If you had to pick your side:
[b]If you had to pick sides,
would you say you are a monist or dualist?
Please make your vote and state the one word;
DUALIST or MONIST.
I just thought it would be interesting to see.
If you want to debate or talk about them in any capacity, do so elsewhere.
I would love if you’d join us at the following thread:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=156034[/b]
MONIST
Property Dualism should be a choice, since I believe consciousness is wholly dependent on a functioining brain, yet I have my doubts that it can be simply reduced to physical brain states. Brain causes mind, but I’m not convinced brain is mind, just as I am not my dad.
Of course, if brain is mind, then we have no freedom and we are not moral agents. Which may be true, but sucks.
Still, I don’t think it’s conclusive that consciousness itself is reducible to neuron firings as opposed to a product of such firings that cannot really be likened to anything else in the physical universe.
Just an Atheist trying to be mystical? Eh, maybe. But even though I’m an atheist, I think science is a little too hubristic for its own good and it is quite possible that there are natural phenomena that it will never ever be able to explain.
Monist. If I could get a rational argument from a dualist, I’d forego my agenda. Science is neither equipped nor is meant to explain all of the mysteries of the universe, physical, mental or spiritual; but it’s on the right track.
How the heck do people come up with these implications?
If you are only your physical body with its physical brain, that does not affect your “freedom” or “moral agency” at all. This need to be “more” than a physical system derives from confused metaphysical interpretations of freedom and moral agency.
My understanding is that “I am free to do X” means either that I am physically/mentally able enough to do X (positive freedom), and/or that no insurmountable obstacle will intervene if I try to do X (negative freedom). From this point of view freedom does not require being more than a physical system.
This is a false opposition. If consciousness is an emergent property of neuron firings as I claim it is – then it is both materially a product of neuron firings, and a higher-level model for the operation of the brain which cannot be reduced to neuron firings.
As an example of an emergent property, consider a glass of water. It can be described microscopically as a collection of interacting water molecules, yet it can also be described macroscopically using the laws of fluid mechanics. The macroscropic description is emergent from the microscopic one; for physics can in principle demonstrate that the microscopic description implies the macroscopic description. But the macroscopic description has relevance in its own right. No one wants to describe a glass of water molecule by molecule, so they use fluid mechanics.
Similarly consciousness is a product of neuron firings but it is also a description of mind that has relevance in its own right. No one wants to describe the brain neuron by neuron, so we talk about consciousness, a macroscopic model of the brain/mind. If consciousness is a macroscopic model of the mind, advances in understanding of the brain cannot undermine our understanding of consciousness. They can only clarify that understanding’s relationship to the physical processes of the brain.
Science will not accept a brain model that is incompatible with freedom and moral agency as we experience them, any more than it would accept a water model that is incompatible with water’s slipperiness.
aporia,
Brilliant. Go to Bane’s other thread.
Yes on both counts.
I chose dualist, but I really don’t identify with categories. I don’t feel comfortable saying “I am a dualist,” if you know what I mean.
I just feel that property dualism in philosophy of the mind is the best concept going at this point in time.
Sure, and I understand that we can fall on both sides sometimes and on different issues. If you you were at gun point and HAD to say you are one or the other, which would you say?
This is by no means an intelligent survey. And if you want to debate your side, or if you want to debate that you are BOTH (???) then start another thread that calls this one stupid! (Cause it probably is)
sigh I don’t understand how college educated people still do not know the difference between free will and free action. It boggles my mind. It’s sad, really.
Yes, but as many billions of philosophers since Descartes have established, this may be “freedom” but it is not free will.
Yes, I understand your position, but you missed the part where I said I don’t believe it is conclusively true. Your suggestion is one possibility.
Most of the ivy league scientists I know accept that we don’t have free will, whether or not it phenomenologically feels like we do. And they may very well be correct. Many are compatibilists, however, and believe free will is not necessary for moral responsiblity. Like Immanuel Kant, I am not one of those compatibilists.
With a gun to my head I’d say a monist, because whether or not consciousness is a material substance or not , or is in or outside the causal chain of nature, I still believe it’s origination is in the brain. Property dualism is closer to monism in my view, since when the brain dies, the mind will as well.
DUELIST
I consider myself a monist. But it really depends on what perspective we are viewing the situation in.
MoL has given me a fair deal to consider and I may come out realizing I’ve been a crypto-dualist this whole time.
Are we more concerned with what we start with, or what we end up with for the purpose of this poll?
You “started” Dualist, dropped the physical side of it and went with one side of Dualism (Solipsim) and then you returned to Dualism. Simply the fact that you would have said you were a Monist (when you were a Solipsist) makes me conclude that this survey is shit! But it is still fun anyway! 
Although maybe you never really became a Monist. Maybe you will never get rid of the dualistic way you view the universe.
I said “Duelist” and I meant it!
And a solipsist is a monist, perhaps the purest form of one!
LUKE! Don’t go to the Darkside!
If you had a gun to your head right now and you had to say where you are in your journey right now; what would you say?
As long as everyone posts that they are Monists I will be happy. If anyone says they are Dualists, I will be made unhappy. And since the purpose of everyone at ILP is to make me happy, you must answer Monist! This is the correct answer.
Yes. This is why I said this survey is shit, because
a SOLIPSIST and a MATERIALIST are both MONISTS. Yet they are, in a way, both sides of DUALISM. They are opposites in a way.
So, if a monist has to concede that there are two irreducible, fundamental kinds of monist, does their head explode?
Announcer - “… And the Monists are ahead by one length!.. This is so exciting!..”
AHHHHH!!!
