Dualistic thinking: what is it and how does it affect us?

This way of thinking leads us to simplify reality by breaking it down into two categories.

When we think about the things around us, or about people, or about ourselves, we tend to categorize in pairs: male-female, good-bad, hetero-homo, nature-culture, mind-body, innate-learned, individual-collective, and so on.

Far from being a coincidence, this dualistic thinking has been the transitional solution to philosophical, social and scientific dilemmas resulting from historical and cultural processes. that have resulted from historical and cultural processes. Broadly speaking, in the West we have organized (thought and manipulated) the world hierarchically in pairs since the era we know as "modernity".

The mind and the body: the modern dualism

Dualistic, dichotomous or binary thinking is a tendency we have in the West that has led us to organize the world in a way that until recently had gone unnoticed because it was considered "common sense". According to this, what exists can be divided into two fundamental categories, each of which is relatively independent. On the one hand would be the mind, ideas and rationality, and on the other the material.

This dualistic thought is also known as Cartesian because in the history of ideas it is considered that it was the works of René Descartes that finally inaugurated modern rational thought. This is based on the famous Cartesian cogito: I think therefore I am, which indicates that mind and matter are separate entities.and that matter (and everything that can be known) can be known through rational thought and mathematical logical language (for Descartes, mind, God and logical reasoning are closely related).

That is to say that very close to this tendency (and therefore to the way of doing science and our thoughts and practices), is the modern Western philosophy of rationalist tradition (which is based on the rationalistic (which is based on the belief that the only or the main valid way of objectively knowing the world is the one based on logical reasoning).

For this reason, the rationalist tradition is also known as objectivist or abstract, and is linked to other concepts that have to do with the traditional way of doing science, for example concepts such as "positivism", "reductionism", "computationalism".

With his works, Descartes represented a large part of the project of modernity, however, these works are also the product of a debate that in his time was trying to solve: the mind-body relationship, which he solves, among other things, through his opposition.

Impact on psychology and social organization.

Fundamentally rational dualistic thinking marked in an important way the development of modern science, which begins to study reality separately.which begins to study reality by separating mind from matter (and from there the body from the soul, life from non-life, nature from culture, man-woman, western-non-western, modern-non-modern, etc.).

Hence, this tradition is closely related to the knowledge and practice of psychology. the knowledge and practice of modern psychology.whose roots are established precisely in the divisions between the physical world and the non-physical world. That is to say that psychology is based on a physical-psychic model; where it is assumed that there is a mental reality (which corresponds to the "objective" reality) and another entity, material, which is the body.

But not only that, but rational knowledge was also androcentric, so that man is positioned as the center of the creation of knowledge and the highest rung of living beings. This strengthens, for example, the division between the "natural" and "human" worlds (which is at the basis of the ecological crisis and also in many of the ineffective alternatives to repair it); the same as we could analyze the divisions between the sexes, or in the bases of colonization, where certain (Western) paradigms are established as the only or the best possible worlds.

The problem of reasoning in this way

Basically, the problem with separating things and explaining them as a binomial is that our knowledge of the world is greatly simplified. our knowledge of the world, as well as our possibilities of action and interactionsand our possibilities for action and interaction; moreover, they are asymmetrical binarisms, i.e., they operate on the basis of often unequal power relations.

In other words, the problem itself is not thinking in pairs (which is also the case in non-Western societies), but that these pairs are almost always unequal in terms of power relations. are almost always unequal in terms of domination and oppression.. A clear example is the domination of nature, which since modernity has been constituted as a Western human imperative and which has recently been confronted as a serious problem.

Thus, like other philosophical and scientific paradigms, dualistic thinking does not remain only on the mental plane, but generates relationships, subjectivities, forms of identification and interaction with the world and with other people.

The return to the body and the overcoming of dualisms

Reclaiming the terrain of the body, matter and experience is one of the great postmodern tasks. In other words, the current question in many contexts, especially in the human and social sciences, is how to get out of dualistic thinking in order to generate a new way of thinking. how to get out of dualistic thinking in order to generate alternatives of relation and identification..

For example, there are several theories in the social sciences that have critically positioned themselves in the face of realist epistemology, androcentrism and truth based on modern science. What some of them propose, in very broad terms, is that although there is an external reality (or many realities), we do not have neutral access to it, since the knowledge we construct is subject to the characteristics of the context. the knowledge we construct is subject to the characteristics of the context where we construct it (a critical realism or a where we construct it (a critical realism or situated knowledge).

There are other proposals that propose that it is not necessary an absolute rejection of rationality and Cartesian thought, but a reorientation of this tradition, with which they reformulate the very concept of cognition, understanding it as an embodied action.

Thus, the horizons of rationality itself are extended, and the understanding of reality is developed considering interactions, since it is understood that what is between mind and body (and the other dichotomies) is the relationship, and it is this that must be analyzed and understood.

Some principles of relationality have even been developed as a new paradigm for understanding and organizing the world, as well as numerous social studies of emotion that go beyond the rationalist that go beyond the rationalist framework (in fact, their development has been recognized as an affective turn).

Some alternatives

In the social and political arena, some proposals have also emerged. For example, social movements that attempt to take up the concepts of Eastern, ancestral, pre-Hispanic and, in general, non-Western traditions; as well as political movements that denounce the claim of universality of the One World and propose the existence of many worlds. In general terms, these are proposals that seek to destabilize dualisms and question supremacy, not only in discourse but also in concrete actions and in everyday life.

It is clear that there is not only one alternative, the very development of alternatives is a historical consequence of an era in which the excessive rationality of modernity is questioned, because among other things we realized that it had some negative effects on interpersonal relationships and on the hierarchical construction of our identities.

That is to say, the program of overcoming dualism is an unfinished task in constant updating, which also arises as a consequence of historical and ideological projects of a specific of a specific context, and which above all puts on the table the need to reformulate our societies.

Bibliographical references:

• Grosfoguel, R. (2016). From "economic extractivism" to "epistemic extractivism" and "ontological extractivism": A destructive way of knowing, being and being in the world. Tabula rasa, 24: 123-143.
• Escobar, A. (2013). In the background of our culture: the rationalist tradition and the problem of ontological dualism. Tabula rasa, 18: 15-42.
• Araiza, A. & Gisbert, G. (2007). Transformations of the body in social psychology. [Electronic Version] Psicología: Teoría e Pesquisa (23)1, 111-118.