Dualism or idealist monism as the best model for survival after death data

I'm not familiar enough with this: how does Taoism involve dualistic (or dualistic-like) concepts in your view?

Through the twin concepts of Yin and Yang, each representing Earth and Heaven respectively. As seen in the symbol of the Taijitu, they represent a unified duality that give rise to each other, each bearing the seed of the other. They represent the extremes, the opposites, the complementaries of reality, as well as the concepts of balance and harmony, when perceived together.

Maybe the position you're searching for is "dialectical monism" (the Wiki article references the Tao Te Ching).

Seems like an excellent fit.

I've not personally found a better metaphysical explanation than this that can explain, well, seemingly everything in such a neat manner.

It allows for apparent mind-body dualism, and yet, there's no Hard Problem or mind-body interaction problem in sight, because allows for idealist monism too!

And given how Taoism also has a concept of the whole being within the parts ~ all things have a harmony and balance of Yin and Yang within them ~ it also allows for the concept of a microcosm within a macrocosm, where the ego-self is but a miniature, temporary version of a vast, eternal soul-self, which itself may be a microcosm within another macrocosm...

[Ninshub]

This person, James Quirk, has two articles about "dialectical monism" on his blog, which maybe spells it out more.

Here's the first one.

All of the essential elements are present in the Taoist conception of yin and yang and the idea of Taiji. In addition, some forms of Buddhism, including the Mahayana and Zen traditions, appear to incorporate elements of dialectical monism, as indicated by our earlier excerpt from the Heart Sutra and by considerably more evidence available to the inquisitive researcher.

Through the twin concepts of Yin and Yang, each representing Earth and Heaven respectively. As seen in the symbol of the Taijitu, they represent a unified duality that give rise to each other, each bearing the seed of the other. They represent the extremes, the opposites, the complementaries of reality, as well as the concepts of balance and harmony, when perceived together.




Seems like an excellent fit.

I've not personally found a better metaphysical explanation than this that can explain, well, seemingly everything in such a neat manner.

It allows for apparent mind-body dualism, and yet, there's no Hard Problem or mind-body interaction problem in sight, because allows for idealist monism too!

And given how Taoism also has a concept of the whole being within the parts ~ all things have a harmony and balance of Yin and Yang within them ~ it also allows for the concept of a microcosm within a macrocosm, where the ego-self is but a miniature, temporary version of a vast, eternal soul-self, which itself may be a microcosm within another macrocosm...

Very interesting, but I think it may not be really necessary. Descartian Interactional Dualism still has some life in it, and even may well be simpler or less complicated than this formulation, in my estimation. The need for a causal interaction of two existentially different substances is supposed to be a definitive refutation. However, Wiki of all things mentions several plausible refutations of this argument. The best ones:

"...it has been suggested that given many disciplines deal with things they do not entirely understand, dualists not entirely understanding the mechanism of mind-body interaction need not be seen as definitive refutation. And the idea that causation necessarily depends on push-pull mechanisms (which would not be possible for a substance that did not occupy space) is also arguably based on obsolete conceptions of physics."

The mechanism of interaction need not in fact ever be understandable by human physicists. Any more than a way of reconciling QM and General Relativity. The latter so far intractable problem doesn't prevent physicists from actively using both theories in their work.

Spiritual traditional versions of this would include the observation that if God and a spiritual heirarchy exist that set up our reality, the existence of souls and of free will and of separate physical and spiritual realms may have been a founding set of requirements, to be filled by fiat by the will of God and/or higher spiritual beings. Brute facts of reality that would include the laws of physics with all of their obvious fine tuning, and an interactional dualist nature of reality.

The Hard Problem of course isn't a problem at all for Interactional Dualism, just for Physicalism.

[Laird]

Bernardo's response in the google group that Laird shared points to an article by Shani that's behind a paywall. However Googling decomposition and combination problems I found this one that's available to read by Nagasawa and Wager, "Panpsychism and priority cosmopsychism" (also 2015).

I'm not sharp enough to completely understand it and see if the model of "priority cosmopsychism" that's presented answers Titus', and Laird's (possibly more difficult), objections, but from my naive reading it seems like it's treading similar waters.

I see Gregory Miller has very recently "answered" the Nagasawa & Wager paper however: The Decombination Problem for Cosmopsychism is not the Heterogeneity Problem for Priority Monism.

Meanwhile Petersen in Idealistic Studies (2021) proposed something else: triadism!. Non-Constitutive Cosmopsychism: Countering the Decombination Problem.

Just a little note, Ian, to say that I hope to read these papers at some point and offer my thoughts, but it may not be for some time as I am deep in MyBB coding to try to get the 1.9 release happening.

Also: @nbtruthman, I also still hope at some point to start that thread on theodicy, especially to respond to the one you offered.

