Heart Of Substance Dualism

How does the mind relate to the body? This query is known as the mind-body problem is puzzling due to the mystery behind the interactions between the mind and body. For example, I can have mental activities like my belief that today is Tuesday, but one could not open my head and find the weight or physical location of that very same belief. However, my belief that it is Tuesday can alter things in the physical world. For example, my Tuesday belief might cause me to walk to a certain building ready for class or cause me to set my alarm for a different time. These two concepts, mind and body, seem to have some sort of relationship, but the puzzling aspect is identifying what exactly that relationship entails.

There are several theories that

As Mandik describes it, “the heart of substance dualism is the idea that your mind and your brain are two distinct things, not one and the same thing” (Mandik 15). This view asserts that the brain is a physical substance with the mind being non-material. Due to this difference, a dualist would also claim that it is possible for the mind to survive independently of the body. Though there are many arguments that support the dualist interpretation of the mind-body problem, the most influential is Leibinz’s Law. This law, according to Mandik’s book, is known as “the indiscernibility of identicals” (Mandik 16). Essentially, if the substances x and y are completely identical, then substance x must have all the same properties as substance y. Leibinz's Law can be used to prove that the mind and body are two distinct substances. If the mind and brain share the all the same properties, they must be the same substance; if they do not share all the same properties, they must be different substances. There are many versions of this same argument. One example of this compares the spatial location of the body to the seemingly non-spatial location of the mind. However, the most influential utilization of Leibinz’s Law originates in the work of

The first counter example relies on the concept of two parallel streams of events; one stream contains physical and body events while the other has mental events. Thus, if I stubbed my toe, the actual stubbing occurs in one stream while the pain felt occurs on the other stream. The other counter-example states that God is in control of these events. It is believed with this counter-example that God is the cause of the relationship between mind and body. Both of these arguments raise a problem due to the fact that they cannot technically be completely disproven; no one can say for certain that parallel streams and God do not exist. However, on the same note, they can't garner much support either due to their focus on the realm of prediction and belief rather than fact and evidence. Overall, the interaction problem is the most damaging objection to Dualism due to its ability to shake the very foundation on which the theory