Hi, I've been looking for a place on the net to talk philosophy without getting blown away with erudition and logic tricks, and this site looks like a good bet. I don't have a degree in philosophy, but over the past few years I've been reading some books and articles and doing some thinking regarding the nature of mind and consciousness. So I guess that I'm a philosophy-of-mind hobbyist.

I've decided to stake out a position as a substance-interactionist dualist. I realize that this is not a popular position within modern academic philosophy (but I am not an academian, so I don't need to worry about fashions in thought). I also appreciate the danger that such a position can easily wander into religious or spiritual speculation or uncritical guruism. As a "non-professional", I'm not ready to vigorously defend interactionist dualism in a debate; philosophical debates based on complex logical syllogisms (and rhetorical quasi-syllogisms) make my head spin. I'm trying to build a paradigm, just to see how much "water" a dual-realm concept can "hold", from a critical thinking perspective. I simultaneously remain open to the possibility that my "model" fundamentally depends upon speculation and pushes the mystery into a different box without saying much new.

I've investigated the thoughts of Chalmers, Searle, Dennett, Block, McGinn, D.N. Robinson, Popper and a host of others including various neurophysicists, psychologists and other scientists (including John Eccles and Francisco Varela and David Bohm and Doug Hofstadter). Right now I'm reading Microcognition by Andy Clark, and much of my reading material is by non-dualists (Paul Churchland is next on my list). Even the most ardent cognitivists, physical reductionists and functionalists give me ideas to add to the little "thought paradigm" that I'm trying to construct regarding subjective experience and its ontological relation to the universe. In fact, some of my most valuable thought components have come from Dennett! So I welcome criticism, but I also wonder if there are any other fellow interactionist-dualism sympathizers out there. If interested, my "little model" is outlined on my web site as listed below.

My undergraduate degree is in engineering, and I highly admire and respect the fields of science and math. In fact, I still consider myself to be a technology geek; one of the most enjoyable experiences in my life has been writing computer code. But I've also had some interesting experiences with meditation practices, which help me to believe that science and math are ultimately incomplete. (I do realize that researchers are able to reproduce such "mystical experiences" using trans-cranial magnetic induction into the temporal lobe.) I thus feel that "hard-problem" consciousness (as Chalmers would say) must ultimately be dealt with in a trans-scientific fashion (without sacrificing critical thinking), given its ontological uniqueness. Yes, I've heard of caloric fluid, aether, the phlogiston, elan vital and other failed dualisms from the past. But the epistemological barrier here seems of a different and unique sort.

Ultimately I believe that reality is a monism, but for now and perhaps forever, consciousness will remain ungrippable by what applies to all else, i.e. physics. So perhaps I am what Habermas described as an ontological monist and an epistemological dualist (but not an epiphenomenalist one; I cross the causality line even though most modern dualists don't).

I look forward to contributing some thoughts as I can and considering others' positions. I'm not here to preach, and I intend to remain open-minded. I very much appreciate the civilized tone that this list seems to value, especially given that my "paradigm" is somewhat inchoate and "experimental", and thus can be run over by sharp rhetoric and debating techniques. Thanks,

Jim G., an "eternal student" (though not in school, formally, other than the 'school of life')

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Consciousness, A Short Course