One Person, Indivisible

An end to dualism

Jun 06, 2025

This essay is the centerpiece of my book-in-progress The Quest for Wholeness and is key to understanding many of the other essays I have published and will publish on this Substack.

It is sometimes held that philosophy is remote from everyday life, but this view is mistaken. Here are five examples of philosophy in action:

Women who starve their bodies in order to conform to an unrealistic ideal of beauty
Businessmen who never exercise, live on carbs and energy drinks, and drive themselves like machines until they get heart attacks
People who are ashamed of their bodily functions
People who have promiscuous sex without emotional attachments
Intellectuals who live in their heads instead of in the real world

It may not seem so, but these people have a philosophical problem. Perhaps they were taught their philosophical beliefs by their parents or their church, or perhaps they breathed them in from the atmosphere. They probably did not acquire their assumptions by studying philosophy textbooks. Many such ideas are simply baked into everyday concepts and create a template for people’s developmental paths. Their philosophy might be wordless, but it's still a philosophy.

What is the philosophy in question? It’s called “dualism.”

Over the centuries, it has frequently been claimed that a human being is a divided being—some form of consciousness + a separable body. According to many preachers of religion, you are a soul temporarily associated with a body. According to many philosophers since René Descartes (1596–1650), you are an immaterial mind in mysterious communication with the material machine that is your body. According to many modern philosophers and scientists, you are a brain—its relation to the mind is unclear—and your body is no more than an appliance. All the people in the examples above likely fall prey to one or more of these theories.

Such theories claim that we are each a "house divided." This is not the case. Instead, a human being is an entity that must be recognized as a living whole—a conscious and bodily self, yes—but in no sense a mind, soul, or brain + a body. There is no fissure down your middle. You are one person, indivisible.

I call my version of anti-dualist theory personal holism. It is a validation of the human being.

Ideas on this subject have huge repercussions. A divided person is a self at war with itself, because the elements of each dyad will seem to have different tendencies and needs and because there will always be the temptation for one part to exploit, fight, or neglect the other.

Your thinking, your emotions, your vitality and sexuality, even your ability to dance and your sense of humor all depend on how you view yourself—not on your “official beliefs,” i.e., how you intellectually hold ideas as abstractions—but on how you live your actual beliefs. One of my core contentions is that you can be a dualist or a holist without knowing it, and any idea or doctrine will make an enormous difference in your life if you have let it sink in and become part of you, however implicitly.

What is a Person?

Now that I’ve said what I think a person isn’t, I should say what I think a person is.

Throughout this essay, I use the word "person" to denote a human being regarded as an indivisible entity. I aim to return to a child's unsullied, commonsense point of view, but it can take a lot of looking and thinking to attain and retain such a perspective as an adult.

My formal definition of "person” is a bit technical, but it will clarify why I make the points I do here and in other essays. I will offer an informal version of it in this section and unpack the formal one in a later one, at which time it should become clearer.

Here's the formal definition: A person is a conceptually conscious physical entity, alive and moving in a directly perceived world with other entities and persons.

To me this goes beyond being a dry abstraction—it is a passionate credo, an affirmation of a way of existence. Hopefully, you’ll feel something similar once I unpack it.

Here is the informal, simplified version of my definition, just to help readers see what I’m getting at: A person is an undivided rational being living in the real world. I hope this helps. But we will need more than this abbreviated version if we want a complete and defensible treatment of the concept.

You could consider my formulation an elaboration of Aristotle's immortal definition of the human being as "the rational animal." But I think his definition requires expansion and contextualization to scrape off the errors of the millennia.

Philosophizing

I'm not sure whether, in Western culture at least, one could have the problems I list above without the support of at least implicit philosophical dualism, but I suppose it is possible. Such actions might simply be a manifestation of non-intellectual personal issues such as trauma.

I am confident, however, that a deep encounter with a theory like personal holism can suggest a better way to manage one's life, regardless of whether one holds explicit or merely implicit dualist views. Holism offers ways to properly understand aspects of one's self and to choose to bring them into proper alignment in order to resolve life issues. For example, while a gamer’s sedentary lifestyle almost certainly does not derive from explicit dualist beliefs, he might still be treating himself as essentially a mind hooked up, Matrix-style, to a console, and an encounter with holist theory might inspire him to get out and move in the real world.

