If there is dualism between consciousness and the body, how does conscious thought result in movement of the muscles? How does deciding to hit a nail result in a nail getting hit? What is the mechanism whereby thought acts on material objects?
If there is dualism between consciousness and the body, how does conscious thought result in movement of the muscles? How does deciding to hit a nail result in a nail getting hit? What is the mechanism whereby thought acts on material objects?
Precisely. There is no mind/body dualism. The mind is the body, and the body is the mind. An excellent book that discusses this problem in depth is Antonio R. Damasio's Descartes' Error. Of course there are other books that discuss this problem as well.
I think a more appropriate type of dualism, one which in fact is very real, is body(including the mind) vs. information. Perhaps that which we call "ourselves" is really the sum total of all the bits of data we've collected in our body up to this particular point in time. But these bits of data, stored away as they are, are not "real." They are not physcial, they have no "body." Oh yes, we can see brain cells and DNA and all that, but it's just so much matter without a rational mind to give it order and meaning. We can see the brain cells, but we can't see the "thoughts" that the brain is thinking; and what are thoughts other than just our seemingly random processing of information?
When someone is brain damaged, what really happens is they lose the ability to access information that was--at one time--readily available in their bodies. The information is either "destroyed" or inaccessible. So in that sense, what we are really talking about is body/information dualism.
Now for the theological ramifications:
It is interesting to note that when Jesus rose from the dead, is was a bodily resurrection, not "spiritual." The interesting question is this: why did he have to be resurrected bodily? Why couldn't he just let his body decay, and come back as some sort of ghost?
Perhaps the message being communicated to us is that even after death, we will have bodies of some type. As a matter of fact, orthodox Christian theology states that we will be given a new, incorruptable body upon our deaths, one that is no longer subject to the physical laws of this universe, but which will certainly contain our "spirits."
What if--and I'm just thinking out loud here--that which we call "spirit" is really just all our random bits of data which we've collected over the duration of our lives? And what if God simply takes this data, dumps it in a new body, and we regain "ourselves" along with a new "brain" that might be able to process and access our old information in new and surprising ways, while still being able to add even more information into the mix?
Of course there's more than just information that makes us who we are: we also have this bizzare will to live, that is far more than the sum of our parts! Where does that come from? Why do we want to live? Why do we think eternal life in heaven would be such a good deal? Such things are well beyond the ability of physical science to make sense of.
But more importantly, is there a matter/consiousness dualism? Can we logically speak of things existing without conscoiusness, and there being no "beings" of any kind to perceive those unconscious beings?
My argument is this: not only is there no mind/body dualism, but not even consciouness/matter dualism. Hence, consciousness can not be seperated from existance (matter).
But I would say that absolute consciousness is not dependent on matter as we understand it...there very well could be some other sort of "matter" that has properties and abilities that we couldn't even guess at...