That's why in Chan Buddhism there is the namarupa - mind-body. — Agustino

Nāmarūpa is fundamental to all Buddhism, not simply Ch'an. It means literally 'name and form' and is one of the '12 nidanas' or links of dependent origination.

There are explicitly dualist schools in Hinduism, specifically samhkya, which has parallels to Cartesian dualism, as it believes the two fundamental substances are consciousness (purusa) and matter (prakriti) which are joined together in the human form. (However in many other respects they are of course vastly different as it is an Indian rather than Western philosophy.)

Buddhists will generally say that body and mind are two aspects of a whole, but what that 'whole' is, is an open question, in my opinion, as it is neither body nor mind. Interestingly, I have found that Buddhist scholasticism will sometimes adopt quite a dualist model, as in the following statement of the Dalai Lama, when discussing the ground of re-birth:

There are many different logical arguments given in the words of the Buddha and subsequent commentaries to prove the existence of past and future lives. In brief, they come down to four points: the logic that things are preceded by things of a similar type, the logic that things are preceded by a substantial cause, the logic that the mind has gained familiarity with things in the past, and the logic of having gained experience of things in the past.

Ultimately all these arguments are based on the idea that the nature of the mind, its clarity and awareness, must have clarity and awareness as its substantial cause. It cannot have any other entity such as an inanimate object as its substantial cause. This is self-evident. 1 — H H The Dalai Lama

Sounds rather dualistic to me.

Anyway, from the viewpoint of Buddhism, many modern people are 'Cārvāka', i.e. materialists, because they believe that with the death of the body, the elements return to the earth, etc, and there are no karmic consequences ('fruit of action') which is of course not the Buddhist view. However Buddhism also doesn't believe there is a sub-stratum or enduring kernel of consciousness which migrates from life to life, rather that the causes which give rise to a given life, will give rise to another life in future, which will experience itself as 'I and mine', up until the point where all identification with, and attachment to, the causes of rebirth cease.

Buddhists will generally say that body and mind are two aspects of a whole, but what that 'whole' is, is an open question, in my opinion, as it is neither body nor mind. — Wayfarer

Right, but this sounds more like neutral monism (much like Spinoza and Schopenhauer) rather than substance dualism or Platonic/Aristotelian hylomorphism. Neutral monism is very popular today in the West.

Anyway, from the viewpoint of Buddhism, many modern people are 'Cārvāka', i.e. materialists, because they believe that with the death of the body, the elements return to the earth, etc, and there are no karmic consequences ('fruit of action') which is of course not the Buddhist view. However Buddhism also doesn't believe there is a sub-stratum or enduring kernel of consciousness which migrates from life to life, rather that the causes which give rise to a given life, will give rise to another life in future, which will experience itself as 'I and mine', up until the point where all identification with, and attachment to, the causes of rebirth cease. — Wayfarer

Yeah, but this doesn't have much import to me, the same way that Schopenhauer's argument for immortality doesn't have much import. To say that consciousness continues which will experience "I and mine" isn't t say that I continue in any shape or form (unless I identify myself with that consciousness which says "I and mine"). Also what you're putting down here as the Buddhist view isn't the view of all forms of Buddhism. What is meant by many through reincarnation is that your thought patterns, desires, tendencies, atoms and the like reincarnate - the Five Skandhas. This can be a very materialist doctrine in itself, as much as it can be spiritual. Depends what you consider your "self" ;) .

That's simply reifying ape behaviour into a concept. — Banno

And we reify the abstract behaviors of a wrench into the concrete term "wrench." Such is the purpose of language. The questions are: (1) did the wrench preexist the "wrench," and (2) is the ape's knowledge of the wrench of a different type (as opposed to degree) than the person's?

I've never understood how #1 couldn't be answered in the affirmative, but that's your thesis.

Regarding #2, you would hold that a languageless mechanical savant, gifted in nothing but the ability to repair all that is broken, who is a maestro with everything wrench like, knows less of the wrench in his hand than a helpless child who is simply able to recite the word "wrench" when his father holds various wrenches in front of him?

What does our child know of the wrench in our savant's hand than does of our savant other than that wrenches have names?

What sort of thing is a concept, apart from what shows in behaviour? — Banno

It is difficult to provide non-circular definitions because all things are immanent within experience. So our whole conceptual puzzle will, in the end, be circular. It is impossible to create a non-circular but complete philosophical account of reality.

But that behavior illustrates that the monkey understands that banana is food and rocks are not. What does food mean? Food means something that nourishes the body and satisfies the desire expressed through hunger. So the monkey feels hungry and sees that banana satisfies that hunger by - as apokrisis tells us - imitation. I suppose the first time baby monkey feels hungry, they don't quite know what that feeling is supposed to be about, because to understand what it is about means precisely to understand how it fits in with other things - when it begins, when it ends, etc. - to understand its place in the causal chain.

