Mind–body dualism

Mind–body dualism holds that mind and body are fundamentally distinct, often as different kinds of substance or reality. It treats conscious experience as not reducible to physical processes.

Mind–body problem: The philosophical problem of explaining how mental phenomena relate to the physical body and brain. Dualism is one influential answer to this broader problem.
Mind–body interaction: Causal influence between mental events and bodily or physical events. Interaction is the key causal relation required by many forms of substance dualism.
René Descartes: A seventeenth-century philosopher who developed a prominent form of substance dualism. His separation of thinking mind from extended matter became the canonical modern formulation.
Identity theory: The view that mental states are identical with physical states of the brain. It rejects dualism by identifying mental events with physical events.
Substance dualism: The view that mind and matter are distinct kinds of substance. This is the classic form of dualism: mental and physical things belong to different ontological kinds.
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia: A seventeenth-century philosopher who challenged René Descartes on mind–body causation. Her correspondence pressed Descartes to explain how an unextended mind moves an extended body.
Gilbert Ryle: A twentieth-century philosopher known for criticizing Cartesian accounts of mind. He called the idea of a mind as a separate thing a category mistake.
Eliminative materialism: The view that some or all ordinary mental concepts will be replaced by mature neuroscience. It challenges the dualist premise that familiar mental categories track fundamental realities.
Property dualism: The view that reality is physical but includes mental properties irreducible to physical properties. It preserves mental distinctness without positing a separate mental substance.
Occasionalism: The view that God, rather than created things, directly causes events that appear to interact. It offers a theological solution to interaction without direct causal influence between mind and body.

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