What we sense and what we percieve.

True/false, in/out, up/down, hot/cold, good/bad, I/it (subject/object), beautiful/ugly, now/then, here/there, real/false, etc. (all oppositional dichotomies as absolutes)--including dualism/non-dualism.

Dualism has said that there are two 'substances' in the world, like mind and matter.
But like 'subjective, objective', I have no reason whatever to consider them as related or opposed. There is simply no common ground. So on what basis do I count two and say "here is 'dualism'?

John Jones

Quote:

Dualism has said that there are two 'substances' in the world, like mind and matter.
But like 'subjective, objective', I have no reason whatever to consider them as related or opposed. There is simply no common ground. So on what basis do I count two and say "here is 'dualism'?

But why must you consider them as opposed? Dualism in Descartes does only mean that there is a substance named "soul" that is not physical - by that he intended "extension" - and another substance, the "body" that was physical (extension).
They are not opposed but different. And, this is the main point, they are all that exists.
The problem with this dualism is in the fact that it was not enough to Descartes. He wanted to discover how did the soul interact with the body. And there starts the problem: in order to have interaction we must find a common framework. He couldn't solve the problem (in my opinion there is no solution, because the problem in itself is false).
As you say, two different things do not make dualism. But if those two different things represent all that is and exists, and if they have different nature, then we have the cartesian dualism.

Objective and subjective, in my point of view, have nothing to do with that kind of dualism. They only represent two different perspectives about a consensual reality.

John, dualism is not "two things". You're right. It is one thing from two sides. JL listed a bunch of good examples. Things we know in relation to their oposites. And it is not an absolute truth, this dualism. It is merely a tool to help us understand what we see. You yourself have applied it skillfully in your objections.

I could have included, of course, mind/brain, spirit/matter, and the fantasy, natural/supernatural, but what matters here is that we generally think in terms of opposites, if only tacitly. Up, implies down, right left, good bad, natural supernatural and so forth. But reality is far too subtle for that, if our goal is to appreciate experience, and not just to use language in its conventional ways for its utilitarian functions, we must see things more in their non-dualistic, precognized uniqueness. I do not say "grey"s because that implies black and white. Perhaps grey is John's "third thing"?

Sure they can. Aren't we talking about how people organize their experience dualistically? Your single scale is ontological. We are talking about epistemology: how people construe their lives--I agree that opposites have no reality apart from our thinking. The topic of this thread has to do with how we sense/perceive the world. Dualism has to do with our seeing the world IN TERMS OF our thinking, in terms of the conceptual grids we impose upon, and thereby shape, our experience. I agree that opposites do not exist in the world, other than in our heads.

John, you say that "There is also a problem of saying two things are opposites, for that requires a third thing." What is that? Are you referring to a thinker?
Related to that, you also say that "If you say that we see the world in terms of our thinking then you say that there is a hidden world substance and a thinking substance (or parameter)." I'm lost here. Are you taking the position of absolute idealism, that there is only thought "in here" or only a material world "out there" (or Kant's dichotomy of the noumena and phenomena)? I can only surmise that you are at least advocating a true monism, a unity of the subjective and objective. But we cannot say much along that line--to talk about that unity requires the use of dualistic lingistic tools.

John, you say that "There is also a problem of saying two things are opposites, for that requires a third thing." What is that? Are you referring to a thinker?
Related to that, you also say that "If you say that we see the world in terms of our thinking then you say that there is a hidden world substance and a thinking substance (or parameter)." I'm lost here. Are you taking the position of absolute idealism, that there is only thought "in here" or only a material world "out there" (or Kant's dichotomy of the noumena and phenomena)? I can only surmise that you are at least advocating a true monism, a unity of the subjective and objective. But we cannot say much along that line--to talk about that unity requires the use of dualistic lingistic tools.

JLNobody wrote:

John, you say that "There is also a problem of saying two things are opposites, for that requires a third thing." What is that? Are you referring to a thinker?
Related to that, you also say that "If you say that we see the world in terms of our thinking then you say that there is a hidden world substance and a thinking substance (or parameter)." I'm lost here. Are you taking the position of absolute idealism, that there is only thought "in here" or only a material world "out there" (or Kant's dichotomy of the noumena and phenomena)? I can only surmise that you are at least advocating a true monism, a unity of the subjective and objective. But we cannot say much along that line--to talk about that unity requires the use of dualistic lingistic tools.

If you say that there is a world that we think about and that that world is hidden, then how can I say that that world and my thinking about it are opposites? If one thing is hidden, and the other thing is known, then how can we say they are opposite each other?

A third thing? Yes, the third thing is the thing that brings the two things together so that they can be seen as dissimilar. Things are only similar or dissimilar according to a third thing. That third thing may be their hidden parameter. For example, the hidden parameter invoked when we say that black and white are opposites, is light. And light is a monism in this example.

John, I agree with your last paragraph completely. Our experience of the world has two dimensions, (1) immediate experience, e.g., Northrup's "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum," and (2) culturallly consituted experience, e.g., Northrup's "differentiated aesthetic continuum"). The latter is our world of cooked experience, in which we see the world as composed of classes of things, properties and events; the former is our life of raw experience which underlies the first. The undifferentiated aesthestic continuum is not "hidden"--I'm surprised I gave that impression to you. It is just unprocessed, or preprocessed. It is just pre-cognitive, not yet meaningful in an explicit sense, not yet seen "in terms of our thoughts" (categories, models, values, etc.)