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Are there any notable contemporary philosophers who advocate for dualism as an ontological viewpoint?

Bjorn Woodsford

Yes, there are several notable contemporary philosophers who advocate for dualism as an ontological viewpoint. Dualism is the philosophical position that holds that there are two essential and irreducible principles that make up reality: the physical and the mental. In this view, the physical realm is characterized by material objects and their properties, while the mental realm is characterized by subjective experiences and their properties.

One of the most prominent contemporary dualist philosophers is David Chalmers. Chalmers argues that physicalism, the position that everything in the world is ultimately reducible to physical processes and properties, cannot account for the subjective nature of conscious experience. He contends that there is a fundamental "hard problem" of consciousness that cannot be solved by physicalist approaches alone. Chalmers posits that this problem requires a dualistic ontology that recognizes the existence of non-physical mental states.

Another noteworthy contemporary dualist philosopher is Richard Swinburne. Swinburne posits that there are two fundamental types of substances in the world, mental and physical, which are not reducible to each other. He argues that consciousness cannot be accounted for by physical processes alone, and that an ontological dualism is necessary to explain the nature of subjective experience.

Another philosopher who advocates for dualism is William Hasker. Hasker argues that there are two types of properties in the world, those that are physical and those that are mental, and that this ontological dualism is necessary to account for the properties of conscious experience. Unlike some other dualist philosophers, Hasker does not posit a complete separation between the physical and the mental, but rather argues for an interactionist dualism, in which mental events can have causal effects on physical events, and vice versa.

In conclusion, there are several notable philosophers who advocate for dualism as an ontological viewpoint. These philosophers argue that a dualistic ontology is necessary to account for the nature of subjective experience and consciousness, and that physicalism cannot provide a full account of these phenomena. Despite criticism and opposition to the dualist position, these philosophers continue to advance their arguments and engage in lively debates with their critics.