This page is a “stub”: a placeholder, so I can link to it, while I have not yet finished writing it. The text that follows, if any, is an explanation of what the page will say, rather than the proper contents of the page itself.
Dualism is the stance that individuals can be unambiguously identified and separated.
In the dualistic stance, the self exists independently from other people, from the world, and from any sort of eternal ordering principle such as God.
Dualism comes in both eternalist and nihilist forms. Eternalist dualism is typical of traditional Western religions. It holds that the true self, or soul, is separate from God, or other eternal ordering principle. God is transcendent and separate from the world. (Eternalist monism, by contrast, asserts the ultimate identity of God, the world, and the soul.)
The scientific-materialist world view tends toward nihilist dualism (although it is possible to hold a scientific-materialist view without either nihilism or dualism). On this view, individuals exist separately, but have no real meaning or purpose.
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