Philosophy Discussion: Is mind-body dualism correct?

Passcode: 463907

During our first discussion several questions relating to mind-body dualism came up, which we had discussions on:

1. Discussion on 8/7/25-What (and where) is the mind? (We posited the mind is the largest possible markov (entropy limiting) blanket (e.g. the human, dog whatever biological entity we are discussing), although the mind involves multiple processes happening within the brain simultaneously, the brain organizes itself into a single consciousness because that is how organisms evolved to self organize and minimize wasted energy within the system (i.e. the brain and subsequently body). And the mind is not strictly within us but is instead the communication that takes place between organisms (e.g. humans with each other forming a society.)
2. Discussion on 8-14-Is there an innate potentiality within atoms to evolve into higher realms of existence (i.e. atoms that are not alive lead to living things, living things lead to mental things, so is there an innate pre-consciousness in atoms)? To start we haven't yet determined that consciousness itself is not an illusion (as it may be the case that it serves no objective purpose). Granted it exists, consciousness may exist throughout the universe in all matter and through having a brain we are able to perceive it like an antenna. Consciousness also may be a form of resonance not in any brain but between minds and non-biological things as well. Consciousness is a type of relational activity whereby one thing, such as a neuron, has to relate to another to generate it. For an analogy of the innate consciousness that could exist in an atom take the example of a human zygote which is a single cell, but contains the potentiality of a full person and their resulting consciousness. As stated above consciousness may be nothing more than a complex biological entities ability to self organize into a single control center, before this can happen matter had to self organize itself into life, which it did. Furthermore, atoms do seem to have an ability to organize themselves with protons, neutrons electrons in certain configurations etc. Along these lines it would appear that there is an innate preconsciousness (the potentiality from the ability to self organize) in atoms.
3. Discussion on 8-22 On the flip side, is there any kind of a supra consciousness (or other emergent state) created from the aggregation of individual minds? The functional purpose of an individual mind seems to be to manipulate its surrounding environment to continue its survival. When individual minds get together and get along in a society they have a tendency to become more alike. A married couples views on things and ways of thinking seems to slowly coalesce. This also is developed throughout society in common ideas and even definitions of words that define the parameters in which people think. For example in the political world standard parlance has taken seemingly infinite views and reduced them down to a couple main ones, democrat, republican or libertarian. This development of a common language and standardization of ideas puts huge swaths of society on the same page and allows them to know where they stand in regards to other swaths of society. Society endows things with an objective meaning (i.e. a bar of gold is equivalent to 5 cows for everyone). This objectivizing of the world gives the individual minds in society the consensus needed to organize one another. So the supra-consciousness created through society seems to be an organizing of the individual minds within it.
4. Discussion on 8-29-How does one engage in a mental process (i.e. how do you decide you are going to try to remember something) and do we have multiple consciousnesses (e.g. what is the entity that reminds you of that famous actors name, you were trying to remember earlier, randomly when you are eating dinner)? The mind may work by consensus where when enough of your neurons are firing along similar lines and at high enough wavelengths that pattern of thought gains attention. There also may be multiple consciousnesses (or mental states) in your mind that are performing different tasks simultaneously (e.g. you are reading trying to pay attention, but multiple images are passing through your mind trying to draw your attention). So for example you are trying to remember an actor's name and can't, then stop trying. Unbeknownst to you an area of your mind that is subconscious continues to work on the problem and when it does remember the name it will generate a high enough wavelength and get the consensus of enough other neurons so that they move the attention of the mind to that area and suddenly you become conscious of that area of the brain and remember the actor's name. Deciding to engage in a mental process may be similar where the brain needs a type of mental consensus to engage in a certain action, whether mental or physical. The so called collective consciousness may work in a similar way where enough consensus on, for example, what a symbol means causes the symbol to have that meaning. We also believed that labeling seems to be an important aspect of consciousness and in fact may be a fundamental aspect of it. The act of being conscious seems to involve almost constant labeling. Labeling both takes away from experience and adds to it. It takes away because by labeling something as, for example a parrot, you take yourself away from that actual parrot and to the theory of a parrot. This causes you to loose the uniqueness of this individual parrot. But also, labeling saves mental energy because we no longer have to individually analyze everything we see.

Based on the above, I do not believe Mind-Body dualism is correct. Looking at the evolution of matter into living things, living things into mental things, mental things into collectively organized things, I think the mind is intricately related to the body(brain) and not separate from it. Furthermore, I do not believe that mental states are of a character fundamentally different than physical ones because they grow out of the physical states and appear to be an inborn potentiality of the physical (i.e. matters ability to self organize).

In this next discussion/debate we will discuss the question of whether mind-body dualism is correct?

Overall, In this series we discuss great questions of philosophy. You could call what we are doing debate style or open forum, but participants are free to give their ideas and challenge others while discussing the topic of the week. Each week I will choose from one of hundreds of topics such as: are humans innately good or evil, what makes us human, did you exist before you were born, and does god (a supreme mind) exist. I think a Socratic method/critical analysis of questions where each assumption held on a particular topic is questioned to dig deeper is a good way to make progress.

Let us hear what you think.

(The Zoom link will be posted shortly before the event. I have installed a timer in Zoom, so a timer will start automatically when you start speaking, I am setting a 3 minute time limit on each speaker. Once a speaker talks anyone can follow up with a counter point, question, or continuing thought along the same line of thought (leave such comments to 1 minute). But do not begin a new train of thought unless you raise your hand. )