Very interesting, but I think it may not be really necessary. Descartian Interactional Dualism still has some life in it, and even may well be simpler or less complicated than this formulation, in my estimation. The need for a causal interaction of two existentially different substances is supposed to be a definitive refutation. However, Wiki of all things mentions several plausible refutations of this argument. The best ones:

"...it has been suggested that given many disciplines deal with things they do not entirely understand, dualists not entirely understanding the mechanism of mind-body interaction need not be seen as definitive refutation. And the idea that causation necessarily depends on push-pull mechanisms (which would not be possible for a substance that did not occupy space) is also arguably based on obsolete conceptions of physics."

Simpler...? Less complicated...? How is it simpler or less complicated than a stance that fully fills in the blanks? It feels, honestly, less complete.

It feels like a very strange defense to say "scientific disciplines deal with things they don't understand, therefore dualists don't need to think of an explanation", especially when there are stances which **provide** explanations!

An incomplete explanation is left most wanting... in filling in the blanks, even if they're incorrect.

Spiritual traditional versions of this would include the observation that if God and a spiritual heirarchy exist that set up our reality, the existence of souls and of free will and of separate physical and spiritual realms may have been a founding set of requirements, to be filled by fiat by the will of God and/or higher spiritual beings. Brute facts of reality that would include the laws of physics with all of their obvious fine tuning, and an interactional dualist nature of reality.

Why would an all-powerful God with a spiritual hierarchy even need to create different base substances...? It seems needless complicated...

And amusingly enough, this setup just reintroduces a form of Monism / Non-Duality into the picture! The base substance being God. We're right back to Monism / Non-Duality... because it implies that mind and matter are not their own base substances, but are based on God, as God, a singular entity, was the Creator.

The Hard Problem of course isn't a problem at all for Interactional Dualism, just for Physicalism.

The Hard Problem isn't a problem for Physicalists precisely because they pretend it's not an issue for them... even though the existence of mind and qualia clearly blows massive holes in Physicalism's claims.

Pure Dualists just have a different problem... of how mind and matter can interact at all.

Idealism has no such issue, because matter can be reduced to mind, as it were.

Dialectical / Dualistic Monism fills in the holes that Idealism is criticised of having, by acknowledging the statements of Dualism, and filling in the blanks by positing Idealism.

Which is why Taoism is such a neat philosophy, because it lends itself perfectly to having its concepts being transformed into a metaphysical philosophy. It satisfies both my Dualist observations and Idealist beliefs about reality.

[Ninshub]

Just a little note, Ian, to say that I hope to read these papers at some point and offer my thoughts, but it may not be for some time as I am deep in MyBB coding to try to get the 1.9 release happening.

I was hoping that was the case, Laird, so I'll be looking forward to that! But take your time.

[Ninshub]

That's not to diminish the quality of the idea itself, of course.

No, nor does it take away from the fact that it expresses or articulates what's already present in those various religious philosophical traditions (Taoism, Kashmir Shaivism*, Nagarjuna's take on Mahayana, etc.).

(*Kashmir Shaivism is very interesting and something I want to explore further. A lot of non-dual spiritual teachers or practitioners, including Rupert Spiva and his Direct Approach, and his predecessors Francis Lucille and Jean Klein, combine(d) both Advaita Vedanta, which is more purely monist, and Kashmir Shaivism.

[Ninshub]

No, nor does it take away from the fact that it expresses or articulates what's already present in those various religious philosophical traditions (Taoism, Kashmir Shaivism*, Nagarjuna's take on Mahayana, etc.).

I think another tradition that might fit the label "dialectical (or dualistic) monism" is Bhedabheda Vedanta.

I see that a few years back Sci posted a thread about Steve Taylor's recent proposal for "panspiritism". Taylor distinguishes it explicitly from both Goff's cosmopsychism and Kastrup's analytic idealism.

The paper is here.

AN INTRODUCTION TO PANSPIRITISM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MATERIALISM AND PANPSYCHISM, 2020, published in Zygon.

It also claims to deal with the "combination problem" differently, so it might be another one to add on to Laird's pile of reading material (!), and I'm wondering if this approach might not be better fitted to Laird's own views as I can perhaps intuit partially from that Google group.

We have seen that one of the most problematic issues with panpsychism is the combination problem of how particles of matter combine to produce larger conscious entities. However, there is one form of panpsychism, which is not affected by the combination problem. This is cosmopsychism, which is the form of panpsychism most similar to panspiritism. Cosmopsychism suggests that the universe as a whole is a conscious entity. Indeed, it should be conceived as “the one and only fundamental entity” (Goff 2017, 118), which is inhabited by microcosmic conscious entities. Although this viewpoint avoids the combination problem (since larger conscious units do not arise from combinations of smaller conscious entities), it involves an equivalent decombination problem of how the larger conscious entity of the universe gives rise to smaller conscious beings, such as human beings. Goff (2017) suggests that we should think in terms of “a conscious universe which contains other conscious subjects as partial aspects” (110) but this offers no account of how the consciousness of smaller objects relates to—or is derived from—the consciousness of the whole universe.