This is a therapeutic benefit of philosophy. However, let me add a strong caveat: I do not mean to reduce psychiatric disorders to philosophical errors. I am speaking only of subclinical problems. Good philosophy is therapeutic, but it is no substitute for therapy when that is called for.

This leads me to outline my approach to philosophy. In my opinion, good philosophy ultimately “cashes out” in everyday life. I believe that its starting point is the given, i.e. the world of tables and rocks and other people that we inhabit before science tries to "reduce" them to something else, and that its end point should be concrete benefits. As we go along, I will provide some proofs, but much of the time, I will simply point to where I think you should look, offer interpretations, and move false ideas from view.

Personal holism versus dualism is a war with many battles. I can’t report on them all in a single article. This foundational essay is an introduction to topics that will be covered in later essays, so bear with me if I leave some questions unanswered for now. As you will see if you read on in this book, personal holism is the basis of my views on values, intuition, authenticity, and more.

A Noun or an Adjective?

My dissolution of dualism in its various forms is at its base neither technical nor scientific. It's not even the result of long arguments, although I will provide some substantive arguments in other essays. In my opinion, dispelling dualism begins with the correct conceptualization of phenomena (that is to say, of us)—almost with the correct grammar, insofar as grammar reflects the basic features of the world, i.e. entities, attributes, actions, and relationships—which roughly correspond to nouns, adjectives/adverbs, verbs, and prepositions.

First of all, there is no problematic relationship between consciousness and body because there is no such thing as “consciousness.” To forestall understandable scoffing, let me be clear: I am not claiming that people are not conscious or self-aware or that they have no private thoughts that make a difference as far as their actions are concerned. Those positions are espoused by a philosophical theory known as eliminative materialism. According to this theory as it’s usually described, consciousness is at best just the heat emitted by the engine (presumably the brain) that’s doing the actual work.

No, I mean exactly what I said: there is no such thing as consciousness, except in the trivial sense that everything that exists is a "thing." As Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982) explains, “Consciousness is not a primary object, it is not an independent existent, it’s an attribute of a certain kind of existents.” (p. 251) Consciousness, she adds, presupposes a self that is conscious.

The word “consciousness” is really only the derivative noun form of the fundamental concept "conscious." As an attribute of an entity—for our purposes, a person—the concept “conscious” is correctly denoted by an adjective. It is merely a matter of grammatical convenience to add “-ness” to it and to thereby cast "conscious-ness" as a noun. It’s a way of naming it as a quality. The danger is that one might reify consciousness by treating it as an entity—as a consciousness. That would be like trying to strip the round-ness of a billiard ball from the ball itself. You can do so as an abstraction but not in reality. The ball (which is round) is the actual entity—the person (who is conscious) is the actual entity. The abuse of the grammar underwrites dualism.

I am a conscious person (noun modified by adjective), but I am not a consciousness (noun by convenience only).

If there is no such thing as consciousness in the reified sense, then there is no problematic relationship between it and a person as a whole, any more than there is a problematic relationship between a ball and its roundness. There’s just me being aware of the world. Looked at from this perspective, it’s not a remarkable fact at all, at least not philosophically. The science of how it is that human beings are conscious is another problem, and philosophers are going to be of little help solving it.

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"Mind" is grammatically somewhat different from “consciousness.” It is not the noun form of an adjective. The word really is a noun, but it does not denote an actual entity any more than “consciousness” does. When people go looking for minds, they are seeking a thing that is a “pure” consciousness, distinct from the body and which controls the body. It is like the reified round-ness of the ball again, separate and self-sufficient. Descartes calls it res cogitans—the "thinking thing."

The same analysis applies to “soul,” which is similar to “mind” except that the former is a life force that is supposed to come from and return to God, at least in Western thought. God has no place in the theory of personal holism because a disembodied consciousness, as God is thought to be, cannot exist. It is awful to contemplate how many people have spent their lives terrified of being sent to eternal torment by an insubstantial being.

The concept of “mind” is at root a cluster of metaphors. “I use my mind.” “I have an idea in mind.” “I need to wrap my mind around something.” And so forth. Literally, what these metaphors mean is “I think,” and there is nothing that says that a person as a whole can’t be the one doing the thinking. Your emotions, your posture, your level of activity, your breathing, and so forth affect your thinking. All of you is involved in your conscious-ness. It’s just what you attend to and what you let slip into the background that make you feel as if your “mind” is doing the work.

Dualists want to say, "I am my mind or soul,” which means "I am not my body." They view the body as a material object apart from the essential self, as a thing made of what Descartes calls res extensa or “extended stuff,” i.e. something that has volume, unlike immaterial res cogitans.

However, the central claim of personal holism is that you are "extended stuff," i.e. a physical entity that lives, thinks, feels, sees, touches, etc. Res cogitans is res extensa. Look where you will, there's no non-physical mind or soul to be found. We are not spooky entities drifting in the ether, because mind and soul are not entities at all.

I am neither a mind nor a soul. I am a person. I am living, conscious matter. More on matter in another essay, but I will say that the idea that matter cannot be conscious is just a prejudice: we deal with conscious matter in the form of animals and people all the time.

Many modern dualists, taking a more “scientific” tack, divide a human being into a brain and a body and say the former is the true self. The brain is a different case from the mind/soul. The brain really is a physical entity correctly denoted by a noun, but it is conceptually, organically, and functionally subordinate to the living whole that is a person (or other animal). We would not even know what a brain was outside of the context of a living, conscious, bodily being. It would be just a hunk of goo. These dualists frequently say that the brain could be transplanted into another skull without sacrificing personal identity. Sometimes the body in this kind of dualism is facetiously referred to as a “meat suit.” However, the claim that a person is their brain is self-stultifying.

I have a brain, but I am not my brain.

The newest and perhaps most insidious form of dualism can be found in theories of “transhumanism.” According to some versions of this view, you are like a computer: your brain is the hardware, and your “mind” is the software. This notion is doubly wrong in my view: first, it treats the “mind” as an entity—namely, a program, which is, in addition, an immaterial thing—and second, it overemphasizes the role of the brain in the whole person, while the body is regarded as dispensable. This theory leads to ludicrous notions such as the possibility of uploading personal consciousness to other “devices.” This is the science fiction update of Cartesian philosophy. I don’t know what effects such beliefs would have on the people who believe them, but they can’t be good.

I am not a program.

(I will discuss brains and transhumanist ideas at a later time. For now, refer to this in-depth treatment by Thomas Fuchs.)

Furthermore, most dualists believe that we are an inner being—brain, mind, or soul—watching the world on inner TV. But I am not an inner self that sees and touches representations of the world within me, because the brain and eye and flesh working as a living, moving whole are in contact with the world directly. (More on this in a later essay.) According to personal holism, we live among the trees and other people without an intermediary. They are right here for us, as we are right here with them. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961) states ". . . there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself." (p. lxxiv)

Descartes, though, writes “I am certain that I can have no knowledge of what is outside me except by means of the ideas I have within me” He was wrong. We are in the world; it is not within us. We do not have to infer its existence; it is the given. Sadly, even neurologists and philosophers who do not believe in an immaterial mind or soul but who rather believe that the brain is the self are Cartesians on this subject.

Tying all of this back to my formal definition, the real entity, the noun in the paradigmatic sense, is “person.” We as persons are not immaterial, but rather conscious physical entities living and moving among other physical entities. Furthermore, we are not merely conscious like the other animals: We are rational beings. Lastly, we are not souls, minds, or brains separated from the world; we are in it; we are aware of it and other people as immediately real.

Here is the unpacking of my formulation, stated in the first person:

I am a conceptually conscious . . . I am aware and rational
physical . . . I possess volume and mass
entity, . . . I am a distinct whole
living and moving . . . I am an animate being that explores and manipulates my environment
in a directly perceived world . . . which is immediately present
with other entities . . . I am not the only thing that exists
and persons . . . I share the world with other selves

Put it together. Say it as an affirmation. Say it out loud, slowly and with feeling, using the unpacking to linger on the meaning of every word and phrase:

I am a conceptually conscious physical entity, alive and moving in a directly perceived world with other entities and persons.

Sometimes I repeat it until it sinks in and becomes part of me. Knowing what I am helps me feel grounded.

I hope this makes my theory and its usefulness clearer. I will have much more to say about these ideas in this and later essays, but I think I have laid a solid foundation to build upon.

