Substance Dualism

Introduction
Stemming from the work of the  ancient   greeks, t his is the version of Dualism and Plato which suggests that there are two substances that make a human being: mind and matter. Plato and his forms marked some of the first thinking into how the substance part of dualism might come about. His theory was that our bodies were the physical, corporeal part, then our souls were something different entirely, immortal and everlasting, you couldn't kill someone's soul. Once the body had perished due to natural or unnatural causes, then the soul would go to the world of the forms, where our understanding of beauty, justice and logic come from. Plato would then argue that the reason we don't all pop out of the womb with the intellectual age of an immortal being is that the strain of birth makes us forget. We are only left with an impressions of the forms, allowing us to understand the world around us.

Later on, Descartes would give the theory a name, and stuck  'Cartesian '  on the front, like a little Latin name-tag. You know, in case one of the other philosophers picked it up by accident and thought it was theirs. Coming from a different culture and religious background to the Greeks, Descartes held that the immaterial mind and the material body are two completely different types of substances' and that they interact with each other. This, he would argue very well. In fact, he made such a good case for it  that he was then  unable to make it work completely as a theory.

Important Terms
Substance: A thing capable of existing independently of anything else

Mind: a substance that possesses mental properties: e.g. believing, doubting.

Body: a substance that possesses physical properties: e.g. height, mass.

Leibniz's Law: If 'x' has a property that is not possessed by 'y', then 'x' is not 'y'.

Arguments for:

 * The Indivisibility Argument
 * The Conceivability Argument
 * Freewill
 * Privacy and privileged access: I, and only I, know my mental states.
 * Qualia: the 'what it is like' of experience

Arguments against:

 * Masked Man Fallacy
 * The problem of other minds
 * The Mind Body Problem
 * Interactionism contradicts a basic law of physics: the conservation of energy
 * The 'ghost in the machine' - Category mistake

Important Quotes
"'I am a thinking thing... It is certain I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it'"-Descartes: Meditations, 5"'There is a vast difference between the mind and the body, in that the body by its very nature is always divisible, while the mind is completely indivisible.'"-Descartes: Meditations, 6

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