Dualism is the belief that the human brain and the human mind are two distinct, independent entities. Dualism is a position on the mind-body problem that is attractive among the religious, and those who believe that human thought and emotion cannot be measured in chemicals alone; that the mind is something far more complex and far less explainable. Within the dualist realm, there are two branches: Property Dualism and Substance Dualism. The latter asserts that there are two forms of matter in the universe (physical and nonphysical) and that the mind is actually made of a type of nonphysical matter – physicists out there probably already have red flags being raised. This branch has been met with constant and well-backed criticism from the scientific community. The former, on the other hand, is a type of dualism which claims that there is only one type of matter in the universe, but that the brain is a physical object in a class of its own. It has a sort of emergent property – that being that the mind “emerges” from the brain only after the brain has reached a certain level of complexity. The brain is an object that has both physical and mental properties. Epiphenomenalism is a form of property dualism in which it is believed that the mind has no causal power over the brain or body. This claim is both consistent with currently held scientific theories and, as many intellects have found, very difficult to disprove. The idea that the human mind has no causal power is both logically conceivable and plausible.
Since writing this, I have taken it upon myself to determine which form of philosophical belief I belong to. I find this very difficult. At the heart of my beliefs is
