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...
Ronzo, do you mean in the sense of Lorentz transformability, such as e.g., matter/energy? A dualistic complementarity that ultimately expresses a unity?
How does thought create an action? How are we able to 'do' anything at all that a simple organism could not do? Such as create something that does not exist in nature, if such a thing is possible.
I believe the question of body and consciousness and spirit cannot be separated from the question "what is life?" which we have been exploring on the Monist thread. At post 30, I said the following:
Scriptures and Jewish tradition speaks of the soul and spirit in four levels as follows:
2. ruach - the self-will or free will peculiar to man (abstraction, anticipation, intention, etc.) – by Jewish tradition, the pivot wherein a man decides to be Godly minded or earthy minded (also related to Romans 8, choosing)
3. neshama - the breath of God given to Adam (Genesis 2:7) which may also be seen as the “ears to hear” (John 10) - a sense of belonging beyond space/time, a predisposition to seek God and seek answers to the deep questions such as “what is the meaning of life?"
4. ruach Elohim - the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2) which indwells Christians (I Cor 2, John 3) – the presently existing in the “beyond” while still in the flesh. (Col 3:3) This is the life in passage you quoted: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." (John 1)
The “self-will” is in the domain of the ongoing inter-disciplinary studies of consciousness and the mind. The monist view would be that consciousness (as well as the soul) are merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. Qualia speaks against such a conclusion. Qualia are the properties of sensory experiences which are epistemically unknowable in the absence of direct experience of them and therefore, are also incommunicable. Examples include likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil.