It’s literally like this:

Materialists/Physicalists: “The thoughts in your head come from your conditions and are ultimately the result of your organs and nervous system. Your consciousness is linked to your brain activity and other parts of your body interacting with the physical real world.”

Dualists: “Ok but what if there were an imaginary zombie that has the same organs and molecular structure as a living person but somehow isn’t alive on some metaphysical level. If this zombie is conceivable, that means it must be metaphysically true somehow.”

Materialists: “That’s circular and imaginary, isn’t it?”

Other dualists: “Ok but what if I were in a swamp and lightning strikes a tree and magically creates a copy of me but it’s not actually me because it doesn’t have my soul.”

Am I reading this stuff wrong or are these actually the best arguments for mind-body dualism

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    Love is just chemicals the same way a child is just carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and hydrogen. The “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and it’s pointlessly reductive.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’ve sometimes used a puppy as a metaphor: “yes a puppy is a bunch of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, and hydrogen, and is worth less than a dollar of those chemicals in their most elemental forms. Or it’s a puppy.”

      It gets the point across to all but the most :reddit-logo: brained smuglords who will continue to focus on the former as a sort of emotional stake in being as supposedly unemotional as possible, anyway. :very-intelligent: