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Substance Dualism Essay

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When it comes to the subject of philosophy, there are a few different “branches” people think of: ethics, political or logic, for example. It is not often the case that when people hear the word philosophy that they immediately think of metaphysics; most people do not even know what metaphysics is. Metaphysics is not a type of science like physics is, but rather the study of what is beyond the physical or beyond nature. It deals with topics surrounding change, the universe and what is common to all beings. It is a difficult subject to grasp, which is the most probable reason of why there are many different theories when it comes to these topics. The beginning of the metaphysical inquiry typically begins with looking at the philosophy of the mind, which is a highly …show more content…

A substance is an entity that exists that is not a property, but that has properties. Substance dualism is the view that there are two substances that make up the mind, which are physical and immaterial: “Specifically, the dualist argues that psychological substances, states acts, processes, and the like, are nonphysical or mental things, ontologically different from non-psychological material beings. In other words, while materialists are ontological monists, believing that there is only kind of being, dualists maintain that there are two fundamentally different kinds of being, material and mental” (Madden, 2013, p. 19). It can be inferred from this quote that materialism is then the belief that there is only one substance and that substance is material. Now that there is a foundation for the theories, the psycho-physical dependence argument against substance dualism states that psychological states are dependent on the brain. The dualist states that the psychological states and the brain are two separate entities, but this objection states that they are not. The argument goes like

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