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Cartesian Dualism

Sam Goto

What is the relationship between the mind and the body?

We mostly agree that:

  • We all have a mind and a body.
  • They interact with one another.
  • Your mind is private to yourself.

Here are some positions that we have taken:

  1. Dualism: minds and matter are fundamentally different things. main criticism is the observation that if they are fundamentally different things how can they interact with one another?
  2. Monism: minds and matter are not fundamentally different things.
    1. Idealism: Mind only, no body.
    2. Materialism: Mater only, no mind.
      1. reductionist: everything reduces to physics
      2. eliminative: no such thing as the mind

All of these have challenges, empirical and/or theoretical. More recently, a line of thinking called behaviorism / functionism has shed more light into this question.