According to mind-body dualism, the mind and body are distinct in one way or another. Different dualistic views will give different explanations for how the mind is distinct from the body. Substance dualism. In this tradition of dualism, matter and spirit exist and are distinct substances: one physical and extended in time and space and the other less extended. Some dualists claim that there is a reality composed of two different substances: physical and spiritual. Mind-body nominalism provides an answer to why the power of thought can seem entirely separate from and beyond the parts of thought. a material system to which it belongs, viz. because this system can be seen from the nominally dualistic point of view of our Notions of, Matter and Thought, IV.iii.6, p.83. But for Locke, mind, matter and materialism. Science and philosophy have a long and complicated history. Both are human efforts to express the nature of the world. But where is the border between them? The essential principle of Cartesian dualism is that the mind and the body are not identical substances but rather distinct and distinct ones. He gives three proofs that the mind and the body are distinct. An important implication of this argument is that the mind, as a distinct substance, could exist without the body. Leibniz's law: for two objects to be,