Here's a link to a philosophical defense of old-fashioned interactionist dualism , dated 2006 and submitted by a candidate for an M.A. in philosophy at Monash University. I'll come to Koksvik's argument in another post, but for now I'll review my understanding of the state of play. Interactionist dualism was famously Rene Descartes ' answer to the question of the relationship between mind and body . There exist a lot of different possible answers to this question, from the materialist reductionism that says in essence that the 'mind' is an illusion, to the Berkeleyan idealism that says in essence that the 'body' is an illusion. Dualists all by definition say that mind and body are very different things or types of thing, and that they are both real. Dualists differ among themselves on whether the mind and body really interact. They certainly SEEM to interact! If I skip lunch, the thought "I'm hungry" will be in m...