The Body in Mind

So, if the “mind” is, as I say, just a cluster of metaphors and a person is not just their brain, what, if anything real, is a body?

A living body in the physical sense is a three-dimensional entity with mass. It is a real thing, unlike “a” consciousness; it consists of matter (which we understand to some extent), but it has to be properly conceptualized.

One could say with Merleau-Ponty that "I am my body." But while I have no problem with claiming that I am bodily or corporeal (both adjectives, not nouns), the traditional concept of "body" (a noun) typically refers to a mindless thing and thus suggests materialism, although that is very much not how Merleau-Ponty means it. I don’t think this problem arises with my formulation, “A person is conscious matter,” because “conscious” is simply an attribute of some configurations of matter. They are not distinct elements.

(By the way, I am not committed to the idea that matter fundamentally has volume and mass. I am only speaking in the terms that reflect how we normally experience it. Reality’s ultimate constitution is irrelevant to my theory. The world which we inhabit consists of mountains, houses, dogs, the sun, etc. These are the things we directly know and live among, not subatomic particles [or whatever] as such. Philosophically, I adhere to what might be called “the primacy of the given.” In other words, you can’t get to a theory of subatomic particles while doubting the reality of rocks, scientists, their equipment, and so forth. Our current scientific theory could be proven wrong without changing our experience of the given at all, because the given comes before any attempt to reduce it to something else.)

If I am right, referring to a literal body as a separable part of a person is as inappropriate as referring to consciousness as a separable part of a person. Your “body” is not some kind of hanger-on, not a machine, tool, prison, temple, or meat suit. Definitely not a “dunghill” or something that has to be “beaten into submission” as some Christian authors have said.

I am reminded of George MacDonald (1824 - 1905) who mentioned someone saying that they had a soul. His reply to them was “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” This is precisely how I do not want to use the word “body.”

I find it better to dispense with talk of minds and bodies (in a literal sense), instead sticking with my formulation’s claim that a person is a conscious, living, physical whole. We can, of course, still use the term "body" to refer to our physical aspect, as in "I feel my emotions in my body," or to refer to the part of a person below the head, as in “He has a beautiful body.” And of course, metaphors of mind and body are alright as long as they are used carefully, without letting oneself be seduced by them. We shouldn’t stop saying “I have an idea in mind,” just because dualism is false any more than we should stop referring to the setting sun when we know that it is the earth that rotates.

The actual metaphysical “chunk” that humanity comes in is the person. Our mental and physical attributes cannot be separated from the entities that are us except as abstractions, just as the wetness of rain cannot be separated from the rain.

I do not have a body. I am a bodily being. I am truly one person, indivisible, a self entire.

Consequences of Dualism

Dualistic beliefs, whether explicit or implicit, give rise to or support certain behaviors and feelings. Wherever there is dualism there is almost inevitably a conflict between what one thinks of as one’s mind, brain, or soul and what one thinks of as one’s body:

One might try to dissociate from or block “input” from the body, feelings, the “outer world,” and/or other people because one isn’t comfortable “in” one’s body and so distances oneself from it.
One might try to control aspects of one’s life to excess, seeking to establish the mind or brain as a tyrant over the body, as our starving women and our businessmen examples might do.
One might try to "live in one's head" and treat concepts and other people as mere ideas to ponder or items for entertainment, with no connection to the real world, like the intellectuals of our example.
One might hate or be ashamed of natural bodily functions or desires because the body is a foreign, unclean thing.
In a bit of a switch, one might identify with one’s bodily “instincts” and believe that reason (the mind) is only a source of rationalizations and evasions, as some promiscuous people seem to.

Let’s Talk About Sex

Sexuality is a good topic for discussing dualism and holism in action, because it will let me work through some of my theory. I am well aware that human sexuality has nearly infinite variations and that there is no way to cover a significant fraction of them in a single essay. I am just picking a couple of common sexual types to make my points.

Some dualists might feel that their sexual urges are animalistic things of the body, which they regard as separate from the essential self. There are multiple ways of instantiating this belief. Let’s examine two cases:

1. A religious dualist might feel herself to be a pure soul made by God and tethered to an animal body. Such a person might feel guilty about even the thought of having sex, and it could be difficult for her to build a solid emotional attachment around something she believes to be sinful. This person might feel tragically conflicted.

