Mind Body Dualism

The short answer is labels.

The mind has been labeled because it has been thought about. Something that is nonexistent shouldn't be called a "thing" since there is no thought involved. The mind can be seen as either imaginary or real based on what and how you think about it via your perspective/belief.

...Wow, so you differentiate between a mind, which is not percievable, untestable, and unobservable...and a nonexistent thing...because you DEFINE it as being different. I mean come on...you can't honestly think that's a good answer.

I was the deciding vote!

Fuck yeah.

Was that a trolling vote, or do you actualy accept duality? If so, why. Also, it's not really decided...the vot'es on infinite xD

Could you ever imagine yourself becoming a zombie?

Hey now, you're the one who wanted me to differentiate between the mind and nonexistence. That's the best I can do. It seems to me like you want people who state their opinions about this subject to submit to your ideals. That can hardly be called a discussion. You have to learn how to be more open minded.

I can see the possibiity of a severely mutated disease attacking my brain and causing me to becomme a 'zombie' in a wa. but for scientific reasons, I don't think I would last long as a zombie. I think I woudl end up starving, or melting, or freezing, or just being out and out shot by the military.



It's not that I want them to submit to my ideals, it's that I would like people to believe things and have a good reason to believe them, mainly because believing things for bad reasons is silly. Trust me, I'm open minded, if you can show me any evidence at all, or even a USEFULNESS in believing in the mind, I'll consider the idea, but I'm not so open minded my brains are going to fall out. All you've essentially done is define a mind into existence, and from what I can tell, your only reason for believing in this duality is...because you want to believe it. I mean...those aren't good reasons.

Your reasons are bad FB and you should feel bad.

I read your post on mind dualism again....

"How can the mind interact with the body?
If our conscious was a non physical matter then could we just disconnect and view things far greater than with our eyes?"

Those words got me in a really deep thinking state right now.
I can only say....
that one must experiment on himself to experience having a conscious roaming around without the body.

You need to see if there are any reports on such events, from what I know some people reported having a out of body experience and seeing faraway places while dreaming even though it felt so real.

Normally you wouldn't feel anything in a dream right?
Well based on my experiences I literally felt objects in my dream...
I haven't had sex in a long time yet when I was performing intercourse with my dream chick, her insides felt so real ( warm and wet HMMmmm).
And when I woke up.... the exact same spot where she touched me was SOOOooo warm even though it was a cold morning... yet my chest felt like it had been touched by a skinny frail arm right on my chest...
Sure it was only a dream but I can guess my conscious roamed somewhere else and it brought those feelings along with it...

Those are probably the deep mysteries behind the conscious...
people can only experience them while they are asleep...
doesn't that explain that we must sleep in order for our mind to roam somewhere else?

@Legendary_Dollci: I too had a really vivid dream while I was in the hospital. At first I was blind and def, then I was outside of my physical body. What I saw was what might have been a connection of universes (a multiverse so to speak). I felt someone was trying to tell me something without actually speaking words. I don't know how to describe it, but it was kinda like I could sense what was being told to me (A sixth sense perhaps?). Anyways, after that dream, the patience and doctors told me I was sleep walking all throughout the night (I never sleep walked before, I never had a dream starring myself for that matter). It felt real, so I ended up using that as a stepping stone towards making my life better than it already is.


@BigLundi: Say what you want, just know that my last statement in regard to the difference between the mind and nonexistence hasn't been counter argued. You just simply dismissed it as silly logic. The bottom line is that I want to believe in mind-body dualism, and you don't want to believe in it. Neither of us can be right or wrong because we're just fish swimming around in a tank. I already know what you're gonna say next (because I did the same thing you're doing in one of my topics on Hongfire), so I guess there's nothing more to discuss here. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna keep on swimming.

I sleeptalk AND sleepwalk alot.....
Yeah those are the mysteries of the universe.. unexplained and hard to research on......
I like experiencing those things every once in a while.....
Feeling those things in a dream and feeling them after you wake up is a HUGE step in finding out what humans are capable of... the imagination of it is really cool and fun to think about

What do you guys think about the idea behind the Akashic records?

Send a link and I can give you my opinion. :)

I think we can study and figure out all sorts of things on this earth, but the things beyond life will never be known. In that sense, there might be something inside of us that goes on after life, something like a soul. There might be nothing, but there is as much solid evidence to support the idea that we simply rot in the ground as there is to support the idea that we have souls that do something or go somewhere after death.

Honestly, that sort of thing cannot be argued, either for or against, not scientifically. There was a scientist, J.B. Rhine, that studied psychics and reincarnation and various other aspects of the paranormal, and by the end of his career, he focused on psychic phenomena, seeing that it could be tested. This pissed off some of his supporters, who wanted to know about life after death, but how do you prove or disprove anything involving the dead, when we don't know how they feel, if they indeed feel anything. At least with psychic phenomena, there might be something going on in the brain that explains why people know things they shouldn't be able to know, and not simply because a dead person told them.

(Rhine did say that the existence of psychic phenomena may prove that there is something that survives after death, but he never dared to attempt to prove it scientifically.)

You can come up with logical arguments for or against the existence of something beyond the physical mind, but they would just be ideas, without any way of proving them scientifically. And for centuries, people came up with logical arguments that were proven to be complete horseshit once a scientific experiment came along to test things.

So, if a person believes that there is a soul, there is really no way to prove that he is wrong, and of course, there is no way to prove that he is right, not using science or math or anything that measures the physical world. Because a soul and an afterlife would not be of this physical world.

I couldn't agree more.... since scientists can only study on matters that have physical substances.... to study on a non physical matter would be impossible.

@ FinalBoss You say that a mind is different from a nonexistent thing because it’s been labeled as something that exists, yet is nonphysical, untestable, and immeasurable. What if I were to label the mind as simply being synonymous with my brain? What then? Labels are arbitrary, they’re simply different combinations of vowels and consonants that we assign meaning to by fiat. I mean, while it’s true we’re simply two people living our lives in the universe, which is what your analogy says I’m fairly certain, but does that mean it doesn’t, or even SHOULDN’T matter what either of us thinks?

@Legendary_Dollci I shouldn’t have to explain to you why we †˜feel’ things in our dreams, why dreams can appear to be vivid, and even how we can have LUCID dreams. Instead, I’ll simply say this, these things have indeed been explained without any use of a nonphysical mind. As far as people seeing the room their bodies are in, this has actually been tested, believe it or not, and it fails. Here’s how it was tested: A person lays in a bed, and they’re put in an induced state where they then †˜see’ the room outside of their bodies. The difference is, the people testing them, after inducing this state, place something on the wall behind the subject’s body, and ask the subject to read it. When the subject is brought back to consciousness, they fail, consistently, every time, to read what is placed above them, out of their human sight.

@K-1 Rhine has never successfully repeated any experiment he ever claimed in any way proved psychic energy or any other such woo woo pseudopsychology. Not only that, but whenever he published a paper, he would select already known dishonest studies, sometimes outright lie, and embellish his own results for the purpose of perpetuating his bias view that psychic energy, and psychics themselves must exist.

However the fact remains, as you said, such things are not able to be viewed in a scientific setting…unless…hold on a minute…

Do you think that there is such a thing as a nonphysical thing that can AFFECT reality, outside of our own bodies? Because if so that CAN be tested, scientifically, as anything that exists in reality, and affects reality in any way can be tested scientifically. The thing is, psychics and mediums and all that woo woo nonsense has never been successfully tested and replicated in any laboratory. I have no reason, whatsoever, to believe anything other than my own brain exists, and that its limits are in affecting my human body. So…that’s what I believe. Am I wrong in that?

I didn't claim that Rhine was correct, only that he went about things in a more scientific matter and thus focused on something that could potentially be studied in a lab, versus something that could never move beyond a philosophical argument.

I do not believe that anything nonphysical could affect this physical world. If it could, it wouldn't be nonphysical, because at least a part of it would affect the physical. Unless, of course, there are gods and ghosts in some completely separate dimension that look on us and decide when to make the wind blow or something, but that's basically poppycock and isn't even worth discussing.

You are not wrong in believing that there is nothing more than your body and this physical plane of existence, but you should realize that there is also nothing wrong with other people believing that there is something more, as long as they don't try to mix their beliefs with science in a way that is false. Believing that one's dead grandmother is sending messages through coincidences in one's life is fine, but believing that the spirits of the dead are what make wounds heal faster and that medicine is unnecessary is dangerous and should be condemned.

Well...I KIND of agree with you in that people have the right to believe what they believe, and that I shouldn't let that bother me. the problem is there ARE people out there that take advantage of people who choose to believe things for which they have no good reason to believe. I mean, how many mediums claim to be able to speak to the dead and charge people money to do so? How many people claim to be able to tell a person's future via palm reading or tarot cards? these people get PAID...to bullshit the gullible. I don't like that, I don't encourage it. the thing is, those charlatans will not be convinced that they should stop, so instead I aim my conversation to the sheep...I try to convince people not to believe irrational things for THEIR good, not for mine. I'm not affected, I just empathize is all.

I answered YES
Can I define for you what non-physical thing is? No I can tell you what you already know but not what you seek.

But I'll try anyway cos I find you intriguing.
To me, I have been taught that a physical thing is something I can touch, see, feel, hear and taste are physical e.g trees, cars, water, wind, e.t.c
Although am currently debating on weather if Ican hear, see or feel something then it qualifies as being physical. For example (in my view) I know to classify light as a physical object, but because I can only see it but can't taste, feel, hear or touch in my view it will be in the category of non-physical.

My explanation of something that is non-physical would be something that an individual is aware off. An example of a non-physical thing I'd say gravity, We are aware of it, we cannot see, hear,touch or taste it but we claim to feel( which is false because we would only be "feeling" it's effects like G-forces and such.

Oh and in the matter of minds, all I have to say is this, you are aware that you have a mind but you know you have a brain.

PS: I only read the first two pages so excuse if I may have said something someone else already said. :D

A non-physical thing to you is something that someone is aware of...well you d understand that applies to physical objects right? I mean, how can a chacteristic apply to completely dichometric objects? Also, gravity is a physical substance. It's a force that exerts itself on all things in existence, and can be tested, and measured. I'm not aware I have a mind as opposed to knowing I have a brain. If I did, I would accept mind body duality.