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""Soul" is a completely religious concept, and science should no longer consider it." Does that mean science currently does consider it? ThunderkatzHo! 21:39, 14 July 2007 (CDT)

There are "scientists" who insist on it, mostly the wacko types. Perhaps i can reword--PalMD-Goatspeed! 21:47, 14 July 2007 (CDT)

What about non-"mind/matter" dualism? For example, the dualistic philosophies of East Asia that revolve around yin/yang? Researcher 18:44, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

What about them? Dualism usually refers to substance/non-substance. Other philosophies usually go by different names. Yin/Yang, unity of opposites, or the other Eastern concepts of complimentarism, are, I think, unrelated to this concept. 19:51, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Perhaps because of my own idiosyncratic training, I've always seen dualism to refer to any tradition which has a strong duality within it, not just the dualism of "soul/matter." For example, Zoroastrianism is usually referred to as a "dualistic" religion due to the supposed equivalent strength between the forces of good and evil, even though neither is necessarily affiliated with matter or mind. Researcher 19:58, 17 October 2007 (EDT)
I think those are two different types of dualism. The most common usage is in mind-body dualism. We need a different name.--PalMD-If it looks like a donut, eat it 20:06, 17 October 2007 (EDT)
Or perhaps a disambiguation? I'd be willing to write the other article on dualism as a classification, but I don't know how to write a disambiguation Researcher 20:48, 17 October 2007 (EDT)
Alternately, I could write a page called "dualistic" since it's more of a descriptor in the sense that I mean. Researcher 21:03, 17 October 2007 (EDT)


Advanced understanding of the concept of dualism is not the apparent split between mind and body, spirit and matter. It is the concept that our brain based ego perceives existence through opposition of meanings. The most evolved theories of spiritually proclaim that mind and body, spirit and matter are one and the same thing. In dualistic terms it would be said that universal mind creates universal matter and vice versa. There is no split between mind and matter, they are one and the same. This sounds impossible, because of our dualistic way of capturing the essence of the universe, by opposing opposites of the same thing (hot VS cold, up VS down, high VS low, spirit VS matter etc). Oddly enough and ironically, scientists that are opposed to spirituality have no problem admitting that mass can turn into energy and vice versa, therfore they are the same thing in different expressions.— Unsigned, by: / talk / contribs

There is a difference. We have evidence for the mass-to-energy thing...--ZooGuard (talk) 14:41, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Unrevert me[edit]

No one has "seen" a mind except their own. This is not at odds with dualism. -- (talk) 23:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course it is: what can't be detected can't be allowed for. Him (talk) 00:00, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Why? By that logic nobody but you has a mind. -- (talk) 00:05, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I never said that I had a mind. Him (talk) 00:10, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Well that's a way to disprove dualism. -- (talk) 00:17, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

It says No evidence for interaction "from mind to body" has been found.[edit]

Isn't us discussing this topic evidence for interaction from mind/consciousness to body? Is there a name for this argument, I'd wager some philosopher would have named it? Although I guess the article is really saying that neuroscience has found no "neuroscientific" evidence. -- (talk) 01:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll go out on a limb and assume it could be called the "ain't no naturalistic evidence for dem supernaturalistic"-argument.Sumpfkraut (talk) 17:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Meaningless sentence will be removed. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Alleged differences between mind and soul[edit]

Isn't this part a bit inconsistent? Where exactly is the actual difference between one supernaturalistic concept and another supernaturalistic concept in their scientificness?

As far as I can tell an entity that has no physical or chemical proportions -as a mind that is independent of the body would, or so it seems to me- is not part of our physical and chemical universe and the laws it is bound by, and thus out of scientific reach, and ergo unscientific.

If the mind is supposed to be subject to the laws of our universe, then I want to know in how far it could be separate from the physical and chemical entity it is supposed to be interacting with and depending upon, and what its actual physical and chemical attributes were. Sumpfkraut (talk) 17:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Software does not have physical and chemical attributes, yet somehow you used it to type this...--ZooGuard (talk) 18:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Though I agree that this article and the one on Mind are not written very well.--ZooGuard (talk) 18:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Consider a gold ring. Now separate the ring from the gold... Scarlet A.pngpostate 18:25, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
ADK, that is a brilliant analogy and I'm stealing it for future use. Tetronian you're clueless 19:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Category mistake. The mind is emergent from the brain. The software example is a good one. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, I stole it myself from some sort of religionist thing that I can't quite remember, but it's a very good one because it shows properties that emerge out of scope. The "ring" is a property of the gold in a particular combination (i.e., a ring of gold). Thus the mind should be a property of material things (neurons) in a particular combination (a working brain). It doesn't mean that there are "mind atoms" floating around, and it doesn't mean that one neuron has a mind. Etc. etc. etc. Now, the software thing is an interesting analogy but I wouldn't take it too far because we can't really read the brain in the same way as software. However, given that software is basically 1s and 0s, and in "physical" reality those are encoded onto magnetic strips or physically stamped onto a disk you could say it exists - but we need the computer to read it, otherwise a string of magnetic strips is merely arbitrary noise. The hardware running gives it meaning, and the program emerges out of a combination of the hardware reading the software. Scarlet A.pngpostate 20:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


  • Cognition works by metaphors.
  • Cognition has a major unconscious component.
  • Cognition, with its metaphors, are shaped by the body which houses the whole catastrophe.

They will say other things, of course. They describe a whole taxonomy of metaphors, categories, prototypes, image schemata, and so on. In simple terms, all of it is an empirical body of knowledge, intentionally without any structure of a priori notions to be validated. I find the empiricism and embodiment to be appealing and fascinating. Not sure if they have much to say about the soul, but they do allow for inconsistent metaphors coexisting. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 04:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)