Talk:Dualism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More information Article milestones, Date ...
Good articleDualism has been listed as one of the Philosophy and religion good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 22, 2026Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on February 18, 2026.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that epistemological dualism posits a fundamental division between experience and reality?
Close

Bayle

It sure seems to me Bayle's treatment of Manichaeism should be mentioned just as well as Augustine. Those are the two pivotal famous Mani followers in Western philosophy. Popkin selects only like a dozen entries from the dictionary and includes that entry. It is why Leibniz does the possible world theodicy. The same for Bayle's article on Paulicians. Cake (talk) 15:11, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

I checked a few overview sources on dualism, such as Machamer & di Poppa 2005, Bianchi 2025, Graves 2023, and Robinson & Weir 2025. As far as I can tell, they do not mention Bayle. Bianchi & Stoyanov 2005, another overview source, mentions Bayle one time, but only in regard to etymology. I don't know much about Bayle but it's possible that his main interest was not in dualism per se but in critiquing certain conceptions of evil. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 24 December 2025 (UTC)
I think here is a very fine case of adding to those sources in a way that is not original research. If he is new to you, I suggest you read at least Bayle's Stanford Encyclopedia page to understand how significant he was in his time. The only thing Leibniz ever published was his response to him. Hume also read a ton of Bayle, so it fits nicely in that spot of the article. "What Bayle was up to" is so notoriously hard for the best scholars that the 'Bayle enigma' has a name. Regardless of that, his dictionary was very famous, and two of the most famous ten entries or so are Manichaeans and Paulicians. He defends them so well it shook Leibniz and others. Forgive me for editing it on my own, but I figured it was uncontroversial. I could easily cite scholars of skepticism like Popkin, Ariew, and others. I even considered mentioning the 'dualism' of Bayle's apparent fence-riding on the question of skepticism v. dogmatism. Bayle and dualism per se might not get a lot of search hits, but only Augustine would get as many for Bayle and Manichaeism. Bayle says their dualism solves the problem of evil. Here is a good example. An article on Mani has to mention Bayle. The relevant section . Cake (talk) 20:54, 24 December 2025 (UTC)
It wouldn't be original research but it would probably violate WP:PROPORTION. I'm not sure that the SEP article on Bayle supports his inclusion here. I don't think it says that Bayle is a dualist but just that he imaged a dialogue between a monist and a dualist. It also says that he is usually grouped today among the “minor figures” in the history of philosophy". I didn't read the article from start to end so feel free to cite a passage that explicitly supports his inclusion as one of the main figures in the history of dualism.
If you insist, we could add a footnote along the lines Discussing the problem of the existence of evil, Pierre Bayle contrasted monotheism with dualist perspectives. However, my impression from this and some of our other discussions is that your inclusion criteria are too wide. If we applied them generally, they could lead to the inclusion of hundreds or thousands of names for each article of this type, turing these articles into bloated compendia rather than accessible overviews. The difficulty for wide-scope articles is not to find things to talk about but to boil their topics down to the most essential elements, which still results in lengthy articles because of their scope. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:11, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
I linked the relevant page in a journal article for you to see, which says he defended Gnostic dualism in 3 articles. I cannot name a more notable defense of it, as Augustine was a convert. It doesn't have to do with trying to include everyone.
The Stanford article says "Although he is usually grouped today among the "minor figures" of philosophy, Bayle was considered by the leading philosophers of his day as an equal, as one of the most erudite authors of any century." It then talks about his huge influence on Leibniz and Hume. Spinoza didn't make Leibniz publish, that was Bayle. Leibniz wasnt a skeptic before Hume, that was Bayle. He is a very nice addition to the cliche Descartes to Spinoza to Leibniz without adding every other Cartesian. The source I used which was deleted also said his dictionary was a big part of the Enlightenment. All this is saying to me is Bayle is relevant to the history of philosophy moreso than contemporary philosophy, hence he was put in the history section. If Bayle's dictionary obviously deserves an article, and Leibniz's theodicy obviously deserves an article, why cannot we mention the Gnostic dualism in the dictionary which made Leibniz write it? Cake (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
I added a modified version of the footnote suggested above. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:28, 26 December 2025 (UTC)
I appreciate the compromise. While history saw Bayle as the heretical Gnostic dualist, your way of putting it is probably how he would have preferred. Forgive the nitpick, but I think his only "works" are the Dictionary, though it is an entire oeuvre in itself. Also, famously, all the philosophy in the Dictionary is in the lengthy footnotes. So it is only natural for him to be a footnote. I found yet another reason to include the Dictionary with which you might be more sympathetic, on top of the Gnostic dualism, and aside from the Cartesianism. Apparently the popularization of the term "Dualism" goes through first Thomas Hyde then Bayle's entry on Zoroaster then Leibniz. Cake (talk) 03:56, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
I reformulated the footnote to mention the dictionary. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:11, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

