(March 20, 2015 at 7:33 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(March 20, 2015 at 7:29 pm)Surgenator Wrote: A dualist huh. If you have two different things, material and ideal, how do they interact with each other. There has to be some mediator that is both part material and part ideal. If there is a mediator that is both material and ideal, then the material and ideal are not two different things since one object can have both. They are just different attributes of the same thing.That stock objection is a straw man. Imagine a single sensible body like a boat. It has both a material of which it is made, say aluminum, and also partakes of a particular form. Anyone can see that the form 'acts' on the material by giving it properties, like buoyancy, and that the material allows the form to manifest. Form and material are inalienable and yet distinct, i.e. dualism.
The foam and the aluminum are allowed to interact because they're are both made out of material things. The mediator between them is the electromagnetic force between the atoms of the foam and the atoms of the aluminum. If the electromagnetic force didn't exist between the foam and aluminum, then those two would pass right through each other.