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

I don't think you realise the extent to which science is pragmatic. I mean suppose you pour an aqueous solution into a glass beaker. In a sense that gives you a shell of glass molecules with a mixture of water and solute molecules inside.

I suppose in some abstract sense you should consider all the molecules together because they are interacting. Or you could go to an even more abstract view in which you are simply dealing with a mass of electrons and nucleons interacting with each other!

All science deals in approximations - both mathematical ans conceptual.

David

Metaphysics and ontology stances on the nature of reality barely have anything to do with science, nor can science confirm nor deny any of them. Science is quite limited in capability to be able to meaningfully analyze the shared objective world within the physical senses. The paranormal is extremely to analyze with the methods of science, due to its demands of independent, repeatable data. Which is why parapsychological experiments can take forever... and why they are quite limited in how they can be meaningfully studied, as science can only say certain things ~ things of the nature that can be measured.

And as the paranormal so often defies measurement, most of the paranormal pretty much defies meaningful study, as how are you even supposed to measure the immeasurable, thus make experiments that can give any sort of... coherent data? It means we're left trying to reduce to the qualitative to the quantitative... which can strip the beauty out of the experience.

Forgive me, but the frustration I have is that you never seem to be able to explain what exactly about Idealism is more "complicated" when it comes to explaining paranormal data. How can the non-physical interact with the physical in Interactive Dualism? There isn't any intuitive predictive power, because there is no explanation of how two entirely distinct base substances can even begin to interact. That is the essential complication of Dualism in explaining the paranormal in all of its richness and dynamic nature. Dualism creates its own complications by demanding two base substances, without being able to begin to explain how matter can be its own source, and yet some mysteriously still interact with mind.

From my perspective, the paranormal is much better explained by either Objective Idealism or Neutral Monism. Objective Idealism has God as the common medium by which spiritual entities can interact with the physical world, as both spirit and physical stuff follow the same ultimate metaphysical rules. Neutral Monism has matter as just being another manifestation of the neutral base substance, thus there is no issue of interaction between matter and mind, also just another manifestation of the base substance. Same core nature, different manifestation.

So, if we're abusing Occam's Razor... parsimony easily goes to Neutral Monism for me ~ Idealism, as nice as it is, has complications with fuzzy definitions of "consciousness".

You seem to unreasonably minimize the difficulty for Idealism and Monism imposed by the Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony.

Yes, an Idealist philosophy of mind can be greatly elaborated to accomodate generating the actual experiences of the NDEr in two vivid apparently different realities of the experientially separate worlds of the physical and the mental/spiritual.

Presumably Idealism can do so, but only at the cost of it assuming numerous auxiliary hypotheses implementing additional complicated features and functions, that would enable the Idealist metaphysic to arrange a perfect (contradictory to Idealism) illusion during the NDE OBE in which the NDEr experiences a total separation from his body and brain and observation of his body and brain from a physical distance in the physical world, leading sometimes to transportation through a “tunnel” of some sort into another experientially much higher spiritual realm where a great light and presence is encountered, deceased loved ones perhaps encountered, etc. , all while experiencing a “realer than real” greatly enhanced and expanded sense of consciousness, all while the physical brain is dysfunctional. An experience perfectly conforming to interactional Dualism.

It should also be mentioned that other paranormal phenomena also seem very much to indicate interactive Dualism, the most prominent and evidential one being the reincarnation evidence. 

A general observation: a lesson from all this is that a large body of evidence always trumps theory (and philosophy).

If this is a complicated illusion created by Idealism being the correct theory of mind, it is an illusion so compelling that it totally convinces the experiencers and profoundly changes their subsequent lives.

The NDEr experiences a process of completely separating from the physical brain and body and experiencing himself now as some sort of mobile center of consciousness, and usually has a great reluctance to return to it. This experience and its vividness and “realer than real” nature is exactly what would be expected from interactional Dualism.

Again, why would an Idealist world reality so elaborately arrange such a thing as the NDE OBE experience, so contravening its true nature?

Anyway, such a complicated set of auxiliary hypotheses surely qualifies Idealism in this context to probably be invalidated as rather unlikely per the well-known Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony, which in the history of science has proved to be very useful in predicting the truth among competing theoretical explanations.

This major problem with Idealism contrasts with the one main problem of interactive Dualism, which is of course the question of how two supposedly existentially different “substances” can still intricately interact in the brain’s neural structure in order to allow embodiment by human beings. My answer is that the “powers that be” have evidently dictated that there be such an interactional mechanism as a fundamental part of the way our world reality works, by simple fiat, a special case exception from the way 99% of the world actually works, accomplished simply in order to acheive their desire to enable human life on the Earth as spirits having physical lives, with all their joys and challenges.