The Italian philosophy

Merry Christmas all. My wiki present was having the Pythagoras edits kept. The contrast between the pre Socratic Ionian school and Italian is sometimes given as materialism (or 'material monism') vs. dualism (eg by WKC Guthrie). Pythagoras is the main 'Italian' philosopher, so mostly he is meant. While I cannot make it work in every case (is Xenophanes or Parmenides a dualist? Probably not. The perfect monists. Then again, Xenophanes has the "God-world" dualism and Parmenides proem has 2 paths.), I do wonder though about some other Italian cases. For instance, Empedocles is not often called a dualist, rather a pluralist, yet he does have the dual forces of love and hate. Cake (talk) 19:42, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

FYI, Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy: The earlier Presocratics and Pythagoreans. Introduction and summary on page 249 is "Monism or Dualism?" He notes F. M. Cornford interprets Pythagoras as a monist, but that he interprets him as a dualist. Cake (talk) 19:03, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

GA review

Passed. Shapeyness (talk) 21:50, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Dualism/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) 14:54, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Shapeyness (talk · contribs) 02:22, 21 January 2026 (UTC)


GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check.
    a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:


Hi Phlsph7, I will review this one. First impressions, I really enjoyed reading this: concise, straightforward, clear, accessible. I also think the visual motif is great and useful to get a quick idea. I'm sure this would fly through FAC if nominated. I'll leave my initial review comments below Shapeyness (talk) 02:22, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi Shapeyness, thanks for taking the time to review this nomination! Phlsph7 (talk) 15:20, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
  • A references section is included and inline citations are included where needed. I would probably have a few more quibbles with sources at FAC, but things look mostly good for GAN. I'm not sure about Howe 2008 though, do you think it meets RS? Howe seems to have the background and past research in this area, but I'm not sure about the publisher and one of the editors has a history of misrepresentation (although that was only uncovered after this was published). Edit: also, forgot to mention, there are a few very old sources being used (pre-1930).
    Howe 2008 might be sufficient for GA but probably not for FA. I replaced it with a better alternative. I also found replacements for the old sources. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:20, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
  • Earwig shows low likelihood of copyvio. I'll include a full spotcheck later for this and to check for verifiability/OR.
  • I briefly looked through overviews in the article and it looks like it covers all major aspects, but I'll do a more in-depth check for this later too. I did notice a few of the overviews mention ancient Egypt, although nowhere near as much as e.g. Zoroastrianism - do you think it's worth a sentence in the history section?
    I'm not sure how committed scholars are to calling it dualism. I added a footnote. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:20, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
  • The article is stable without edit wars.
  • All images are appropriately tagged and useful to include.
  • I will hopefully include more comments soon.

