Defending Pantheism

[Alan V]

Property dualism, the most plausible of the dualisms, makes the argument "Hey! There is obviously some immaterial aspect of reality!" Hard to refute that, really. They are the "pure skeptics" of monism, I suppose. Cartesian dualism is something of a strawman these days. Property dualism is at least somewhat plausible.

Searle's biological naturalism is more materialist than non-materialist, but one might say his idea that consciousness is not ontologically reducible to physical states amounts to some sliver of dualistic thinking. Some accuse him of being a property dualist on that account.

I think the real argument is whether materialism is reductionistic or emergent. If it is emergent, and new properties are possible with more complex arrangements of matter, then there seem to be many more properties than property dualism acknowledges. In addition to the material property, life and mind are two more properties and perhaps individual identity as well.