Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

different ways of splitting the world in two are often now referred to as ‘double-aspect theory’ or ‘dual aspect theory’. Sometimes this is just given as two main types — substance dualism and property dualism. Substance dualism is the idea that there are two different types of substance in the universe — usually denoted consciousness and matter. Descartes’ dualism would fall under this category. (See Chapter 8.) Property dualism is the idea that there is only one kind of substance (usually matter) but this can display different properties — for instance, objects and consciousness. But I’m also using ‘dual-aspect’ as a collective term here for a number of different ideas. So we might add Bertrand Russell’s ‘neutral monism’. This might be described as — there is a single unknown substance that underlies all of reality as a substrate, but it is neither mental nor physical. We might also include David Bohm’s ‘implicate order’ (from which both matter and consciousness are ‘explicated’) and panpsychism might see consciousness as an underlying substance (the ultimate substrate) from which both mind and matter are derived. There is also ‘hyperdualism’, which asserts that consciousness does not rely on matter, brains or mind to exist, but rather exists in its own right. The mind just relays the workings of consciousness, it does not generate them.

There are further variations however, and more elaborate explanations that aren’t always consistent in terms of our splits in the world. Plato’s, Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s ideas are all dualist, as noted above, but they do not really fit into either substance or property dualism.

95