<P> Mind--body dualism, or mind--body duality, is a view in the philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are distinct and separable . Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind--body problem . </P> <P> Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls and further elaborated a hierarchical arrangement, corresponding to the distinctive functions of plants, animals, and people: a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism that all three share; a perceptive soul of pain, pleasure, and desire that only people and other animals share; and the faculty of reason that is unique to people only . In this view, a soul is the hylomorphic form of a viable organism, wherein each level of the hierarchy formally supervenes upon the substance of the preceding level . Thus, for Aristotle, all three souls perish when the living organism dies . For Plato however, the soul was not dependent on the physical body; he believed in metempsychosis, the migration of the soul to a new physical body . </P> <P> Dualism is closely associated with the thought of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical--and therefore, non-spatial--substance . Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self - awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence . Hence, he was the first to formulate the mind--body problem in the form in which it exists today . Dualism is contrasted with various kinds of monism . Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism, but property dualism may be considered a form of emergent materialism or non-reductive physicalism in some sense . </P> <P> Ontological dualism makes dual commitments about the nature of existence as it relates to mind and matter, and can be divided into three different types: </P>

Was one of the first to suggest that the mind can cause physical ailments