In a sense, the decombination problem could apply to panspiritism too, but is easily dealt with. As we have seen, the consciousness of macrosubjects is seen as an influx of fundamental consciousness. As I have suggested, one of the functions of cells is to receive and transmit fundamental consciousness, so that it becomes canalized into individual forms. So there is a very direct relationship between fundamental consciousness and the consciousness of individual subjects. At the same time, this still leaves the “transmission problem” of exactly how consciousness enters into individual subjects, via organized clusters of cells.

Anyway, Taylor mentions the closest Indian philosophical tradition to his model as being Bhedabheda Vedanta.

I'd never heard of this tradition, it's not mentioned in a Hinduism textbook I read that mentions and explains the more well-known, principal Vedanta philosophies: nondual Vedanta (Advaita), qualified nondual Vedanta, and dualistic Vedanta. This one interestingly means "difference and non-difference vedanta".

From Wiki:

The characteristic position of all the different Bhedābheda Vedānta schools is that the individual self (jīvātman) is both different and not different from the ultimate reality known as Brahman. Each thinker within the Bhedābheda Vedānta tradition has their own particular understanding of the precise meanings of the philosophical terms "difference" and "non-difference". Bhedābheda Vedāntic ideas can be traced to some of the very oldest Vedāntic texts, including quite possibly Bādarāyaṇa's Brahma Sūtra (c. 4th century CE).

Bhedābheda is distinguished from the positions of two other major schools of Vedānta. The Advaita (Non-dual) Vedānta that claims that the individual self is completely identical to Brahman, and the Dvaita (Dualist) Vedānta (13th century) that teaches complete difference between the individual self and Brahman.

Steve elaborates here a bit on both Kashmir Shaivism and Bhedabheda Vedanta being both forms of "realistic idealisms" as opposed to Advaita Vedanta (and Kastrup's idealism I suppose) being "anti-realistic".

An Indian philosophical tradition, which takes a realist idealist approach is Kashmiri Shaivism. As with Advaita Vedanta, all things are seen as a manifestation of a fundamental spiritual principle (usually referred to as Śiva rather than brahman) but the difference is that all things are seen as wholly real, having their being in the absolute consciousness of Śiva. All material things come into existence because of the dynamic nature of absolute consciousness, which projects a subtle vibrational energy (known as spanda). This energy crystallizes into seemingly solid material things, so that all things literally consist of absolute consciousness. (This notion of crystallization is similar to Schopenhauer's concept of matter as “objectified will” [Schopenhauer 1851/1969] and also to the cosmogenic aspect of Peirce's [1891/1992] philosophy, as will be noted shortly.) The phenomenal world is therefore not an illusion—matter is as real as spirit itself, because essentially matter s spirit. In this way, Kashmiri Shaivism affirms the reality of the phenomenal world and the human body (Wallis 2013). In other words, Kashmiri Shaivism moves close to panspiritism, although there is a difference in that in the former, material things have an equal ontological status to fundamental consciousness, whereas panspiritism suggests that the material world is not just of the same nature as fundamental consciousness.

The Indian philosophical tradition that allies most closely with panspiritism is Bhedabheda Vedanta. This approach can be seen as an attempt to integrate the monist and dualist traditions of Indian philosophy. The term Bhedabheda literally means “difference and non-difference,” suggesting that material forms are both identical and distinct to brahman. Like Kashmiri Shaivism, Bhedabheda Vedanta describes the phenomenal world as a real manifestation (or parinama) of a fundamental spiritual principle (brahman). But Bhedabheda goes further than Kashmiri Shaivism, by suggesting that material forms are not identical with absolute consciousness, but have their own distinct identity (while at the same time existing in brahman). In Bhedabheda Vedanta, various metaphors are used to illustrate the relationship between fundamental consciousness and material forms, including a wave and the ocean, a fire and the sparks that arise from it, the sun and its rays, and a father and his son. Individual subjects and material forms are of the same nature as brahman, but have their own distinct form and identity. This is an identical perspective to my form of panspiritism, which sees material things are distinct from fundamental consciousness, at the same time as being pervaded with it and grounded in it.

(Note that there are some panspiritist trends within the western philosophical tradition too—for example, the Stoics, Plotinus, the Italian sixteenth-century philosophers Bruno and Patrizi, and later figures such as Spinoza and Johann Gottfried Herder. Unfortunately I do not have space to discuss this here. See Taylor [2018] for a fuller discussion.)

[Ninshub]

This video presentation by Steve (posted in the original thread by Sci) isn't the greatest, I think the paper is clearer and a little bit more detailed, but the end features a short discussion between Bernardo and Steve at 35:20.




I haven't listed to this next one yet, but it's possible there's potential for more discussion between these contrasting perspectives: