spiritually growing mainly due to the hardships of the physical world is evidently the purpose of the creation of this physical system by the "powers that be".

Then, finally, the issue becomes how do Idealism and Monism compare with interactional Dualism in terms of the number and complexity of the auxiliary complicating hypotheses necessary for these philosophy of mind theories to explain certain paranormal phenomena which on the face of it seem to take place exactly according to interactive Dualism.

Let's look at some actual case data in a little detail. A good rule is that actual evidence trumps theory every time. The following is the beginning of Pam Reynolds' NDE OBE in her own words. It is unequevocal that her direct experience was of literally separating from and leaving her physical body (which she was evidently previously "inhabiting") to then temporarily remain in the physical world, float above her body and observe it and the physicians working on it, followed sometimes by travel through some sort of tunnel into a spiritual realm, only to return. There are many other cases of veridical NDE OBEs like it, although Reynolds' is especially detailed and complete. The experiences speak for themselves of the immaterial human spirit and consciousness manifesting in the physical world via inhabiting and somehow interacting with the physical body especially the brain, and then under extraordinary circumstances usually of trauma, leaving the body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness.  Such experiences with confirmatory veridical features are a direct demonstration of the interactional Dualist theory of mind. 

From Rivas, Titus; Dirven, Anny; Smit, Rudolf. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 152). International Association for Near-Death Studies Kindle edition:


Another prominent paranormal phenomenon indicative of interactive dualism is the well-researched and verified reincarnation evidence.

The best statement of Occam's Razor is that it is the principle of parsimony, that the simplest explanation of a given phenomenon is most likely to be correct, or in other words that the fewer complicating additional unsupported assumptions you have to add to the philosophy or theory to  make it work, the closer is the explanatory theory likely to be to the truth. And it turns out, if you make enough unsupported assumptions, you can prove basically anything. Auxiliary hypotheses is another name for unsupported assumptions. Do you deny that Monism and Idealism (as defined above) have to have a number of auxiliary hypotheses or unsuppported assumptions added to them in  order to explain the data of the above sort of paranormal cases, and that interactional Dualism has to have nearly none, except questionably the proposed likely solution that such interaction was a brute force act of creation by fiat of the Designers or Designer?

Just so I understand:

- A Designer, or group of Designers, makes two substances out of Nothing? Or out of Its/Their own infinite Body/Bodies?

- The two substances are both extended into at least 3 dimensions, so that we have a physical extended world and a spiritual world extended?

- Any seeming interaction between the substances is actually a Parallelism, where a collection of conditional checks are acted out to ensure alcohol clouds the mind's judgement and a runner's will pushes past exhaustion?

- Said conditional check even holds for PK, even though different people exert different mental effort to manifest any PK at all, with some focusing to move some RNG generators and others able to perform much greater feats like levitation?

- When I see an apparition or an NDEr/OOBEr are they seen through my eyes, or some spiritual sight that is also part of the Designer's set of conditional checks? So even though I *think* I sense an apparition with sensory organs the reality is actually that I am seeing it through my spiritual sight? And when Pam Reynolds saw her physical body, there is no actual sensory continuity between the light of this world and her seeing? It just seems like that because of the Designer(s) setting up of parallelism when this universe is created?

- Psychic healing of any kind, shamanic or not, is also simply a matter of Parallelism. When Rolling Thunder says he is placing sickness into some fresh stakes that look rotted upon the completion of his ritual what is really happening is the Designers' conditional checks are healing the body and rotting the steaks independently?

If the above hold then it seems to me Interactionist Dualism only works if we accept a very bizarre view of causality, one that I am unconvinced holds up to deeper scrutiny. 

And if the substances of this universe and the afterlife are distinct and created whole cloth from Nothing I would just dismiss Interactionist Dualism entirely as nonsensical. There are people who think God can create Something from Nothing but I dislike this as I don't see a logical argument for why this is at all possible.

Let's look at some actual case data in a little detail. A good rule is that actual evidence trumps theory every time. The following is the beginning of Pam Reynolds' NDE OBE in her own words. It is unequevocal that her direct experience was of literally separating from and leaving her physical body (which she was evidently previously "inhabiting") to then temporarily remain in the physical world, float above her body and observe it and the physicians working on it, followed sometimes by travel through some sort of tunnel into a spiritual realm, only to return. There are many other cases of veridical NDE OBEs like it, although Reynolds' is especially detailed and complete. The experiences speak for themselves of the immaterial human spirit and consciousness manifesting in the physical world via inhabiting and somehow interacting with the physical body especially the brain, and then under extraordinary circumstances usually of trauma, leaving the body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness.  Such experiences with confirmatory veridical features are a direct demonstration of the interactional Dualist theory of mind. 

From Rivas, Titus; Dirven, Anny; Smit, Rudolf. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 152). International Association for Near-Death Studies Kindle edition:

I think this gets to the heart of what I am saying. Science simply has to be pragmatic, otherwise it is worthless. The evidence is, as you say, emphatically in favour of Dualism, so that is the model science should settle on for the time being. Monism is a contrivance, which again might have some truth from God's perspective, but unless God has joined this forum at some point, we have to reason from where we are in time.

You only have to read books like "Irreducible Mind" to realise that while there is a mass of evidence needing explaining, many scientists talk as if there was no such evidence!

David

I think this gets to the heart of what I am saying. Science simply has to be pragmatic, otherwise it is worthless. The evidence is, as you say, emphatically in favour of Dualism, so that is the model science should settle on for the time being. Monism is a contrivance, which again might have some truth from God's perspective, but unless God has joined this forum at some point, we have to reason from where we are in time.

You only have to read books like "Irreducible Mind" to realise that while there is a mass of evidence needing explaining, many scientists talk as if there was no such evidence!

David

Edward Kelly, one of the principle authors of Irreducible Mind, is an Idealist though?

In fact when we look at the anti-materialist wave that started gaining momentum AFAIK we find Dualism to be conspicuously absent?

Platonism, Panpsychism, Idealism, and Informational Realism on the other hand seem to have gained ground. I know you can find variants of all of these having been advocated in papers as well as pop-sci journalism such as Scientific American & New Scientist. Not sure I've seen any such push for Dualism?

In contrast, it seems scientists dismiss anomalous data on the grounds that this data points to Dualism. That probably isn't a fair dismissal, but nevertheless I don't see how insistence that parapsychology associate itself with Dualism will help? If anything the opposite seems to be true, that an insistence on Dualism will only hurt the field further.

To even try and rescue Dualism one has to respond to the Interaction Problem. And skeptics certainly won't accept a Designer implemented Parallelism. Deeper examinations of Causation, where one tries to figure out how stuff of the same substance can even enter into causal relations, end up moving away from Dualism as well.

In terms of getting STEM academia to bring Parapsychology in from the cold I see Dualism as a dead end.

Edward Kelly, one of the principle authors of Irreducible Mind, is an Idealist though?

In fact when we look at the anti-materialist wave that started gaining momentum AFAIK we find Dualism to be conspicuously absent?

Platonism, Panpsychism, Idealism, and Informational Realism on the other hand seem to have gained ground. I know you can find variants of all of these having been advocated in papers as well as pop-sci journalism such as Scientific American & New Scientist. Not sure I've seen any such push for Dualism?

In contrast, it seems scientists dismiss anomalous data on the grounds that this data points to Dualism. That probably isn't a fair dismissal, but nevertheless I don't see how insistence that parapsychology associate itself with Dualism will help? If anything the opposite seems to be true, that an insistence on Dualism will only hurt the field further.

To even try and rescue Dualism one has to respond to the Interaction Problem. And skeptics certainly won't accept a Designer implemented Parallelism. Deeper examinations of Causation, where one tries to figure out how stuff of the same substance can even enter into causal relations, end up moving away from Dualism as well.

In terms of getting STEM academia to bring Parapsychology in from the cold I see Dualism as a dead end.

Imagine if Newton had come up with the 4-dimensional curved coordinate system that is used for General Relativity. It required centuries of mathematical sophistication to reach the point where such a framework could be used. People had to discover vectors, matrices, tensors, limits, curved coordinate systems, plus a lot more that I don't know because I tried and failed to master GR!

I'm not interested in scientists simply stating that they have become Panpsychists, or Idealists, or whatever - that means nothing unless they can use the philosophy to do experimental science.

Scientists will only take NDE's (say) seriously if they have a possible framework into which to place these strange events. The Dualist idea that the mind exists somewhere else than the physical brain is the simplest framework possible.

My point is that if Science is to move forward it needs the simplest explanation of its data, NOT the most likely ultimate explanation, which I agree is probably Idealism.

There is no way current science - e.g. neuroscience - can use Idealism.

I can't find any more ways to say this!

David

[Laird]

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.

This Philosophy StackExchange answer clarifies these terms nicely, I think. I recommend giving it a read.

By "monistic idealism", I mean the ontological position that all of reality is a singular mind, and that all other minds (including our personal minds) are in some sense identical with that singular mind or otherwise in some sense subsist in it.

By "pluralistic idealism", I mean the ontological position that all of reality consists - and only consists - in multiple minds, which aren't (at least aren't all) identical with one another nor (do all minds) subsist in (an)other mind(s).

On those definitions, and given the linked answer, subjective idealism is a monistic idealism. Absolute idealism probably is, although it is not entirely clear that the "Absolute Idea" which is all of reality is really a mind as we typically conceive of it. Let's call it close enough to qualify though.

Kant's transcendental idealism is not an ontological idealism in the first place, because it posits a mind-independent external reality; it just says that we don't (can't) perceive that mind-independent reality as it actually is. Hence, as an idealism, it is instead an epistemic one, and ontologically fits neither monistic idealism nor pluralistic idealism as I've defined them above. In my conceptual schema, it is ontologically a substance dualism: there are minds (the one type of substance), and then there is the "stuff" out there with(in) which those minds interact (the other type of substance, unknowable to us minds as it supposedly is).

Objective idealism, to which Valmar referred in a later post, likewise posits a mind-independent external reality, it just says that that reality is "mental" in the sense of being comprised of ideas. To me, this is as absurd as Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis - the hypothesis that reality is comprised of mathematics - because ideas and mathematics are in the intangible and abstract category of the conceptual, which cannot serve to ground real being. Aside, then, from its fitting neither monistic nor pluralistic idealism as I've defined them above - and, ontologically, probably being a strange form of substance dualism - objective idealism can simply be dismissed based on its ungroundedness (at least, it seems that way to me).

As for "Monadic Idealism", I think by that you mean the position that Gottfried Leibniz presents in his work The Monadology, which I've not read, having simply quickly read up on it in that Wikipedia article. It probably fits my definition of pluralistic idealism.

To sum up, given my definitions of ontological positions:

Monistic idealisms: subjective idealism and absolute idealism.

Pluralistic idealisms: Gottfried Leibniz's monad-based system, to which you refer as "Monadic Idealism".

Dualisms: Kant's transcendental idealism and objective idealism (the latter of which, being ungrounded, can simply be dismissed).

Non-idealistic monisms: Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis (which, again, being ungrounded, can simply be dismissed) and physicalism aka materialism (which can be dismissed as incoherent in its entailment that non-conscious stuff is sometimes also conscious stuff, and also for its failure to account for the casual efficacy of conscious experience as such, as well as for other reasons with which we're all familiar).

Given that my ontological schema seems to cope with all of the positions thrown at it so far, I'm going to stick with it.

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.

Oh, I wasn't insisting in the first place that minds themselves have spatial extension: I already affirm that they don't. Even, though, granting that minds themselves are extensionless and non-spatial, they certainly - even if only as in some sense "infinitesimal points" - have some sort of relationship with one another, and it's hard to see how that could avoid the entailment of some sort of medium via which they are related: even as (analogous to) infinitesimal points, they can't all be the same point, because that would entail monistic idealism, not pluralistic idealism, so (again, analogously) they would seem to at least need to exist on (the analogue of) at least a one-dimensional "line".

Anyhow: yes, like I said, it's probably not impossible to conceive of minds simply existing rather than existing in a dimensional space, but it's hard to do.

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

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, but it's more nuanced than that.

Firstly, it needs to be clarified that I prefer "persons" (aka "minds" aka "souls" aka "consciousnesses") to "the mental" or "the spiritual" in this context. Persons aka minds, not "the mental", are the substances: "thing"-type substances (as opposed to "stuff"-type substances) in the philosophical sense, the definition of which I referenced in my second-last post.

Persons aka minds have mental attributes, and undergo experience, which also is mental, so "the mental" refers to secondary characteristics of a substance (again, in the philosophical sense). There's some additional nuance here too though in that I think we should distinguish, ontologically, between persons aka minds and their experiences (and mental characteristics and phenomena in general): these are distinct ontological categories, and neither can be reduced to the other.

Secondly, the experience which persons aka minds undergo or volitionally undertake is clearly differentiated, so it could be said to have some sort of "inner dimensionality" - not spatial, but at least conceptual. Even when we - merely - conceive of a circle, we conceive of a closed arc as distinct from the space it encloses and the space outside it, so there is some sort of conceptual structure even in the conception of a circle. Then, of course, we can undergo multiple modalities of experiences simultaneously - perceptual, cognitive, imaginative - which again implies some sort of inner structure to experience. It's not a spatial structure, which is why I'm tentatively referring to it instead as "inner dimensionality".

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.

Honestly, I literally have no idea what distinction you are trying to make here.

There is a two-way casual interaction between the thing-substances which (who) are persons aka minds (who both undergo and undertake experience) and the stuff-substance which is matter (or "spiritual energy" or "spiritual matter" or "astral energy" or "ectoplasm" or whatever the case may be).

That's it for me.

I don't understand how you intend "interaction" and "parallelism" to bring any nuance beyond that.

The best I can make of the distinction you're trying to make is that one involves God and the other doesn't. From my perspective though, whether or not God created substances has no bearing on how those substances, given that they do exist, interact.

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?

There is no mental "stuff" in the philosophical sense of substance. There are persons aka minds ("thing"-substances not "stuff"-substances) who have (mental) experiences. Experience is not stuff, and nor are persons aka minds.

