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How to Tell a Dualist?
1Department of Psychology, Northeastern University.
Conflicting mind-body intuitions arise because Dualism, a flexible belief, interacts with Essentialism. This suggests supernatural beliefs are a blend of ethereal and innate concepts, not purely spiritual.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Philosophy of Mind
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Intuitions about the mind-body connection are often contradictory.
- Existing explanations for these inconsistencies are insufficient.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the interaction between Dualism and Essentialism in shaping mind-body intuitions.
- To explore how these concepts influence beliefs about trait emergence and innateness.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted.
- Experiment 1: Assessed trait emergence in a body replica versus the afterlife.
- Experiment 2: Judged trait innateness, correlating with embodiment intuitions.
Main Results:
- Epistemic traits were favored in the afterlife (Dualism), but innate traits were also favored there (Essentialism).
- Embodied traits were deemed more innate, indicating embodiment influences innateness judgments.
- Innateness and embodiment judgments correlated.
Conclusions:
- Dualism acts as a flexible constraint on reasoning about innate origins and post-death persistence.
- The interaction between Dualism and Essentialism creates "chimeric" supernatural intuitions.
- Mind-body beliefs are shaped by both ethereal and embodied concepts.
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