And the baby monkey doesn't yet understand this. But it sees mother monkey eat banana. It imitates mother monkey and eats banana too. Then hunger disappears. This experience is repeated with regularity over and over again, and soon monkey starts to form a conception of what hunger, food, etc. are. How does it do this? By seeing the regularities and patterns to be found between those aspects of experience.

It's similar to how we learn a language. We go from speaking no language at all, to becoming quite capable to speak one language. And it's a bit miraculous when you think about it, because we essentially learn to speak from nothing. Language is nothing else but the identification of patterns between sounds and other experiences. When you say "fire!" I go back in my memory and seek for the experience associated with you saying fire.

All this has to do with memory. It is memory that makes conception of any kind (including linguistic conception) possible to begin with.

...the concrete term "wrench." — Hanover

What is concrete about the term wrench? It is not the name of an individual; nor is it universally the name of one class of thing; nor are there no exceptions, for there are things of which we wonder if the term is correctly applied.

Did the wrench exist before it was named? You seem to think the answer obvious; but I invite you to reconsider. You have framed the question in a way that suits your analysis; the first spanners apparently were to tension crossbows; an individual box spanner for each bow, because they were no standard sizes. It was a few hundred years before sizes were standardised, the term wrench not being used until 1793.

So were there wrenches before the word "wrench: was used? Yep, but they were not much like the wrenches we use today. All you have succeeded in doing is applying the term wrench post hoc.

And regarding your second question, you commit the fallacy of false antithesis...

Perhaps you can be free and easy with language because it suits your view to pretend that the interaction between words and world is simple and goes in one direction: words name things; hence thing and minds are different. But of course this is overly simple, as my description of the interaction of things and words shows. There is no one thing called a wrench; so, again, what is a "wrench"? What is a concept, apart from what we do?

It is difficult to provide non-circular definitions because all things are immanent within experience. So our whole conceptual puzzle will, in the end, be circular. It is impossible to create a non-circular but complete philosophical account of reality. — Agustino

What you can't do without circularity is define each word in terms of other words. But it does not follow that our words do not inform us about reality.

I keep quoting that neat bit from PI ⎰201 about there being a way of using words that is not in terms of other words. It seems to fall on deaf ears, but to me it is profound. It's not about how one learns to use a particular word that already exists within one's shared language; it is about how one learns to use words. Mere imitation, while relevant, will not cut it.

Language is nothing else but the identification of patterns between sounds and other experiences. — Agustino

That's crap. As if we never do things with words. We don't just experience, we act. Language is not so passive, nor solipsistic.

Again, see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/107699

there is a picture of life that sees it as merely experiencing the world; hence

The nature of our mental lives, makes it impossible for us to inquire about the nature of others’ mental experiences, it is a private sphere, sealed off from outer examination. With this said, and holding in mind the fact that according to Dualists, the mind is totally distinct, and unrelated to the body, one stumbles upon some pretty strange conclusions that seem to inevitably follow. — rickyk95

In this view language is the passive naming of experiences, and dualistic solipsism the only outcome.

It's a broken picture. But those obsessed by it can't see it's poverty, because they frame even criticism of that picture in terms of the picture.

Rather, language and the world are locked together, mind and body are one, subject and object is a false dichotomy, and Cartesian dualism fails.

Does a wrench ever come to exist in a fashion that isn't dependent on a linguistic culture? The argument has to work both ways here.

You are treating the wrench as an example of a material object. They are just things to be found in the world. Even if communities of plumbers never existed, a chimp might stumble on to one growing on the wrench tree, the one right next to the banana tree, or some such.

So the knowledge which manifests "real wrenches" is a product of linguistic habit. It is a social constraint that is imposed on material reality. There is a particular job to be done. And look! (melt...twist...hammer...shape.) Here is the right kind of tool to do it.

Hence the reality of the "wrench" is conceptual as much as it is material. Words do more than merely signify - point or refer. They are causal.

Clearly chimps are also conceptual creatures. They can fashion sticks in the right shape to fish termites out of a mound. The trick can be based from old to young by a natural inclination to watch and imitate. So chimps also can "know" - form concepts with consequences.

Conception is not dependent on language. But it is crucial to allow for the fact that humans fill their worlds with linguistically-dependent objects. And these - because they depend on (semiotically) higher order concepts - are always being rolled out in arguments to prove points about "theories of truth" which they can't in fact prove.

Once a wrench becomes a brute fact of the world, a mere material state of affairs, then we are into unvarnished realism and all the usual confusion that entails.

The mind becomes cut away from the existence of the object in question. And the resulting naive realism in fact turns into the very dualism it was pretending to leave behind. — apokrisis

That's pretty well said...