Natural-Born Dualists -- Edge.org
For the last few years I have been interested in common sense dualism, which is the notion that people have two ways of looking at the world. We see the world in terms of material bodies, including our own bodies, and in terms of immaterial souls. And we are dualists; we see bodies and souls as distinct.
Our dualistic conception isn't an airy intellectual thing; it is common sense, and rooted in a phenomenological experience. We do not feel that we are material things, physical bodies. The notion that we are machines made of meat, as Marvin Minsky once put it, is unintuitive and unnatural. Instead, we feel as if we occupy our bodies. We possess them. We own them. Because of this, we talk about my brain, or my body, using the same language of possession that we use when we talk about my car, or my child. These are things that we possess, that we are intimately related to--but not what we are.
For the last few years I have been interested in common sense dualism, which is the notion that people have two ways of looking at the world. We see the world in terms of material bodies, including our own bodies, and in terms of immaterial souls. And we are dualists; we see bodies and souls as distinct.
Our dualistic conception isn't an airy intellectual thing; it is common sense, and rooted in a phenomenological experience. We do not feel that we are material things, physical bodies. The notion that we are machines made of meat, as Marvin Minsky once put it, is unintuitive and unnatural. Instead, we feel as if we occupy our bodies. We possess them. We own them. Because of this, we talk about my brain, or my body, using the same language of possession that we use when we talk about my car, or my child. These are things that we possess, that we are intimately related to--but not what we are.
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