By the way, the so-called “Hard Problem” demonstrates that there is in true fact a fundamental existential gulf between all of the physical and consciousness, which latter consists of all its aspects such as qualia, subjective awareness, thought, intentionality, emotion, etc. The mental and spiritual are totally immaterial and have no physical properties (i.e. the perception of Red has absolutely no weight, physical energy, velocity, physical dimensions, etc.), directly implying some sort of Dualism theory of mind, and directly implying the falsity of Materialism in theory of mind, since there then would be the problem of how can the physical neuronal structure consisting of billions of material neurons and their incredibly complex interactions generate fundamentally existentially immaterial consciousness.

This general criticism seems to me to also apply to the claim that Monism may be the correct theory of mind, not interactional Dualism.

If we're saying this world is in a Functional Dualist relation with larger reality...I think this somewhat works but really only in regards to incarnating spirits that inhabit bodies.

Pretty [much] everything else about the paranormal - Spirits, Apparitions, Weird Events, PK, etc - suggests, AFAICTell, that this reality is merely a part of some larger one. Or to put it another way, there isn't a separate Spirit World so much as we exist in a continuum in which we for whatever reason are constrained by rules that are consistent enough to give us the impression of a "physical" world.

So Dualist in the sense that this reality seems like a "lower" frame of a much larger reality. One way to look at this is you can have a bunch of video games on a computer each with its own rules and ways of interacting with the game reality, but the User is beyond all such games even if they decide to "incarnate" within the game-worlds.

You seem to unreasonably minimize the difficulty for Idealism and Monism imposed by the Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony.

Yes, an Idealist philosophy of mind can be greatly elaborated to accomodate generating the actual experiences of the NDEr in two vivid apparently different realities of the experientially separate worlds of the physical and the mental/spiritual.

Presumably Idealism can do so, but only at the cost of it assuming numerous auxiliary hypotheses implementing additional complicated features and functions, that would enable the Idealist metaphysic to arrange a perfect (contradictory to Idealism) illusion during the NDE OBE in which the NDEr experiences a total separation from his body and brain and observation of his body and brain from a physical distance in the physical world, leading sometimes to transportation through a “tunnel” of some sort into another experientially much higher spiritual realm where a great light and presence is encountered, deceased loved ones perhaps encountered, etc. , all while experiencing a “realer than real” greatly enhanced and expanded sense of consciousness, all while the physical brain is dysfunctional. An experience perfectly conforming to interactional Dualism.

It should also be mentioned that other paranormal phenomena also seem very much to indicate interactive Dualism, the most prominent and evidential one being the reincarnation evidence. 

A general observation: a lesson from all this is that a large body of evidence always trumps theory (and philosophy).

If this is a complicated illusion created by Idealism being the correct theory of mind, it is an illusion so compelling that it totally convinces the experiencers and profoundly changes their subsequent lives.

The NDEr experiences a process of completely separating from the physical brain and body and experiencing himself now as some sort of mobile center of consciousness, and usually has a great reluctance to return to it. This experience and its vividness and “realer than real” nature is exactly what would be expected from interactional Dualism.

Again, why would an Idealist world reality so elaborately arrange such a thing as the NDE OBE experience, so contravening its true nature?

Anyway, such a complicated set of auxiliary hypotheses surely qualifies Idealism in this context to probably be invalidated as rather unlikely per the well-known Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony, which in the history of science has proved to be very useful in predicting the truth among competing theoretical explanations.

This major problem with Idealism contrasts with the one main problem of interactive Dualism, which is of course the question of how two supposedly existentially different “substances” can still intricately interact in the brain’s neural structure in order to allow embodiment by human beings. My answer is that the “powers that be” have evidently dictated that there be such an interactional mechanism as a fundamental part of the way our world reality works, by simple fiat, a special case exception from the way 99% of the world actually works, accomplished simply in order to acheive their desire to enable human life on the Earth as spirits having physical lives, with all their joys and challenges.

By the way, the so-called “Hard Problem” demonstrates that there is in true fact a fundamental existential gulf between all of the physical and consciousness, which latter consists of all its aspects such as qualia, subjective awareness, thought, intentionality, emotion, etc. The mental and spiritual are totally immaterial and have no physical properties (i.e. the perception of Red has absolutely no weight, physical energy, velocity, physical dimensions, etc.), directly implying some sort of Dualism theory of mind, and directly implying the falsity of Materialism in theory of mind, since there then would be the problem of how can the physical neuronal structure consisting of billions of material neurons and their incredibly complex interactions generate fundamentally existentially immaterial consciousness.

