How can you have dualism in Hard SF?
Note that the distinction between science fiction and fantasy breaks down when you add rigorous rules. If you have dragons or hovercraft is beside the point, if the distinction of being "hard" is what's important. And if you really had intelligent spirits as part of the natural world, figuring out how that works would in fact be "science", right?
Keeping that in mind, how could you invent a universe that had dualism as the underlying way human intelligence worked? That is, rather than intelligence and self-awareness emerging from information processing taking place in a purely physical substrate, spirits were (or needed) something else.
The resulting universe should be enough like ours that the setting of early 20th century civilization would be the same. Clearly, the kinds of evidence that ruled out dualism in the real universe would be exactly the opposite, and these results, appearing in the 20th century with brain scans and probes and such, would be the point where this fictional universe diverges from ours.
What would they have found instead? How will this different universe diverge as it invents semiconductors and computers and enters the information age? Perhaps other technology that relies on mastery of quantum-level physics will turn out differently. But, we won't see any difference until around WWII.
That is, how could dualism be possible and yet have a universe roughly like ours? Conversely, how do you ensure that brains wouldn't work without this extra something?
To clarify: I'm not talking about the Philosophical Zombie idea or otherwise that there is some magic ingredient on top of the physical brain serving some vague purpose.
I mean that a human spirit (animating intelligence) is something that exists in a different realm. Out-of-body travel and ghosts allow for fully intelligent beings to act without a body. Conversely, the brain is not what causes thinking, memory, reactions, behavior, etc. (Note if the brain did provide some feature as a particular story universe, then that feature would be missing in the disembodied spirit.)
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/40663. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Several scientific theories predict the presence of extra higher dimensions.
Physics has validated (or at least not falsified) a 4 dimensional (3+1) model of space-time, and if string theory is correct then there are possibly 6+ other dimensions that make up reality, and that we have no way of detecting yet.
Physics can neither prove or disprove these dimensions, and so they remain parts of theoretical models.
I propose that our "spirits" are nth dimensional constructs that are anchored to our physical bodies/minds. While the "spirit" is anchored to the body and mind, all its input is filtered through that connection and processed with the mind to give reality a shape.
To bring up the analogy of flatland, this would be a like a 3D entity being tied to the 2D space of flatland, unable to perceive the 3D space around it while all of its input is coming from that 2D frame of reference.
Once the body dies, the anchor is dissolved and the "spirit" is free to go elsewhere in the higher dimension.
To an nth dimensional "spirit", physical boundaries like walls wouldn't be boundaries at all, just interesting features on the 3 dimensional map below. In this way a spirit could appear to be going "through" a wall by simply going "over/around" it in the higher dimension.
Is is possible that with enough practice, or in near death experiences, a persons anchor could slacken somewhat or temporarily come loose, allowing the "spirit" to drift, and this would account for OOB experiences.
It would also be possible for "spirits" to exist in this higher dimension that never had bodies, which would have abilities resembling those attributed to classic angels and demons; namely observing and influencing people and events, able to interact when they want to by "dipping down" into our physical plain, but be completely undetectable to any scientific instruments or physical perception when they don't want to be. For these "spirits", the things that people have seen as wings might actually be the nth dimensional anchors that allow them to move about in our reality as they choose.
Edit Addressing the brain as a computer:
The brain is a computer, and this idea doesn't change that at all.
Take a normal computer. You plug in a thermometer unit. An electrical signal is sent through the thermistor, and depending on temperature the thermistor alters the signal, which is sent back to the processor. Math is done, and the computer tells you what the temperature is. The brain isn't to different. And if the brain is damaged, like a processor, then the information passing through the damaged sections it will become lost or mangled. So the part of you that is the "spirit" gets bad information and either has to react to it as is, or work around it. Sometimes the brain will reroute functions, or medication will relieve symptoms, or the person may just learn to live with it, compensating for their altered perception mentally.
This does not break OOB, since while the "spirit" is working through the body it uses those senses which overload any others, but if the tether is loosened then it would lose contact with those senses, and the "spirits" own "senses" will take over. The (n)D senses will be different from those needed to live in a (3+1)D world, and it may be possible through discipline to tap into some of the (n)D senses.
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