Dualism

The view that mind and body, or the mental and the physical, are fundamentally different kinds of thing.

Also: mind–body dualism, mind-body dualism, substance dualism, property dualism, Cartesian dualism

What it means

In philosophy of mind, dualism holds that the mental is not simply physical. Substance dualists, such as Plato and René Descartes, think the mind is a distinct non-physical thing; Descartes argued that he could doubt he had a body but not that he was thinking. Property dualists accept only physical things but hold that some of their properties, such as conscious experience, are irreducibly mental. The classic objection, pressed by Elisabeth of Bohemia, asks how an immaterial mind could move a material body. Dualist views also appear in Indian thought: the Sāṃkhya-Yoga school distinguishes puruṣa, pure awareness, from prakṛti, the natural world. Physicalism is dualism's main rival.

The questions it belongs to

• 1.3.1 The Mind–Body ProblemHow can a thought move an arm?

Thinkers

• Plato
• René Descartes
• Elisabeth of Bohemia
• David Chalmers

Traditions

• Greek & Roman
• Modern European
• Indian
• Analytic

To read

• Apology — Plato
• Cratylus — Plato
• Crito — Plato

Sources and further reading

• Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Dualism (Britannica)

Written by the Coordinates of Thought editors and checked against the sources above on 29 October 2026. Not peer-reviewed. How we write and check.

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