This general criticism seems to me to also apply to the claim that Monism may be the correct theory of mind, not interactional Dualism.

Again, your statements about Idealism show a general misunderstanding of what Idealism says and does not say. There is no illusion ~ everything is real because it is experienced. However, the higher realities are simply realer than real, because they are not nearly as limited as this reality is in scope.

You also fundamentally misunderstand Neutral Monism because you cannot seem to comprehend the nature of Monism in general.

If you can seriously consider a divine fiat creating mind and matter and allowing interaction... then how can you not consider the Divine being the Monist substance? That is precisely the logic of Objective Idealism, and Neutral Monism ~ the spiritual being the origin of both mind and matter; matter being a particular set of qualitative forms built into a very rigid system of rules, and mind being spirit that has limited itself so as to comprehend through physical form.

Neutral Monism is superior to Idealism precisely because it allows for an ultimate substance that is the source of all, solving the interaction problem, and happily allowing for a plurality of derivative substances that all seem, appear and act differently, but can all interact due to their shared ultimate nature.

Again, for Interactive Dualism to make any sense, you need to explain how matter can be its own origin.

I compromise by allowing for an Interactive Dualism that exists on a foundation of Neutral Monism ~ mind and matter are the major substances of this physical reality, but they cannot be base, ultimate substances, as neither can be explained to be in any capacity.

Dual-aspect Monism, perhaps.

Taoism, perhaps, where Wuji ~ Unmanifest Nothingness ~ becomes Taiji ~ Manifest, Infinite Oneness ~ which in turn becomes Yin and Yang ~ Manifest, Infinite Duality where Beingness and Form become the Ten-Thousand Things.

If we're saying this world is in a Functional Dualist relation with larger reality...I think this somewhat works but really only in regards to incarnating spirits that inhabit bodies.

Pretty [much] everything else about the paranormal - Spirits, Apparitions, Weird Events, PK, etc - suggests, AFAICTell, that this reality is merely a part of some larger one. Or to put it another way, there isn't a separate Spirit World so much as we exist in a continuum in which we for whatever reason are constrained by rules that are consistent enough to give us the impression of a "physical" world.

So Dualist in the sense that this reality seems like a "lower" frame of a much larger reality. One way to look at this is you can have a bunch of video games on a computer each with its own rules and ways of interacting with the game reality, but the User is beyond all such games even if they decide to "incarnate" within the game-worlds.

Indeed, that is how I understand it, after my more profound experiences... this is merely a subset of a much vaster reality. Outside of this physical reality, physicality ceases to have exist or meaning, and so does mind, as mind only means something during incarnation into physical form. Thus, there is no duality as we understand it.

At the level of God... God is reality itself, so it is the Monad that births Plurality of Forms. I can begin to see what fascinated Plato so.

Indeed, that is how I understand it, after my more profound experiences... this is merely a subset of a much vaster reality. Outside of this physical reality, physicality ceases to have exist or meaning, and so does mind, as mind only means something during incarnation into physical form. Thus, there is no duality as we understand it.

At the level of God... God is reality itself, so it is the Monad that births Plurality of Forms. I can begin to see what fascinated Plato so.

It is interesting that video games provide a [rather sound] analogy to reality, and underlying these games is the intellectual abstraction of Turing Machines and a variety of attendant proof-based Computer Science.

In a game dev engine like Unity you can switch between playing a physics-bound first person view within the game and a developer view where you fly around, move through walls, etc. So akin to the OOBE.

Reincarnation is then akin to either playing the Earth-game again, or switching to a new "game" with its own rules.

Mediumship could be akin to a chat that extends between games, thanks to an underlying system such as Steam's chats that can show you what games your friends are playing.

As I've said before, in Myer's writing he tried to communicate how an apparition need not be the actual body of a soul but rather a kind of incarnation [akin to an in-game "avatar"]. I genuinely think that he was simply born into a time without video games but was attempting to describe something very much like what I'm saying above.

The Idealist-esque ideas of luminary computer engineers Faggin and Mensch & computer scientist Brian Whitworth align with the above, and playing Halo was how Marcus Arvan was inspired to make the Peer to Peer hypothesis. There are also the Monist/Idealist Virtual Reality metaphysics of physicists such as Bernard Haisch and Tom Campbell, and in a more indirect way compatible with other Idealist physicists' metaphysical claims.

