Sheila Dow's concept of dualism: clarification, criticism and development

摘要

This paper analyses Dow's concept of dualism and decomposes it into eight categories, one not explicitly identified by Dow. It is argued that Dow's original definition is underdeveloped and thereby lacking practical relevance. The paper presents a development of Dow's definition, which allows her to attack the splitting of polar categories. This significantly increases the relevance of Dow's definition of dualism and buttresses her criticisms of the mainstream. The paper also identifies 'heuristic dualism' in Dow's work. A distinction can be made between Dow's 'heuristic dualism', which is strictly an intermediate step in an argument, and the mainstream use of fixed dualistic categories.