2. A “scientific,” i.e. reductionistic, dualist (for example, an extreme believer in evolutionary psychology) is more complicated than the religious one. He believes his emotions and behaviors are driven by neural patterns, hormones, and ultimately genes. Such a person is nearly always going to be a determinist. Sexuality for him is simply an aspect of his animal nature and is no more “spiritual” than digestion.

A reductionistic dualist might relish sex. But he still regards it as bestial at its root, and if he is consistent, he would have to believe that love is only an evolutionary ruse designed to maximize the survival of offspring. If one can evade the sentimentality, it would be better just to get the physical pleasure. He still thinks that sex is crude, but in a good way. Needless to say, he is missing out on the emotional qualities of sexuality. He is a sexual cynic.

But notice that he tacitly believes that there is a part of himself that is above instinct, a part that can do the objective science he believes in and make informed decisions about things like sex, even though, according to his theory, all the things in life—including his conclusions and actions—are determined by evolution and not by facts and logic. He exempts reason from his reduction of human nature. He does not really see himself as a brute.

So, he is actually a dualist: on one side of his dyad lies the instinctual part of the brain along with the body, and on the other lies something like the rational mind (although he probably wouldn’t use that word) that is presumably also part the brain but that is functionally separate. It’s a rational-self versus physical-self kind of dualism. It’s an alternative form but it still fits the pattern.

Although the two cases are superficially different, they are both based on the error of dualism. In each case there is that same split.

The two types of dualists I am examining here agree that sexuality is base. It’s just that one tries to ward it off while the other wallows in it. Such people often don’t know what to do with their sexual urges when they appear in adolescence, so they fall back on a theory from religion or science that they were taught as youngsters or that they encountered along the way.

However, if dualism is overcome, which it can be by my analysis or something like it, then they can feel that their sexuality is a healthy and integral part of themselves that can be developed within the context of a thoughtful life. Now their unformed juvenile desires can mature into romantic love.

Personal holism can help with the underlying mistake. It can facilitate what I call “attitude adjustments,” which are the bridges between abstract ideas and concrete experience, feelings, and behaviors.

Your ideas, if you let them sink in and become part of you, determine your feelings. Unintegrated, merely intellectually held abstract beliefs, while they can be a guide to action, do not directly affect feelings as much. Holism, if you think it through and let it sink it, opens up the opportunity to reclaim your physical feelings, including your emotions and sexuality. It will “unblock” you. You can untie the little knots of guilt and arrogance within you. You will no longer perceive your sexuality as something alien or merely “animalistic”; instead, you will recognize it as an aspect of the innocent person you are, free from the labels of sinner or cynic. You will do more than just change your official beliefs; you will change your attitudes.

Furthermore, the concept of “attitude” refers to physical posture and “character armor” in addition to outlook and mood, and embracing personal holism can help one adjust these as well. The religious dualist might be tensed-up and literally suppress her sensual and sexual feelings, perhaps to the point of becoming sexually unresponsive, especially if she’s a woman, while the reductionist might be facile and smug, which, I think, requires a certain physical posture, tense and sloppy at the same time, because he is trying too hard to glibly act out his theory. He might falsify his emotions if they conflict with his philosophical narrative. If he is a man, he is likely to be excessively phallocentric because he has cut his sensuality off from his emotional life. Such attitudes can also be adjusted by letting holistic beliefs sink in and thereby giving oneself permission to explore all of one’s feelings.

These dynamics constitute philosophy in action. Holism and dualism are more than just abstractions that exist in the “mind.”

I think that practically speaking, based on my rather limited experience with the subject, the keys to overcoming sexual dualism include sensuality and passionate intimacy. I’m going to make some suggestions here; take them with the appropriate measure of salt.

For sensuality, try warm, soapy showers or bubble baths. Caress yourself regularly, even when you’re not masturbating.

Relax and let your emotions, erotic and otherwise, permeate you. Let them be you. Say “I love you” to yourself. Dance like no one’s watching. Be sensual in a simple and innocent way.

Erotic intimacy is a form of shared sexual wholeness with your beloved. Gaze into their eyes. Nuzzle the base of their neck. Give and receive all-over caresses, backrubs, and foot massages. Lots of hugs and handholding. Exchange mischievous glances. Think about sex when you’re with them—and when you’re not. (Although of course sometimes you must balance a checkbook or change a diaper. Sex can’t be everything!)

Share pleasure and know that it’s special because it comes from someone whom you rightly idealize. Desire their pleasure as much as your own. Never take them for granted. If you feel wholeness in your passion, you will want to share space with a good person and not just with a body, no matter how nice it looks. Your beloved is right there with you, and you should be present to each other, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, all at the same time.

You can sometimes find yourself in another person. With the aid of holism, you just might attain or retain sexual enlightenment.

One could apply the idea of “attitude adjustments” to emotions in general, to moving, eating, and so forth. I will return to some of these subjects in later essays, including this one about values.

Me Doing Things

I do many things, even though I am just one thing. I, as a single package, see, think, feel, walk, talk, love, eat, breathe, and so forth. My “mind,” “soul,” or brain does not do them by remote control. My “body” is not commanded to do them by a consciousness. I do them: I am a thinker, a walker, a lover, an eater, etc.

If I can free myself from dualism, then my sense of self, my strength and grace, my rational awareness, my emotions, my vitality—all can suffuse my whole person: my arms, my legs, my torso, my genitals, my face, my scalp, my emotions, my intuitions, my reason. They are all me. I am present, and I should be able to radiate my presence into a world that is present to me.

Some might think that words like "suffuse" and "presence" do not sound very philosophical. I would respond that we often don't have words for the qualities of our lives and that therefore we must resort to somewhat poetic imagery to capture the psychological action that embodies the philosophical realization.

My mantra is “I am present among the things of the world, and they are present to me.” If you are concerned that I am leaning too much on poetry, then have a look at this essay in which I unpack the concept of “presence,” which is basically a self-conscious awareness of oneself and other existents as physical beings. You can see how this connects with personal holism. However, I believe that even without the technical analysis, the poetic language can offer helpful guidance, if one relaxes a narrow, intense intellectual focus and follows it.

Try it. Let go. You won't lose control. You can always check the results with more intellectual scrutiny later. Relax and let your awareness and warmth suffuse your whole person. Quietly stand on the ground beneath your feet and listen to the breeze ruffling the leaves of the trees until you feel your presence. I am here.

What I'm describing is mindfulness but not meditation. It’s not just an occasional, sustained focus on one thing, such as breathing. Rather, it’s a continuous adjustment of your fundamental attitudes. You bring your perception, feelings, and thoughts into harmony with the reality of your being as you untense the alleged barriers between “mind/soul/brain” and “body” and let your suppleness flow.

I myself continually make small recalibrations, but I do my major reset every day in the shower. I reach out and think and feel:

This is all real! I am alive! The water and the tiles and the shower curtain and the light and I myself are right here, and I can touch them and see them filling space. I feel vitality and joy at my own existence. My thinking and emotions are as clear and brisk as the water on my skin. I am present in the world, and it is present to me!

A good shower is one of the most profound benefits of a good philosophy. Reclaim reality and you can wash away the errors of the centuries.

Conclusion (for now)

There are many disciplines, collectively known as "bodywork" that may help overcome dualism, but I do not know enough to endorse any of them. I do know this, however: the type of dualism we are discussing, if followed to its logical conclusions, will cut you off from aspects of yourself. Your “body” will be “over there,” flat, merely a tool. Your “mind” will be a prisoner.

Perhaps you do not have the kinds of problems I describe. If so, congratulations! However, the influence of dualism is not only pernicious but also subtle, so you might want to give the matter some thought. Almost any kind of self-neglect can be a sign of dualism, as can excessive self-discipline.

This essay is the introduction to the topic of personal holism, which is the centerpiece of my book. Later, I will discuss the significance of matter and the brain, offer a technical proof of the theory, and cover ramifications for motion and emotion. Basing my ideas on personal holism, I will discuss values, presence, intuition, authenticity, and more. In all cases, I hope to provide more than arid philosophizing. My view of philosophy is that it should be accessible to any educated person and helpful to anyone who encounters it. If my theory is correct, maybe it will leave the reader (that is to say, you) with a warm glow of happiness.