Here are some more detailed comments. Shapeyness (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

  • I think a bit more explanation about the problem that conservation of energy creates for interactionism would be useful (I think the REP explains this a little bit).
    I added another clause to connect the problem to changes of the energy balance. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • I couldn't find any sources that make a connection between platonic dualism and contemporary platonism (or even medieval platonism about universals). I saw more sources contrasting platonic dualism with Aristotle or talking about neoplatonism, although I didn't search extensively.
    I slightly weakened our formulation and added two sources. Falguera, Martínez-Vidal & Rosen 2025 says that the distinctions resemble each other but are not identical. Katz 1997 explores Platonic/abstract-concrete dualism and the problem of explaining interaction between the domains. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • Spots checks below.
  • Dualism contrasts with monism... Whole paragraph covered by Schaffer and de Oliveira sources, except Empodecles, which is covered by Robinson & Weir
  • A dichotomy is a... Supported by sources
  • Various dualist theories in Indian philosophy resemble Western mind–body dualism... Mostly supported, what is the quote supporting emotions being a part of Prakriti?
    Ruzsa "§ 4d. Evolution, Humanity and the World" says that buddhi belongs to prakriti and emotions belong to buddhi. I added this section to the citation. Harzer 2005 says that the intellect (buddhi) and all mental functions belong to prakriti. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:03, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • A central topic in mind–body dualism is the problem of interaction... Whole paragraph supported
  • Ethical or moral dualism is... Whole paragraph supported
  • Another dualism, often addressed in monotheistic religions, concerns the relation between God and the world... Whole paragraph supported
  • Platonic dualism holds... Whole paragraph supported, mainly from McInerny
  • Epistemological dualism, also known as representational or indirect realism I recognised the explanations in the sources as representational/indirect realism, but didn't see them use those terms, do you have a quote?
    I found a source and adjusted our formulation to match it. It says I take it that the fault with the older type of epistemological dualism, called representationalism,... However, you won't be happy about its age. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:48, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
    Since this is just about alternative names I think that is fine. I found these if you think they might be useful instead, although none of them are perfect: "Epistemology and Sociology", Direct versus Indirect Realism (Chapters 6 and 16), "What it Means to Live in a Virtual World Generated by Our Brain". Shapeyness (talk) 19:42, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • What is the quote supporting nature-culture humanism plays a central role in human exceptionalism?
    From Haila 2000: It is commonly accepted that the western view of humanity’s place in nature is dominated by a dualistic opposition between nature and culture. ... I think the dualism tends to be reproduced because of two main reasons. First, it arises in human interactions with the world which tend to turn into subject-object relationships. Second, these specific subject-object relationships are generalized to a totalizing distinction between ‘us’ and ‘the environment’.
    I added another source that makes the relation more explicit. From Dědinová 2026 p. 87: In the dominant Euro-American culture, humans are not only distinguished from nature but opposed to it in ways that make humans radically alienated from and superior to it.
  • Positively, it can be used to justify human domination over nature by establishing a rational order; negatively, it may characterize humans as a malicious influence that disrupts the natural world and degrades its ecosystems The use of "positively" and "negatively" sounds like value judgements, which I think is misleading
    They are value judgments made in the academic literature and we report them. I tried to clarify the passage. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:06, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
    Thank you, I misread the meaning behind that sentence, but it's clearer now. Shapeyness (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • Nature–culture dualism contrasts with monist views that see a continuum between nature and culture rather than a strict separation. Also, what quote supports this?
    From Haila 2000: instead of assuming at the outset that humanity and nature form two distinct realms of reality, we ought to view them as merging into situated, historically and contextually specified complexes. Then, the assumed fixed boundary between “I” and “the world” looses meaning.
    From Apffel-Marglin 2012: Such research leads to questioning the boundary between nature and culture, which is commonly taken as given ... The dissolving of the boundary between nature and culture has simultaneous metaphysical and political implications. ... But before considering the forces and events that brought this dualist paradigm about, a topic taken up in the next chapter, we need to recall that a very different non-dualist paradigm competed... Phlsph7 (talk) 15:15, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • A related dualism focusing on the divide between nature and humans... Supported by sources
  • In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, Gnosticism arose... Mostly supported, although not all in the lead, this may need another source or additional sections used in the citation
    I added another citation. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
  • In ancient India, Jainism emerged roughly in the 6th century BCE... Supported by Nath and Adamson & Ganeri, Barbato gives a slightly different date for the beginning of the religion but tbf it says "most texts" not all

