Substance dualism is the philosophical position that the mind is composed of a fundamentally different substance than is the body, and therefore the functioning of the mind cannot be explained or understood in terms of physical entities and processes. While it has roots going as least as far back as classical philosophers like Plato, it is probably most strongly associated with Rene Descartes. Today, the position is a decidedly minority one among philosophers of mind and neuroscientists. In large part, this is simply a reflection of the prevailing attitude, particularly in intellectual and academic circles, which does not take seriously claims of the immaterial and supernatural. But there are also specific problems with substance dualism that, while long recognized, remain insuperable.
Continue reading “An Attempt to Solve the Dualist Problem of Interaction.”