There is no doubt that we are physical beings, but there is a question as to where our consciousness comes from. Can this consciousness come from a completely physical make up or do we have another non-physical entity? Does consciousness come from a physical brain or a non-physical mind? The two competing views of this question are materialism and dualism. Materialism views the world as being made up of only physical things, while dualism believes that everything has a physical and non-physical make up.
             Dualism claims that the mind is separate from the body. This can be broken down into substance dualism and property dualism. Substance dualism, introduced by René Descartes, states that the mind is a separate non-physical entity. Descartes believed that people have a physical body and brain and also a non-physical mind. This mind is where all consciousness comes from. Descartes claimed that if you could build an automaton of a monkey, the automaton and the real monkey would be indistinguishable. However, if you built an automaton of a human, the human and the automaton would be different. I think this statement in essence is true. I do not think that an automaton of a human would think and feel as a human being would.
             The other view of dualism is property dualism. Property dualism is based on the theory that all things are physical but some physical things also have non-physical properties. Thomas Nagel explained in his manuscript, "What is it like to be a bat," that while a person could know everything about a bat physically he still would not know subjectively what it is like to be bat. If this were true, and the total experience of being a bat could not be reduced to the physical make up of the bat, then materialism must be false. If a bat can not be explained entirely by physical descriptions then there must be something more to a bat than its physical make up. While these
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