aussieguy55 wrote:Mind if I ask? are you a physicalist or a dualist as far as the argument about the soul go?
Neither. I maintain that a sentient being is a composite continuum, made from inseparable psycho-physical "bundles" of physical form, consciousness, (ap)perception, feeling-tone, and mental conditioning-formations. The point is just that both physicalism and Cartesian dualism are wrong, because they posit mind and body as two separate entities rather than as complementary elements of the mind-body system. Physicalism draws the same rigid divide, but it asserts that only one of the terms is real. I dispute the division.
As I said, I am not a dualist. I don't believe that mind and body exist completely independently of each other. What I maintain is that the mind and the body exist as an interdependent psycho-physical system or continuum. This makes a lot of sense given what we know about neuroplasticity, since in a strictly physicalist model there is no way to account for how mental processes can have a physical effect. The Brain That Changes is not an argument for physicalist-reductionism.