Defending dualism requires me to do what what dualist thinkers do, and postulate the existence of a type of matter-energy (proven by extensive physical research to be interchangeable at a primal level, research widely ignored by all but SF authors and New Age gurus) that has not been revealed in any scientific studies to date, ever. While normally disinclined to shelter exclusively behind the bulwark of empirical thinking, in this case it seems the best and most honest tactic.
What is the numinous mind made of, if not of matter-energy? And if not matter-energy, then how does it interact with the body that houses it, how does it control organs, eyes, hands or anything whatsoever? When we spear the monstrous, easily visible neurons of a giant squid, thrusting the talons of scientific inquest into the very fibers of the biological mind, we find little that is different from our own bodies; aside from variations in scale and chemistry, the giant squids are wired very much like the elephants, the ostriches, the polar bears, narwhals, poodles, orangutans, chimpanzees, and humans of this planet.
Why, then, a separate type of elemental matter-energy for the mind? Plato is one major champion of this dualist position, as he taught that material existence is merely the echo of a far higher state. Our bodies, according to Platonists, are crude after-images of mystical Forms, things which also inspire music, nature, and all the ‘universal concepts’ of our manifold physical reality. This type of thinking is possible in a world without modern science, in the Near East of two millennia ago: it seems indefensible in this age of broad physical understanding, when we measure electrochemical impulses across invisibly small gaps in living brains, forge new elements by clever subatomic manipulations. All is matter-energy, the physicists teach us, and the dynamic, shimmering, self-gazing lattice of loops which we name “mind” is no exception.
Spinoza is fearless in his rejection of Platonic dualism, writing with astounding clarity from pre-Enlightenment Europe in his On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662),
“The properties of things are not understood so long as their essences are unknown.” He also opined, in correspondence, “we must take care not to admit as true anything which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow” (Letter 54). It is this sort of rigorous intellectual honesty and parsimony of argument that provide the foundations for all the brave investigations that have built our miraculous -yet rational- world of technological wonders. It is the spirit of material monism, or materialism. As I am pursuing a Bachelor of Science, and am planning a career in research and design, I cannot seriously endorse any position other than materialism without feeling like a fraud, and without the bile of ingratitude souring my breath.
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