It's literally like this:

Materialists/Physicalists: "The thoughts in your head come from your conditions and are ultimately the result of your organs and nervous system. Your consciousness is linked to your brain activity and other parts of your body interacting with the physical real world."

Dualists: "Ok but what if there were an imaginary zombie that has the same organs and molecular structure as a living person but somehow isn't alive on some metaphysical level. If this zombie is conceivable, that means it must be metaphysically true somehow."

Materialists: "That's circular and imaginary, isn't it?"

Other dualists: "Ok but what if I were in a swamp and lightning strikes a tree and magically creates a copy of me but it's not actually me because it doesn't have my soul."

Am I reading this stuff wrong or are these actually the best arguments for mind-body dualism

  • UlyssesT
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    edit-2
    15 days ago

    deleted by creator

    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Love is just chemicals the same way a child is just carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and hydrogen. The "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting and it's pointlessly reductive.

      • UlyssesT
        ·
        edit-2
        15 days ago

        deleted by creator

    • ChapoChatGPT [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah that's what I'm drawing a distinction between, people give the word "just" a lot of reductive power. Love might be made of chemicals, but those chemicals gain new characteristics when organized in specific ways, to the degree that a new referent/entity comes into existence. Love or consciousness are neither "just" concepts nor "just" the building blocks that comprise them, nor are they essences that exist in some realm alien from the material world they arise from.