Social Research Glossary A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Home
Citation reference: Harvey, L., 2012-24, Social Research Glossary, Quality Research International, http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/socialresearch/
This is a dynamic glossary and the author would welcome any e-mail suggestions for additions or amendments.
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Dualism
Dualism (as opposed to monism) places two different substances at the origin of existence.
Dualism goes back to Greek philosophy and can be found in ancient (Middle Eastern) religions. One such dualist view is to see the world as the outcome of the competing forces of good and evil.
Déscartes expounded the best known modern version of dualism when arguing that people comprised of two distinct substances, the material (the body) and the spiritual (the soul).
According to Robinson (2011) in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.
The McGraw-Hill (2004) Sociological Theory site Glossary defines dualism as
The idea that structure (and culture) and agency can be distinguished for analytic purposes, although they are intertwined in social life.
See also
Robinson, H, 2011, 'Dualism' in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 19 August 2003; substantive revision 3 November 2011, available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
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