Research Paper on:
Dualism and John Foster

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of scientific requirements, belaboring the fact that the stringent community typically adopted a reductionist approach when it came to issues of variability. It was his contention that science maintained  a strict and finite view of things that he perceived to have an otherwise broad range and potentiality; however, these aspects were often squelched by a need for systematic control.  Foster (1989) surmised that there with only two questions worth pondering in relation to human consciousness: Can conscious experience be separate from  the brain, and can conscious experience wield causal influence over brain activity? What he found was a dichotomy of results depending upon whoever was given the opportunity to answer  the question. For the first question, dualists agreed that conscious experience can, indeed, exist apart from the brain, inasmuch as they believe that "there are independent, co-existing mental and  physical worlds" (Bissell, 1994, pp. 84-87). However, the monists oppose such a concept, contending that there is just one world where physical entities exist, unlike the claims of dualists  who say that other worlds of paranormal, supernatural and a conscious afterlife are plentiful, thus allowing for this phenomenon. Materialists (monists), in relation to the second question, believe that  such is not the case, being that consciousness "is a causally impotent by-product, inner aspect, or parallel correlate of events in the brain" (Bissell, 1994, pp. 84-87). By contrast,  mentalists (dualists) assert there is reason to believe that consciousness does have power over the brain, which ultimately serves to control and guide behavior and interaction. II. INTERNAL MIND/EXTERNAL  MATERIALISM A considerable amount of Fosters (1989) conjecture has been credited with taking scientific thought to places it had never been in relation