An introduction to dualism: the mental to the fore?

The contemporary debate around consciousness presents us (and often leads us to embrace) a specific current of thought: physicalism, which states that everything in our reality is physical1. In this paper I want to introduce the main points of the opposite view, dualism, according to which there are two different realms of reality: the mental and the physical one. In the introduction I give the main idea and sketch the general intuition behind dualism. In Section 1 I present substance dualism and its more refined version, which is interactionism. In sub-section 1.1 I describe property dualism, which is the mainstream form of dualism adopted nowadays. In sub-sections 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 are proposed two variations of property dualism: epiphenomenalism and panpsychism. Finally, in Section 2 and its two sub-sections (2.1 and 2.2.) I recall Frank Jackson’s famous 1982 thought experiment and two classical objections to it, which are the Ability Hypothesis and the phenomenal concept strategy one. I conclude with a short reflection if we were to take under consideration the acceptance of dualism as an explanation of consciousness and its nature. PS: there's a mistake at page 12, as there's a note in the middle of the page that is not supposed to be there.