@Phlsph7: Thank you for responding to my comments and addressing issues so quickly. Just to let you know, I included some sources in a reply above that may be useful. However, I don't think they are needed to make this pass GAN. All my comments have now been addressed and looking through overviews/checking for any missing sources that could be used, I couldn't find any major aspects missing or issues with undue weight. Therefore, I will pass this as meeting all the GAN criteria. Shapeyness (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Viriditas (talk) 21:58, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

(
)
  • ... that epistemological dualism posits a fundamental division between experience and reality?
  • Source: Bunnin, Nicholas; Yu, Jiyuan (2008). The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-470-99721-5.
    • ALT1: ... that ethical dualism conceives the world as a struggle between good and evil? Source: Bianchi, Ugo; Stoyanov, Yuri (2005). "Dualism". In Jones, Lindsay (ed.). Encyclopedia Of Religion (2nd ed.). Thomson Gale. pp. 2504–2505, 2507–2509. ISBN 978-0-02-865997-8.
    • ALT2: ... that monism is not the only contrary of dualism? Source: Schaffer, Jonathan (2018). "Monism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. § 1.1 Many Monisms. Retrieved 5 December 2025.
    • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Whispering Woods (novel)
Improved to Good Article status by Phlsph7 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 35 past nominations.

Phlsph7 (talk) 11:27, 24 January 2026 (UTC).

  • An interesting topic, I will be completing a review shortly. - Caribbean~H.Q. 22:37, 25 January 2026 (UTC)
As promised, here is my review:
  • Is the article new enough? The article was created as a spinoff following a community discussion a published on December 11, 2025. It was expanded steadily during the past month and passed Good Article nomination on January 22, 2026. Only four days had passed between it being promoted and nominated for DYK, meaning that it meets the "New" criteria.
  • Is the article long enough? This one is self-evident, its good sized even counting only prose.
  • Is it is well-sourced, neutral, BLP-compliant and copyvio-free? This article has dozens of sources, most of them books with all the relevant information provided and 73 inline citations. The language is sober and relatively simple for a technical topic, presenting the topic in a matter-of-fact manner. Earwig's Copyvio Detector only found a 16% similarity, most of which is limited to definitions and explanations. This article meets all of the requirements of the sourcing/neutrality/copyvio criteria.
  • Is it presentable? This is certainly a topic that requires at least a basic understanding of philosophy to fully grasp. With that said, the topic is extraordinarily detailed and simplified without compromising its scope, which is not an easy feat. There is no history of edit warring or outstanding COI issues.
  • Are the hooks cited to a reliable source? Hook 1 and ALT 2 are sourced to reliable online sources and these have been checked. ALT 1 is cited to a source which is considered reliable, but its not online, assuming good faith here.
  • Are the hooks short enough? All three hooks are short enough.
  • Are the hooks interesting? I consider all three of them interesting. With that said, the original hook seems more accesible for people that are unfamiliar with philosophy, since the dichotomy is easily grasped.
  • QPQ review was completed.
  • Are there other subjective issues? No.
Overall, this is a very solid article that exceeds the standard set by the DYK criteria. Good work! - Caribbean~H.Q. 06:38, 27 January 2026 (UTC)
Hi Caribbean_H.Q. and thanks for the review! Phlsph7 (talk) 09:55, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Peer review

Dualism

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review


I've listed this article for peer review to prepare it for a featured article candidacy. I would be interested to learn what changes are required to fulfill the featured article criteria, but I'm also open to more casual improvement ideas. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:27, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Related Articles

Wikiwand AI