Dualism Vs Physicalism Essay

In the sixth meditation, Descartes postulates that there exists a fundamental difference in the natures of both mind and body which necessitates that they be considered as separate and distinct entities, rather than one stemming from the other or vice versa. This essay will endeavour to provide a critical objection to Descartes’ conception of the nature of mind and body and will then further commit to elucidating a suitably Cartesian-esque response to the same objection. (Descartes,1641)

Among materialists, there is till considerable disagreement about the status of mental properties, which are conceived as properties of bodies or brains. Materialists who are ‘Property dualists believe that mental properties are an additional kind of property or attribute, not reducible to physical properties.’

Racism is a powerful enemy that has run rampant in the world for hundreds of years. When the Europeans first came to the Americas, they took over the land and enslaved its native people. Europeans did exactly the same thing to African Americans. The Color of Water, a novel by James McBride, deals with a lot of conflict involving racism. At one part in the novel the author states that race is “ignorable”. The author is portraying the fact that the race of a person should not matter. There are many examples from the text where the main characters experience racism and push through the struggle.

“As usual, she was broke, dumping single dollar bills, change, pennies on the counter to pay for the one-way ticket to Ohio. As I stepped on the bus she squeezed a bunch of bills and change into my hand. ‘That’s all I have,’ she said. I counted it. Fourteen dollars” (McBride 189).

In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

The excerpt from the novel by James Elkins, “How to Look at Nothing,” describes what occurs to our vision when we are faced with nothing. The excerpt accurately describes a variety of phenomenons that happen to anyone when placed in the correct circumstances. It also reveals a lot about what how our vision can be askew. Our ability to judge and act on what we see is sometimes distorted by our own vision.

Gertler’s argument defends naturalistic dualism. Naturalistic dualism is the idea that the mental state is existentially separate from the physical state. Dualism’s opposing ideology is physicalism. Physicalism is the idea that the mental and physical state are one in the same. Through this she rejects the identity theory which claims that mental states are ultimately identical to states of the brain and/or central nervous system. So, if the identity thesis is true then every type of mental state is identical to some type of physical state. And so if the identity theory is in fact true: A equals B and then it is impossible to be an A without also being a B. Gertler disagrees with the identity theory and she comes to the conclusion in her argument

In this essay I will introduce the Knowledge Argument. I will also state and explain Premise 1 and Premise 2, and why the respective premise is plausible. Next, I will state and explain the Conclusion and why it is implied by the premises. I will then identify and explain what the strongest objection to the Knowledge Argument is as well as justify the objection. I will evaluate the argument, stating that the objection fails to scrutinize Premise 2 of the Knowledge Argument, and explain my overall evaluation of the Knowledge Argument. Finally, I will discuss how the discussion of the Knowledge Argument settles the Physicalism debate.

To many people the word “Love” does not seems to be something physical that a person can touch or see, but more like an abstract noun. Love is not something that they can touch or to other it's how they are affected mentally. The author of  Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Barbara Fredrickson gives us another way to view the word love and how it affects us as human beings. Instead of looking at love as a noun but start to look at it as a verb, due to love constantly changing. Fredrickson understanding of love takes a different approach than other by looking at the biochemical aspect of our body band and how it is “designed to love”. Her belief is to look at it from the body’s definition of

The world was in black and white, that much he knew. As a matter of fact, that was what everyone knew. There was never a single speck of color in the beginning, much to his dismay.

Being that the mind is physical, there must be some aspects of consciousness that can be reduced. The reducible qualities of consciousness include the functional aspects of the brain—behavior, information processing, reaction to stimuli, etc. On the other hand, there is the subjective experience that arises from these physical processes. Can the subjective part of consciousness be explained by physical processes? I do not think that is possible.

Physicalism is a branch of philosophy which states that everything in this world is physical. There is nothing like non-physical. Physical facts are the truth in this world. Physicalism is also called ‘materialistic monism’. Monism is a singular existence theory like only one substance exists in the world. Physicalism says all objects in nature satisfy conditions for being physical but there is a divide among philosophers on the conditions themselves. There are questions raised as to what exactly are the conditions for something to be physical. Physicalists say that if something is not visibly physical at the first glance it supervenes on something that is physical. The use of ‘physical’ in physicalism is different from it’s use in general sense. Any property which is a metaphysical or logical combination of the general physical properties is a physical property. Any property supervenes some or the

Defining the Tao can be complex because it is a multipart concept, so an easier definition of the Tao would be claiming it is the “way”, or the “path” of life. There are many virtues of the Tao, and they include humility, non-intention, and non-contention. Ultimately, living a life of Tao is considered to be a peaceful and simplistic life.

Both theories are similar in the sense that they are of the monists (physicalism) view but they do vary in many other ways that I will point out in the duration of my essay.

The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses if we see the previous literature. In common sense, the notion is