Essay on Substance Dualism

By   |  December 8, 2009
Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay

The irony of academic philosophy is that it demands we seek our own answers to our own wonderments and yet concurrently demands we have a firm grasp of historical philosophers and philosophical terminology. I am told to think for myself and yet I must prove my ability to do so by quoting the great thinkers that came before me and then rehashing their thoughts while adding to them my own.  In almost the same breath mankind professes, “A witty saying proves nothing” (Voltaire) and, “Nothing is so useless as a general maxim” (Thomas Babington Macaulay).

Perhaps this atmosphere in itself illuminates human nature. If the same species can come to radically different conclusions by way of questioning the “self” such as Thomas Hobbes believing mankind to be evil by nature, and John Locke believing mankind to be good by nature, than perhaps it is revealed in such a process of thinking itself (and not by any decisive conclusions) that mankind is a complex being. If philosophy demands that I come to my own conclusions of “self” in the so-called search for “autonomy”, and if “substance dualism” asserts that mind and matter are autonomous realms, than must we question the bias of philosophical thought itself? That is, if we are to leave open the possibility that mind and matter are not autonomous, and thus any thoughts that I express herein are possibly no more than chemical exchanges in my biological mind made of matter (thus leaving the naturalness of “social beings” in question), than really, the demand on the part of philosophy that I search for “self autonomy” is in itself, self-defeating.But because mankind is capable of asking itself to search for “self autonomy”, and because biology and history both reveal mankind to be social beings (which I won’t explore deeply here), we might perhaps take the observations of both Locke and Hobbes as true – that human nature is not black and white, but rather conflicting, hypocritical, chaotic, suicidal, good, evil, everything in between, and most telltale of all (I will argue), the most non-instinctive of all other animal species.

The complexity of man, therefore, must be acknowledged not as being the result of sequential development with a linear relationship to other beings (as the Darwinist believes), nor seen through the reductionist’s eye as explainable through the breakdown of the physical world, nor through the view of the existentialist who believes we create ourselves, denying the very existence of a “human nature.”

The traditionalist, or the Judeo-Christian relative of this thought, is the only position that can explain not only why the field of philosophy exists, but why the mind and body exist, and why there is such a historical debate on this topic in the first place. There has been no greater challenge to the traditionalist view in history than that of Darwinism. In fact, there really hasn’t been any other strong challenges to the Judeo-Christian viewpoint in history besides offshoots of this viewpoint itself – other religions, that support or at least encourage the notion of substance dualism, such as Islam, Buddhism (that goes so far as to argue for dualism between states of human consciousness), etc. That is, the only true competitor with substance dualism and traditional positions is the theory of biological evolution. Let’s take a look.

If mankind is the sequential result of evolutionary “variations” in species, in a rise to complexity, we should be able to find less developed or inferior versions of human elements in all other species, but most of all, in the species most similar to humans. Things such as human “reason” and other human elements that traditionalists cling to can be found in such species, according to Darwinists, which would render our uniqueness as humans null. If we are not unique in the ways of mentality, reason, thought, application, and sociality, than mind and matter must be one, and a God must not exist, at least not a Judeo-Christian God.

However, Hobbes and Darwin contradict each other.

Hobbes does not see mankind as social beings, yet Darwin sees our acknowledged sociality as coming from previously non-social ancestors. Darwin seemingly knew this was impossible, calling it the “one special difficulty… which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory.” Lions grouping together for a hunt breaks down in one single moment Darwin’s desperate claim that “No instinct has been produced for the exclusive good of other animals, but each animal takes advantage of the instincts of others. I see undeniable proof for human reason, apart from the instinct of animals, which is commonly pointed to as a less developed form of reason.”

Whereas a man might expect a rainstorm because the winter season is upon him, a vulture instinctively circles lower in the sky, a hyena instinctively sniffs the air, and earthworms instinctively crawl out of their holes in expectation of the same storm. If anything, these unexplainable animal instincts should be manifest within us to a much greater extent than other species.

But somehow, reason seems to take the place of animal instinct in humans. A sense of morality, an appreciation of music, the arts, and creativity, a special biological and mental ability to command spoken language, ideologies, the fact that all species depend on each other for existence, and the reality that the natural world would exist perfectly, and I dare say more abundantly, without mankind, are all undeniable qualities that can be expanded on in defense of the unique makeup and existence of humans as dualistic beings.

The day that I see a dog decide on his own to paint a picture, or a monkey speak Chinese, or a killer whale on trial for murder, or a communist dolphin, or a butterfly capable of making the world a worse place, than maybe I will change my mind.

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2 Comments on “Essay on Substance Dualism”  (RSS)

  1. Sup fellasa generous number of these internet sites produce virus and spywares in your machine. the all-purpose public in discussion groups are the ones who are behind the websites doing the proposals. I tried more than a few them on my PC and finished up spyware. Do not got to watch whichever of the movies, but completed with a corrupted laptop. I attempt to rescued a weirder from making a terrible go. at this time a number of I permit

  2. In typical supersessionist and displacement Christian tradition, you presume the prefix “Judeo-” to lay false claim to Judaism by means of an impossible union of “Judeo-” (pro-Torah) with “Christian” (supersessionist and displacement antinomian=anti-Torah).

    It’s reasonably clear to most that the founders of America were primarily Christians. Be content with that and stifle your greed to lay false claim to Judaism along with it. The history of the original Christian church of 135 C.E. was indisputably antinomian, and even viciously misojudaic (see Oxford historian James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue). The 10 Commandments are an indivisible whole. Rejecting any one constitutes rejecting of the whole… and the Church rejected the 10 Commandments when it superseded and displaced #4 (and shredded #1-3 as well).

    Greed to claim supersession over, and displacement of, Judaism introduces self-contradictions that undermine and negate your arguments.

    Christians’ religious greed results in fecklessness that enables the postmodernists to disassemble and destroy America.

    Contrary to many modern Christian overstatements, the founders of America guaranteed that religion be free to all in private and imposed on no one in public.

    Unfortunately, America’s freedom to practice one’s religion in private doesn’t satisfy religious greed toward dominance. In such case, religions in America need to be declawed.

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