Even Torley's revision of Aquinas' Fifth Way to focus on the rules that determine substances can fit this idea of a Higher Frame providing a reality-as-"game". What is "physical" is Arvan's Lower Frame, the limited reality with arbitrary rules, though this Lower Frame when considered properly still displays the Design aspects of Fine Tuning along with the [unreasonable] effectiveness of maths that concerned Wigner.

The major caveat for me is while structurally the video game analogy holds up, I wouldn't want people to think the suffering of this world is merely illusory. I [suppose] it could be the case, but I would hate for people to just turn a blind eye to suffering because it's supposedly chosen in the Higher Frame or because this life is supposedly more a dream than reality. As James' aptly put it:

"If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight..."  

And as the paranormal so often defies measurement, most of the paranormal pretty much defies meaningful study, as how are you even supposed to measure the immeasurable, thus make experiments that can give any sort of... coherent data? It means we're left trying to reduce to the qualitative to the quantitative... which can strip the beauty out of the experience.

I think there are a number of paranormal experiments which are robust when averaged over a large number of cases. Think of Dean Radin's presentiment experiments, or of remote viewing experiments etc.

My problem is that those results are ready to be recorded evidence for Dualism - using Dualism as a catch all that covers exotica such as monisms etc.

I almost see these more complicated mom-physical metaphysics as a ploy to stop the normal operation of the scientific method.

What I wanted to point out with my beaker of aqueous solution, is that normal science 'knows' the right level of explanation to use. In most cases it treats such a beaker as taking no part in the chemistry of what is going on in the solution (an exception might be if the solution was one of hydrogen fluoride, which eats glass!) - it simplifies the description of the situation as far as it can.

IMHO a big problem for paranormal science is that a successful experiment is more or less defined as something that does not make sense using conventional science - that contributes massively to the opposition to its acceptance. If instead a paranormal experimental result could be defined as one that can only be explained in Dualistic terms, then we might see much faster progress.

David

I think there are a number of paranormal experiments which are robust when averaged over a large number of cases. Think of Dean Radin's presentiment experiments, or of remote viewing experiments etc.

My problem is that those results are ready to be recorded evidence for Dualism - using Dualism as a catch all that covers exotica such as monisms etc.

I almost see these more complicated mom-physical metaphysics as a ploy to stop the normal operation of the scientific method.

What I wanted to point out with my beaker of aqueous solution, is that normal science 'knows' the right level of explanation to use. In most cases it treats such a beaker as taking no part in the chemistry of what is going on in the solution (an exception might be if the solution was one of hydrogen fluoride, which eats glass!) - it simplifies the description of the situation as far as it can.

IMHO  a big problem for paranormal science is that a successful experiment is more or less defined as something that does not make sense using conventional science - that contributes massively to the opposition to its acceptance. If instead a paranormal experimental result could be defined as one that can only be explained in Dualistic terms, then we might see much faster progress.

David

I don't see much progress being made by Dualists, yet Panpsychism and even Idealism have managed to find stronger ground among scientists.

Dualism is, in fact, a pejorative used to dismiss the paranormal from what I've seen. To even get started on redeeming the idea you'd have to get people to let go of the Interaction Problem which is seen as fatal to Mind-Body Dualism, and this would require a deeper dive into the Philosophy of Causation.

All to say Dualism was abandoned for seemingly being unscientific, and I think Parapsychology is better off distancing itself from Dualism rather than trying to force scientists to somehow accept it.

I think there are a number of paranormal experiments which are robust when averaged over a large number of cases. Think of Dean Radin's presentiment experiments, or of remote viewing experiments etc.

My problem is that those results are ready to be recorded evidence for Dualism - using Dualism as a catch all that covers exotica such as monisms etc.

I don't understand your logic... how are these well-constructed experiments "recorded evidence" for Dualism anymore than Idealism or Neutral Monism...? Neither are... "exotica", not when everything we know about reality is filtered through the mind. None of these experiments explicitly provide evidence for Dualism, Idealism or Neutral Monism. The data is just data ~ it speaks for itself. The conclusion, however, is data that has been interpreted through philosophical beliefs. Different people with different metaphysical and ontological beliefs will filter that data through their own belief systems, and thus interpret it through that lens. Even the Panpsychist has an interesting take, because their stance does not necessarily preclude the paranormal.

I almost see these more complicated mom-physical metaphysics as a ploy to stop the normal operation of the scientific method.

