dualisme

Dualisme, or dualism, is the philosophical view that there are two fundamental kinds of reality or substance. In the philosophy of mind, it usually refers to the claim that mental phenomena (minds, thoughts, feelings) and physical phenomena (bodies, brains, matter) belong to distinct kinds of substance or properties. Substantive dualism holds that mind and body are separate substances, while property dualism maintains that there is only one kind of substance (physical), but mental properties are non-physical properties coexisting with physical ones.

Historically, Cartesian dualism, named after René Descartes, is the most influential form in the Western tradition, positing a non-physical mind that interacts with a physical body. Other formulations include interactionist dualism, which holds that mind and body causally influence each other; epiphenomenalism, which assigns causal efficacy to the body and regards mental states as effects only; and various non-interactionist or “double-aspect” positions, such as parallelism or double-aspect theory, which attempt to account for mind and body as related aspects of a single underlying reality.

Debates central to dualism include the problem of causal interaction: if mind and body are distinct, how can they affect each other in a physically governed world? Critics point to the causal closure of physics and arguments from the philosophy of science and cognitive science. Proponents respond with various accounts of mental causation or propose alternative frameworks, such as property dualism or neutral monism, to preserve a coherent account of consciousness.

Today, dualism remains a prominent position in the philosophy of mind and theology, even as physicalist and functionalist theories offer competing explanations of mental phenomena.