Thanks for this article. I wonder about the distinction between substance and property. Descartes makes a good a point that the mind does seem somehow localized. What do you mean when you say it attaches to the same substance as our body? It seems clear that the mind isn’t attached to all parts of the body equally.
I am reminded of Kaluza-Klein Theory, in which the electromagnetic field is described based on a fifth closed up dimension. Perhaps our mind attaches to our body in a manner similar to how such a 5th dimension attaches to the other 4.
In other words, imagine that our mind actually exists in one or more different dimensions of space time than matter, but that these dimensions are somehow closed, like that 5th dimension of Kaluza-Klein, so that my mind doesn’t really extend into your mind even if we get really close.
It does kind of seems like our mind encompasses multiple dimensions. For example, the different way that I perceive sound vs. color might indicate extension into different “conscious dimensions” as opposed to “physical dimensions.” And at least some of these “conscious dimensions” could very well be real dimensions of space time.
It is also possible that these dimensions attach somewhat weakly to the physical ones, kind of like how an electron doesn’t have a specific pin-point location with respect to the nucleus of an atom.
Anyway, there might be a very meaningful way in which there is a different substance for the mind and the body, in that certain conceptual objects e might be extended in “physical dimensions” and be sort of uninteresting or random in the “conscious dimensions” kind of like you could have an object in space where the electromagnetic field gets canceled out. By contrast, the mind might be really interesting in these “conscious dimensions” of space time, but only connects to a fairly limited set of points in “physical space.”
One question this raises for me is whether I am the only mind that inhabits my body, or whether there are a bunch of (potentially very similar minds) occupying the same physical space. If multiple minds were occupying my space, there is little reason to believe I would be aware of them.