"Normal" science has never presumed any particular metaphysical or ontological stance. There is nothing about the scientific method which makes any such presumptions. Yes, one of the axioms of science is that the physical world exists. That's all well and good. But that says absolutely nothing about the nature of the physical world. It cannot ~ because each metaphysical stance interprets the nature of the physical world differently, and none believe that it doesn't exist. It clearly exists, because there is rather physical cause and effect, again irrespective of that actual underlying nature.

What I wanted to point out with my beaker of aqueous solution, is that normal science 'knows' the right level of explanation to use. In most cases it treats such a beaker as taking no part in the chemistry of what is going on in the solution (an exception might be if the solution was one of hydrogen fluoride, which eats glass!) - it simplifies the description of the situation as far as it can.

IMHO  a big problem for paranormal science is that a successful experiment is more or less defined as something that does not make sense using conventional science - that contributes massively to the opposition to its acceptance. If instead a paranormal experimental result could be defined as one that can only be explained in Dualistic terms, then we might see much faster progress.

How? Words and over-confidence are easy ~ but an actual explanation of how Interactive Dualism gets us to places that others do not is never meaningfully presented. It's one of the pain points that bugs me ~ I wait for a satisfying explanation, only to find nothing that explains to me what cannot also be explained by Idealism or Neutral Monism, just in slightly different language and definition.

But... back on topic ~ science has no theory of mind nor can science be realistically applied to create a theory. Philosophy is not something science can measure, or provide certain results for.

So, any meaningful experiments into the paranormal, into consciousness, into the spiritual, science in its current definitions, will forever sluggishly take forever to achieve. Indeed, trying to interpret the deeply philosophical nature of the paranormal, consciousness and spiritual through a scientific lens is far too reductive for something that defies measurement, is not stable and is extremely difficult to reproduce reliably. Which is why paranormal experiments, as respectable as they are, do seem to run into that very problem ~ they're very slow, they take a lot of time, because they rely on unstable mediums, the antithesis of what science relies on to work.

Seances do not work by the use of science, either. They work by intuition and feeling, along with corroboration, if the entity in question claims to have been human or knows something that can be later confirmed. Buddhist meditation practices do not work by the use of science, either. They work by dedicated practice and disciplining of the mind and body. They understand the dynamic, unstable nature of the mind, thus work with that to most effectively overcome the hurdles.

Of course, if you so wish, seances, meditation, etc, can be loosely and crudely by defined as "sciences", but really, they're practices carefully more or less perfected into an art form. If you wish to call that "science", then sure, redefinitions are fine, as long as you don't apply it to everything because of a need for things to be a certain way, rather than as they actually are. That's how reality becomes confused and distorted. That's how we have people who believe that computers, machines, can be "intelligent", because metaphor has been confused and conflated with reality.

How? Words and over-confidence are easy ~ but an actual explanation of how Interactive Dualism gets us to places that others do not is never meaningfully presented. It's one of the pain points that bugs me ~ I wait for a satisfying explanation, only to find nothing that explains to me what cannot also be explained by Idealism or Neutral Monism, just in slightly different language and definition.

Well let's compare Dualism with Idealism. Idealism explains the whole of the physical world in terms of consciousness. However, what does that mean in practice? On the face of it a cat can turn into a dog and that could be explained as the consciousness representing the cat's body deciding it would identify as a dog!

Dualism at its simplest says that there is a mental realm and a physical realm and they only interact weakly.
It doesn't try to explain what mind is, it just separates it fairly cleanly from matter. There is also a very good candidate that explains what the interaction between mental stuff and physical stuff consists of - devised by the physicist Henry Stapp.

But... back on topic ~ science has no theory of mind nor can science be realistically applied to create a theory. Philosophy is not something science can measure, or provide certain results for.

You are correct that science doesn't have a theory of mind.

So, any meaningful experiments into the paranormal, into consciousness, into the spiritual, science in its current definitions, will forever sluggishly take forever to achieve. Indeed, trying to interpret the deeply philosophical nature of the paranormal, consciousness and spiritual through a scientific lens is far too reductive for something that defies measurement, is not stable and is extremely difficult to reproduce reliably. Which is why paranormal experiments, as respectable as they are, do seem to run into that very problem ~ they're very slow, they take a lot of time, because they rely on unstable mediums, the antithesis of what science relies on to work.

Actually that isn't fair. There is excellent evidence that selected mediums can extract information from dead people. Also Dean Radin's presentiment experiments have been replicated and repeated ad nauseam. There is a wealth of evidence that paranormal phenomena happen, but because science doesn't have a way of explaining the results they fall back on endlessly finding fault with the work.

Science could be done and is done on these phenomena - ask Rupert Sheldrake for example.

David