Wednesday, June 9, 2021

The Basic Concept Of Substance Dualism

For some reason, the basic concept of substance dualism is misunderstood by people of many philosophical stances, most of which are false or fallacious, of course.  Even people whose worldviews actually contain substance dualism do not always even recognize this.  They will go so far as to exceed having low self-awareness and alignment with reason.  They will outright deny that their professed worldview makes any distinction between consciousness and matter at all!  This is a symptom of philosophical apathy and laziness to be sure, but the matter can be easily resolved with the light of rationalism no matter how pathetically some misrepresent it.  It is nowhere near as complicated as some try to make it seem.

The concept of substance dualism literally entails nothing more or less than acknowledgment of the fundamental truth that consciousness and its contents--thoughts, mental imagery, emotions, and so on--are immaterial while the body that consciousness resides in is made of matter, or physical substance that has solid components and occupies space.  Dualism can take several forms despite some of them straying somewhat further from the core concept to the point that they go unnoticed by many of those who advocate for them.  Even emergent naturalism and some forms of idealism do not conflict with this, making them different forms of substance dualism no matter what some idiotic proponents of either might believe.

This is clear from the fact that even on emergent naturalism, matter gives rise to consciousness, and even according to certain kinds of idealism, consciousness gives rise to a physical world.  Thus, these can only be types of dualism that still distinguish between mind and matter.  The difference rests in which of the two metaphysical "substances" constantly keeps the other in existence or is more foundational to epistemology or broader metaphysics.  However, proving that consciousness is logically self-evident and that matter is not or that there is evidence (just mere sensory evidence, not logical proof) that human consciousness is at least removed from the world upon biological death of the body does nothing to establish either a kind of idealism or phenomenological naturalism.

This is because even these facts do not illuminate the parts of metaphysics that cannot be proven.  After all, to believe that even the only forms of "idealism" or "naturalism" with regard to the consciousness-matter relationship that are logically possible are indeed true is to make assumptions.  Reason proves that consciousness and matter are not the same, just like it proves that itself, time, and space are not either consciousness or matter [1].  Reason proves that consciousness is immediately accessible to each mind, while sensory perceptions of the external world are not immediately certain--and largely leave us in uncertainty about the appearance of the external world whether or not it is comfortable to realize this.

Beyond points like these, the specifics of the conceptual and metaphysical relationships between consciousness and matter cannot be proven; it can only be proven that some ideas that go beyond this are logically impossible and others are possible but unprovable.  This is where so many stray from that which is both necessarily true and verifiable.  Confusion, fallacies, or impossibilities are the contrasting options.  In each other case, only an irrationalistic person would ever believe what cannot be established by logic.  It does not matter if someone refuses pure idealism, emergent naturalism, or complete skepticism about the knowable core nature of consciousness and matter and thus their provable distinctions.  Irrationality is pressnt in all three.


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