Dualism
Howard Robinson · 2023 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This source is used as context evidence across 5 linked claims and 5 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Reviews substance and property dualism, Cartesian arguments, and the standard physicalist replies.
How this source is used on the map
The reference for what mind-body dualism means and why most contemporary philosophers reject it.
Citation record
- Authors
- Howard Robinson
- Year
- 2023
- Publication
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Source type
- Philosophy reference
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
The brain as transducer, not source — proposed by James, Bergson, Huxley. Compatible with neural correlates but harder to falsify.
If consciousness is basic, the 'hard problem' dissolves. The cost is a major break with the standard physicalist picture.
From Berkeley to Kastrup: matter is appearance within a more fundamental mind. Coherent, ancient, contested.
Descartes' view that mind and body are two distinct substances that somehow interact. The most intuitive position; also the one neuroscience has worked hardest to discredit.
NDEs, past-life cases, terminal lucidity and mediumship cluster suggestively. Each line is contested; together they earn a hearing.
Related evidence hubs
What consciousness is, how it relates to brains, and whether it's basic to reality.
The nature of subjective experience.
Mind–brain relation, qualia, intentionality.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
Related research reports
A comparative guide to materialism, dualism, panpsychism, idealism, filter theories, and consciousness-first interpretations.
A comparative guide to the strongest survival-adjacent evidence: NDEs, terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, past-life memories, mediumship, and after-death communication.
What NDE studies support, what they do not prove, and why the phenomenon remains one of the strongest spiritual-adjacent evidence clusters.
A balanced synthesis of the strongest and weakest evidence across afterlife, consciousness, reincarnation, mystical, psi, and practice claims.
Related sources
The reference work for what 'physicalism' even means before any empirical question is asked.
Reference for claims about postmortem destinations within Christian frameworks; it clarifies the conceptual options before any evidential claim is assessed.
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.
The leading academic group publishing on cases of children claiming past-life memories and on Greyson's NDE work.
The reference for what 'reality is consciousness' / Berkeleyan / analytic idealism actually claims.
Any claim about surviving death or being reincarnated presupposes a theory of personal identity. This entry sets the terms.