What is contemporary substance dualism?

Contemporary substance dualism is the philosophical position that the human person is not merely a physical body, but a fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance—the soul—that possesses consciousness and identity.

Why is the unity of consciousness a problem for physicalism?

The unity of consciousness is a problem for physicalism because physical systems are divisible and spatially extended, whereas a single conscious experience requires a non-composite, simple subject.

The Substance of Consciousness Book Cover by Brandon Rickabaugh and J.P. Moreland

The Substance of Consciousness
A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism
By Brandon Rickabaugh and J.P. Moreland

In an era dominated by physicalist, materialist, and recent turns to panpsychist accounts of the mind, The Substance of Consciousness provides the most rigorous, multidisciplinary defense of substance dualism in the last century. This work establishes the human person as an embodied, fundamental, and immaterial substance, offering a vital alternative to the contemporary reduction of the soul.

Winner of the 2024
Dallas Willard Book Award

The Substance of Consciousness was honored with the 2024 Dallas Willard Book Award by the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture. This award recognizes original scholarship that extends Willard’s conviction that unseen realities—such as the soul—are not only real but available to be known and lived.

Publisher Overview

A singularly powerful and rigorousargument in favor of modernsubstance dualismIn The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism, two distinguished philosophers deliver a unique and powerful defense of contemporary substance dualism, which makes the claim that the human person is an embodied fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance.

Multidisciplinary in scope, the book explores areas of philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the sociology of mind-body beliefs.

Brandon Rickabaugh and J. P. Moreland present the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and rigorous non-edited work on substance dualism in the field, as well as a detailed history of how property and substance dualism have been presented and evaluated over the last 150 years. Alongside developing new and updated positive arguments for substance dualism, they also discuss key metaphysical notions and distinctions that inform the examination of substance dualism and its alternatives.

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Endorsements

“Can we explain the unity of consciousness, or our continuity over time, without the postulation of a simple, immaterial entity as the seat of human consciousness? Materialists and panpsychists hope we can, but The Substance of Consciousness raises powerful challenges to all of these attempts to explain the human mind ‘on the cheap."

Philip Goff

Professor of Philosophy

Durham University

Charles Taliaferro

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy

St. Olaf College

"Rickabaugh and Moreland have produced a tour de force in this brilliant, systematic case for contemporary forms of substance dualism. It is a treasure trove of arguments, objections, and replies that should be required reading in philosophy of mind today, challenging the current, ingrained prejudice against dualism.”

"Though most materialists don't know it, we're in the midst of a renaissance of intellectually serious substance dualism thirty years in the making. The Substance of Consciousness will push the crest of that dualist wave even higher. Materialists who hope to resist have our work cut out for us."

Andrew M. Bailey

Professor of Philosophy

Yale-NUS College

C. Stephen Evans

Emeritus University Professor,

Baylor University

Professorial Research Fellow,

University of Notre Dame Australia

“This is a stunning book. Rickabaugh and Moreland marshal a formidable phalanx of arguments for substance dualism as an account of consciousness and various aspects of the soul/mind and body relation...No reasonable physicalist can ignore this book.”

"Moreland and Rickabaugh's monograph is a first-rate treatment of the most important issues concerning the existence and nature of consciousness and the soul. I highly recommend it!"

Stewart Goetz

Ross Frederick Wicks Distinguished

Professor in Philosophy and Religion, Ursinus College

Robert C. Koons

Professor of Philosophy

University of Texas at Austin

“Moreland and Rickabaugh have written the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and sophisticated defense of substance dualism available…Especially impressive is their creative use of neo-Aristotelian, scholastic, and 19th-century sources (Brentano, Husserl) to develop an attractive synthesis of dualism with hylomorphism...”