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.

I guess you could put it like that: that there are "conditional checks" on the interactions between thing-substances (persons) and stuff-substance (matter etc), just like there are "conditional checks" that determine how stuff-substances internally affect themselves. It seems like a kind of redundant phrase though. We're simply talking about causality. Causality is conditional in the first place. As for "checks", I don't really see how it's semantically useful here.

So really parallelism has to have some kind of means of interaction through some third "stuff" or some entity that interacts with both.

I don't see a need for a third substance. Thing-substances (persons) and stuff-substances (matter etc) can interact directly.

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.

Recall that the Designer is a thing-substance (person), not a stuff-substance. It has no "body" made of "stuff" in the first place.

As a creative (in the most literal sense) agent, the Designer can create (bring into existence) both new thing-substances (persons) as well as (previously non-existent) stuff-substances through and in which thing-substances (persons) can exist and interact.

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.

I think it's different for physicalism, because matter isn't typically conceived of as being creative in the same way that we know that true persons are.

Also, although I think it is highly unlikely, it is perhaps theoretically possible (as a physicalist once put to me in a social media debate) that matter could give rise to experience in the same way that moving a metal through a magnetic field gives rise to electricity. It seems to me, then, that, strictly, we can't rule out physicalism on the basis of a something from nothing problem, although we can point out that experience-from-matter is highly implausible.

Instead, we can rule it out for being fundamentally incoherent in positing that non-conscious (by definition) stuff is or can at the same time be conscious stuff, and we can rule out physically-based dualisms like epiphenomenalism on the basis of their denial that consciousness is causally efficacious when we know that it is.

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.

Then for you, perhaps, a dualism which presupposes both thing-substances (persons) along with the stuff-substances (matter, etc) in and through which they exist and interact is the only viable option.

As I've said previously, I don't see how presupposing their existence is any more plausible or conceptually advantageous than positing that both were created by a primary creative Person, but you seem to see it differently.

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?

As I've asked of you elsewhere, why would we assume in the first place that in the absence of intervention their nature would change as opposed to stay the same? It seems to me to be a strangely arbitrary assumption.

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?

None of that seems to me to be necessary nor useful to posit.

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 don't see any problem with apparitions on dualism.

Either they are manifestations of a stuff-substance (some sort of "spirit energy" as opposed to matter) or they are projections into one or more persons' experience by another person or persons.

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

Same answer as above for apparitions.

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

Again, I don't know what you mean by parallelism, but PK makes perfect sense on interactionist dualism: thing-substances (persons) directly (causally) affect stuff-substance (matter).

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.

OK, but what does it mean to "enter into" that true essence, and how can one enter into a mere relation or mathematical/logical truth (as opposed to an actual reality)?

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.

Agreed, but re Tegmark's theory I say not "probably" but definitely, and I might also definitively rule out Bottom-Up Panpsychism depending on how exactly you define that term.

Dualism to me seems highly unlikely, but I can accept its possible.

I suspect that you're simply conceiving of it in a distorted way: as being a dualism between two stuff-substances - matter (physical stuff) and mind (mental stuff) - when really it's a dualism of thing-substances (minds aka persons, albeit with mental attributes, and who undergo experiences, which (experiences) are themselves not a type of stuff) and stuff-substances (matter aka physical stuff and more transcendent stuff-substances like astral energy, spiritual energy, ectoplasm, or what-have-you).

Idealism also seems unlikely for some of the reasons you gave and some other issues.

Agreed.

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

It seems to me to ultimately at best be just an origin story for substance dualism. At worst, it's just another type of physicalism: property dualism aka epiphenomenalism. More on that in my response to Valmar below.

[Laird]

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.

That which is not a person (and thus that which is not generally conscious) doesn't meet my definition of God. I just want to flag that I'll thus be preferring the synonym you provided: Reality.

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

Their being of the same essential substance is impossible. You are conflating two different types of substance: thing-substances (persons aka minds) and stuff-substances (matter, astral energy, spiritual energy, etc).

The one cannot be the other: thing-substances (persons aka minds) are not even comprised of stuff-substances, nor are they even comprised of experience (which is not itself a stuff-substance); rather, they undergo experiences.

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

The answer is that thing-substances (persons aka minds) like God cannot be subdivided into further thing-substances (persons aka minds) - only stuff-substances can be subdivided like that - and thus if there are to be other thing-substances like God (us other persons), then God has to create them. If they are then to be able to interact, the best means of God's providing for that interaction is to create stuff-substances in and through which they can do so.

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

The question of whether or not Reality consists in both a singular personal being (God) and that being's creation (the rest of Reality) doesn't go away simply by defining that being out of existence, "parsimony" notwithstanding.