Dualism Against Monism

397 Words2 Pages
In this paper I will argue Cartesian dualism offers a more parsimonious explanation of reality than Darwinian monism. I base my statement on the doubt argument: I can doubt that my body exists but I cannot doubt my existence as a thinking thing and I, a thinking thing, i'm not identical with my body. I can conceive that I, a thinking thing, exist without my extended body existing. I was doing research about the doubt argument that Descartes uses and according to The Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals, If two things are identical, then they have exactly the same properties. If it is logically possible that X exist without Y, then X is not identical with Y, therefore I can say that my thinking mind and my extended body are different substances. Monism states that mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, the same (identical) ultimate substance or principle of being. Well we can argue this statement with some examples. What about electricity? Electricity is not a physical thing but, does it exist? Yes it does, even though is invisible like our spirit and soul. If you believe that mind, an invisible thing, was formed from the identical substance then why isn’t our body invisible as well? That’s the reason why I can say that mind and body are a complete different substance (non-identical) which function separately and can never interchange. Let’s talk about human awareness. Human awareness separate us from machines and rocks and other things on Earth. Robots, for instance, they can never feel pain or happiness or anything; whereas one can imagine that when humans are hurt, they feel pain, when humans teach and idea, they know it and so on. Now let me ask you this, can our lives have any value to us? Either they can or they cannot. If they cannot have overall value to us, then what’s the point of living? Either way it doesn’t change the fact
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