Re: Dualism

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:15:19 -0400

Dear Joanthan,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Colvin" <jcolvin.domain.name.hidden>
To: "'Stephen Paul King'" <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>;
<everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:14 AM
Subject: RE: Dualism and the DA


> Stephen Paul King wrote:
>> Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form
>>of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties
>>and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of
>>the duality, as examplified by the idea of "randomly emplaced souls"?
>> The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow
>>that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that
>>are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog.
>
> I don't really uderstand the question the way you've phrased it (I'm not
> sure what you mean by "mutually constrained"); I *think* you are asking
> whether I believe that it is necessary that any duality must have mutually
> exclusive properties (if not, please elaborate).

 [SPK]

    The same kind of mutual constraint that exist between a given physical
object, say a IBM z990 or a 1972 Jaguar XKE or the human Stephen Paul King,
and the possible complete descriptions of such. It is upon this distiction
betwen physical object and its representations, or equivalently, between a
complete description and its possible implementations, that the duality that
I argue for is based. This is very different from the Cartesian duality of
"substances" (res extensa and res cognitas) that are seperate and
independent and yet mysteriously linked.

>
> I think this is implied by the very concept of dualism; if the properties
> of
> the dual entities (say mind and body, or particle and wave) are NOT
> mutually
> exclusive, then there is no dualism to talk about. If the mind and the
> body
> are identical, there is no dualism.

[SPK]

    Mutual exclusivity does not make a dualism, and it should be obvious
that identity is not the negation of mutual exclusivity!

Stephen
Received on Thu Jun 16 2005 - 11:17:49 PDT