Dualism

This is a concept that refers to the division of any given area of reality into two contrasting and, possibly, conflicting areas. Some examples include: mind and matter, spirit and flesh and heaven and earth.

In its classic formulation, in the work of Rene Descartes, mental phenomena are taken as, in some respect, non-physical. The mind for Descartes is a non-physical substance, because minds have no spatial properties and physical reality is essentially extended in space, minds are wholly non-physical. This can be contrasted to ‘body’, which is physical and does have extension in space. In this way the reality of the human person has been divided into two distinct areas.

Related Topics:

Philosophy

Contributed by: Richard P Whaite