What kind of dualist are you?

[Jobar]

Neither- I'm a monistic idealist.

 

[Copernicus]

I just want to express my appreciation for all of the thoughtful replies in the thread. I expected the majority to declare themselves property dualists, so the result was something of a surprise to me. I don't quite get the distinction between monism and property dualism, because, as I've said previously, physicalism is a kind of monism, and property dualism is a variety of physicalism. Nevertheless, maybe what is going on here has something to do with the what philosophers have labeled "eliminativism". Anyway, I may start a thread on that subject later.

 

[Random Person]

I more or less take the Taosit view:

"Ontological dualism


Alternatively, dualism can mean the tendency of humans to perceive and understand the world as being divided into two overarching categories. In this sense, it is dualistic when one perceives a tree as a thing separate from everything surrounding it. This form of ontological dualism exists in Taoism and Confucianism, beliefs that divide the universe into the complementary oppositions of yin and yang.[5] In traditions such as classical Hinduism, Zen Buddhism or Islamic Sufism, a key to enlightenment is "transcending" this sort of dualistic thinking, without merely substituting dualism with monism or pluralism.

The opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles of yin and yang is a large part of Chinese philosophy, and is an important feature of Taoism, both as a philosophy and as a religion, although the concept developed much earlier. Some argue that yin and yang were originally an earth and sky god, respectively.[6] As one of the oldest principles in Chinese philosophy, yin and yang are also discussed in Confucianism, but to a lesser extent.

Some of the common associations with yang and yin, respectively, are: male and female, light and dark, active and passive, motion and stillness. Some scholars recognize that the two ideas may have originally referred to two opposite sides of a mountain, facing towards and away from the sun.[6] The yin and yang symbol in actuality has very little to do with Western dualism; instead it represents the philosophy of balance, where two opposites co-exist in harmony and are able to transmute into each other. In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin in yang and a dot of yang in yin. In Taoism, this symbolizes the inter-connectedness of the opposite forces as different aspects of Tao, the First Principle. Contrast is needed to create a distinguishable reality, without which we would experience nothingness. Therefore, the independent principles of yin and yang are actually dependent on one another for each other's distinguishable existence.

The complementary dualistic concept seen in yin and yang represent the reciprocal interaction throughout nature, related to a feedback loop, where opposing forces do not exchange in opposition but instead exchange reciprocally to promote stabilization similar to homeostasis. An underlying principle in Taoism states that within every independent entity lies a part of its opposite. Within sickness lies health and vice versa. This is because all opposites are manifestations of the single Tao, and are therefore not independent from one another, but rather a variation of the same unifying force throughout all of nature."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism

 

[Speakpigeon]

Black ink on paper or white chalk on black board.

The human mind needs distinction to talk about the world. The distinction is created within the human mind. It doesn't exist outside. What is so distinguished only exists in our representation of the world. It's a simplification. Reality would be much too complicated and complex to be faithfully modelled within our brain. So we use distinctive symbols to make symbolic distinctions, black ink on paper or white chalk on black board. Yin on Yang, or Yang on Yin.

Nothing ontological about it, though.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

The observer observed.

Damn, I should have clicked neither.

 

[Copernicus]

It seems to me that these attempts to eliminate "dualism" all rely on a kind of substance dualist position--that mental behavior is somehow equivalent to physical behavior rather than an emergent property of a physical system. So the idea that one can somehow "transcend" this dualism is really a misconstrual of the nature of asymmetric  supervenience, i.e. to treat it as the symmetric relationship of equivalence:

In philosophy, supervenience is an ontological relation that is used to describe cases where (roughly speaking) the upper-level properties of a system are determined by its lower level properties. Some philosophers hold that the world is structured into a kind of hierarchy of properties, where the higher level properties supervene on the lower level properties. According to this type of view, social properties supervene on psychological properties, psychological properties supervene on biological properties, biological properties supervene on chemical properties, etc. That is, the chemical properties of the world determine a distribution of biological properties, those biological properties determine a distribution of psychological properties, and so forth. So, for example, mind-body supervenience holds that "every mental phenomenon must be grounded in, or anchored to, some underlying physical base (presumably a neural state). This means that mental states can occur only in systems that can have physical properties; namely physical systems."

Note that physical properties are not the same as mental properties. To engage in that kind of radical reductionism is to commit a  category mistake.

 

[Copernicus]

The observer observed.

Damn, I should have clicked neither.

You can take consolation in the fact that you were accidentally correct then.

 

[Kharakov]

I'm more of a property polyist, which is a bit like property dualism, but isn't like property dualism because it's correct.


Your comment reminds me of that old joke "A property dualist is right twice a day."

 

[ryan]

It seems to me that these attempts to eliminate "dualism" all rely on a kind of substance dualist position--that mental behavior is somehow equivalent to physical behavior rather than an emergent property of a physical system. So the idea that one can somehow "transcend" this dualism is really a misconstrual of the nature of asymmetric  supervenience, i.e. to treat it as the symmetric relationship of equivalence:

In philosophy, supervenience is an ontological relation that is used to describe cases where (roughly speaking) the upper-level properties of a system are determined by its lower level properties. Some philosophers hold that the world is structured into a kind of hierarchy of properties, where the higher level properties supervene on the lower level properties. According to this type of view, social properties supervene on psychological properties, psychological properties supervene on biological properties, biological properties supervene on chemical properties, etc. That is, the chemical properties of the world determine a distribution of biological properties, those biological properties determine a distribution of psychological properties, and so forth. So, for example, mind-body supervenience holds that "every mental phenomenon must be grounded in, or anchored to, some underlying physical base (presumably a neural state). This means that mental states can occur only in systems that can have physical properties; namely physical systems."

Note that physical properties are not the same as mental properties. To engage in that kind of radical reductionism is to commit a  category mistake.

In the case of supervenience physicalism, I can't tell the difference between it and parallelism (type of dualism). I read that supervenience physicalism was a desperate attempt to save physicalism, and since its initial popularity from inception, it has become quite unpopular.

 

[Copernicus]

It seems to me that these attempts to eliminate "dualism" all rely on a kind of substance dualist position--that mental behavior is somehow equivalent to physical behavior rather than an emergent property of a physical system. So the idea that one can somehow "transcend" this dualism is really a misconstrual of the nature of asymmetric  supervenience, i.e. to treat it as the symmetric relationship of equivalence:



Note that physical properties are not the same as mental properties. To engage in that kind of radical reductionism is to commit a  category mistake.

In the case of supervenience physicalism, I can't tell the difference between it and parallelism (type of dualism). I read that supervenience physicalism was a desperate attempt to save physicalism, and since its initial popularity from inception, it has become quite unpopular.

What are the objections to it and what is seen as a better alternative?

 

[Random Person]

Black ink on paper or white chalk on black board.

The human mind needs distinction to talk about the world. The distinction is created within the human mind. It doesn't exist outside. What is so distinguished only exists in our representation of the world. It's a simplification. Reality would be much too complicated and complex to be faithfully modelled within our brain. So we use distinctive symbols to make symbolic distinctions, black ink on paper or white chalk on black board. Yin on Yang, or Yang on Yin.

Nothing ontological about it, though.
EB

Can you expand on that?

 

[ryan]

In the case of supervenience physicalism, I can't tell the difference between it and parallelism (type of dualism). I read that supervenience physicalism was a desperate attempt to save physicalism, and since its initial popularity from inception, it has become quite unpopular.

What are the objections to it and what is seen as a better alternative?

I finally found it, but it they did not expand on why supervenience has lost its popularity.

With regards to property dualism versus substance dualism, I have a hard time telling the exact difference between them both.

But the consciousness is at least a dual property to physical properties.

 

[Copernicus]

What are the objections to it and what is seen as a better alternative?

I finally found it, but it they did not expand on why supervenience has lost its popularity.

I haven't sensed or read that it had lost its popularity, so I was curious. It is difficult to tell what is really "popular", because our sense of popularity is so often influenced by the small circle of people that we tend to come into contact with. Philosophers tend to have a much wider range of positions on dualism than dabblers like myself are aware of. I was surprised that so many people rejected the "property dualism" position in the OP survey, but I suspect that there is a strong visceral reaction against accepting the label "dualist" because it is so frequently associated with Cartesian dualism.

With regards to property dualism versus substance dualism, I have a hard time telling the exact difference between them both.

But the consciousness is at least a dual property to physical properties.

The distinction should be quite sharp. Substance dualism implies that the spiritual substance can exist independently of the physical substance. Although the two domains can interact with each other, they can also act independently of each other. Property dualism is a materialist/physicalist position. Since mental activity supervenes on physical brain activity, it cannot exist without it or act independently of it. That is, spiritual "beings"--what we conventionally think of as ghosts, angels, demons, deities, etc.--cannot exist. Nor can reincarnation or rebirth occur.

The point of supervenience, as I understand it, is that reality comes in different layers. Each one has its own set of properties. Physical and mental activity represent different aspects or layers of reality. So the terms we use to describe physical brain activity are necessarily described in very different terms from those we used to describe mental events. In a sense, one can describe mental states like "joy" and "terror" in terms of what goes on physically to produce them, but there will be no simple correlation with a particular type of brain activity. In fact, those mental states could theoretically occur by different physical routes in terms of brain activity. IOW, the mental events do not necessarily always reduce to the same physical substrate of events.

 

[ryan]

With regards to property dualism versus substance dualism, I have a hard time telling the exact difference between them both.

The distinction should be quite sharp. Substance dualism implies that the spiritual substance can exist independently of the physical substance. Although the two domains can interact with each other, they can also act independently of each other. Property dualism is a materialist/physicalist position. Since mental activity supervenes on physical brain activity, it cannot exist without it or act independently of it. That is, spiritual "beings"--what we conventionally think of as ghosts, angels, demons, deities, etc.--cannot exist. Nor can reincarnation or rebirth occur.

What would be the difference between substance parallelism (a type of substance dualism but no interaction) and property dualism? They seem practically indistinguishable from each other. In both there would still seem to be a ghost/spirit/soul floating over our heads, but it is in a one-to-one correspondence to what the physical is doing, which has no physical disturbance but still seems to have "ghost material" floating around.

The point of supervenience, as I understand it, is that reality comes in different layers. Each one has its own set of properties. Physical and mental activity represent different aspects or layers of reality. So the terms we use to describe physical brain activity are necessarily described in very different terms from those we used to describe mental events. In a sense, one can describe mental states like "joy" and "terror" in terms of what goes on physically to produce them, but there will be no simple correlation with a particular type of brain activity. In fact, those mental states could theoretically occur by different physical routes in terms of brain activity. IOW, the mental events do not necessarily always reduce to the same physical substrate of events.

Yeah, I don't like supervenience physicalism, but it is the best explanation that I know. The reason I am weary of it is very subtle but problematic. SP claims a one-way causal connection from the physical to the mental. But then what physical brain state would correspond to a mental notion of this connection/bridge between brain and mental? In other words, the "bridge" itself cannot be just physical since one end is physically grown out of the brain state/matter and the other end joins into the mental state. There would seem to be another substance of both mental and physical coordinating all of this together and that "knows" about such a connection.

Juma, if you are reading, maybe you can explain this last part better since you were the one who brought it up to me some months ago.

 

[Copernicus]

The distinction should be quite sharp. Substance dualism implies that the spiritual substance can exist independently of the physical substance. Although the two domains can interact with each other, they can also act independently of each other. Property dualism is a materialist/physicalist position. Since mental activity supervenes on physical brain activity, it cannot exist without it or act independently of it. That is, spiritual "beings"--what we conventionally think of as ghosts, angels, demons, deities, etc.--cannot exist. Nor can reincarnation or rebirth occur.

What would be the difference between substance parallelism (a type of substance dualism but no interaction) and property dualism? They seem practically indistinguishable from each other. In both there would still seem to be a ghost/spirit/soul floating over our heads, but it is in a one-to-one correspondence to what the physical is doing, which has no physical disturbance but still seems to have "ghost material" floating around.

My ideas on this tend to be shaped by the few sources that I've read, but parallelism is usually considered a substance dualist position of sorts. That is, the mind and brain run in parallel, and maybe a deity helps as an external agency to maintain the parallelism? That seems to be the gist of the summary of parallelism in the Stanford Encyclopedia: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Par. So it is really associated with theism, and property dualism is not. Property dualism is more closely associated with a epiphenomenalism or even interactionism, both of which are discussed above the link I just gave.

The point of supervenience, as I understand it, is that reality comes in different layers. Each one has its own set of properties. Physical and mental activity represent different aspects or layers of reality. So the terms we use to describe physical brain activity are necessarily described in very different terms from those we used to describe mental events. In a sense, one can describe mental states like "joy" and "terror" in terms of what goes on physically to produce them, but there will be no simple correlation with a particular type of brain activity. In fact, those mental states could theoretically occur by different physical routes in terms of brain activity. IOW, the mental events do not necessarily always reduce to the same physical substrate of events.

Yeah, I don't like supervenience physicalism, but it is the best explanation that I know. The reason I am weary of it is very subtle but problematic. SP claims a one-way causal connection from the physical to the mental. But then what physical brain state would correspond to a mental notion of this connection/bridge between brain and mental? In other words, the "bridge" itself cannot be just physical since one end is physically grown out of the brain state/matter and the other end joins into the mental state. There would seem to be another substance of both mental and physical coordinating all of this together and that "knows" about such a connection.

The thing about supervenience, however, is that it is a well-established point of view about the nature of physical reality outside of the mind-body context. For example, we know that a wave in a body of water makes no sense from the perspective of an individual H2O molecule, which merely reacts to local conditions. However, waves of water do exist in our physical reality, and an individual H2O molecule gets "recruited" as part of the wave phenomenon. That is, its behavior is somehow influenced by a systemic behavior that supervenes on its reality. Sometimes, this is referred to as "downward causation". (See references to downward causation in the Stanford discussion of Emergent Properties.)

I'm certainly no expert on this subject. I just find chaos theory and emergence to be a fascinating subject. For those who can stomach Howard K Bloom's somewhat flamboyant style of writing and shameless self-promotion, I recommend his book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates. I actually consider it a tour de force, but I know people who find it difficult to stick with it.

 

[ryan]

What would be the difference between substance parallelism (a type of substance dualism but no interaction) and property dualism? They seem practically indistinguishable from each other. In both there would still seem to be a ghost/spirit/soul floating over our heads, but it is in a one-to-one correspondence to what the physical is doing, which has no physical disturbance but still seems to have "ghost material" floating around.

My ideas on this tend to be shaped by the few sources that I've read, but parallelism is usually considered a substance dualist position of sorts. That is, the mind and brain run in parallel, and maybe a deity helps as an external agency to maintain the parallelism? That seems to be the gist of the summary of parallelism in the Stanford Encyclopedia: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Par. So it is really associated with theism, and property dualism is not. Property dualism is more closely associated with a epiphenomenalism or even interactionism, both of which are discussed above the link I just gave.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is great, but the narrators sometimes take liberties that I have found to actually be wrong sometimes.

Anyways, my issue is that I really don't see a difference between parallelism and property dualism. They both seem to run parallel, substance or not. They both have a one-to-one correspondence and no interaction (except for PD being the source of higher properties). In either case one can ask the same question of how this emergent property got there in the first place.

The point of supervenience, as I understand it, is that reality comes in different layers. Each one has its own set of properties. Physical and mental activity represent different aspects or layers of reality. So the terms we use to describe physical brain activity are necessarily described in very different terms from those we used to describe mental events. In a sense, one can describe mental states like "joy" and "terror" in terms of what goes on physically to produce them, but there will be no simple correlation with a particular type of brain activity. In fact, those mental states could theoretically occur by different physical routes in terms of brain activity. IOW, the mental events do not necessarily always reduce to the same physical substrate of events.

Yeah, I don't like supervenience physicalism, but it is the best explanation that I know. The reason I am weary of it is very subtle but problematic. SP claims a one-way causal connection from the physical to the mental. But then what physical brain state would correspond to a mental notion of this connection/bridge between brain and mental? In other words, the "bridge" itself cannot be just physical since one end is physically grown out of the brain state/matter and the other end joins into the mental state. There would seem to be another substance of both mental and physical coordinating all of this together and that "knows" about such a connection.

The thing about supervenience, however, is that it is a well-established point of view about the nature of physical reality outside of the mind-body context. For example, we know that a wave in a body of water makes no sense from the perspective of an individual H2O molecule, which merely reacts to local conditions. However, waves of water do exist in our physical reality, and an individual H2O molecule gets "recruited" as part of the wave phenomenon. That is, its behavior is somehow influenced by a systemic behavior that supervenes on its reality. Sometimes, this is referred to as "downward causation". (See references to downward causation in the Stanford discussion of Emergent Properties.)

I'm certainly no expert on this subject. I just find chaos theory and emergence to be a fascinating subject. For those who can stomach Howard K Bloom's somewhat flamboyant style of writing and shameless self-promotion, I recommend his book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates. I actually consider it a tour de force, but I know people who find it difficult to stick with it.

Yeah, so much to read in such little time. Since it doesn't look like I am going to take anymore philosophy courses (in addition to just one), the next best thing is that I roam around here throwing out ideas, opinions, threads because sweet sweet sweet Jesus knows that there are enough people on here to critique them.

 

[Copernicus]

My ideas on this tend to be shaped by the few sources that I've read, but parallelism is usually considered a substance dualist position of sorts. That is, the mind and brain run in parallel, and maybe a deity helps as an external agency to maintain the parallelism? That seems to be the gist of the summary of parallelism in the Stanford Encyclopedia: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Par. So it is really associated with theism, and property dualism is not. Property dualism is more closely associated with a epiphenomenalism or even interactionism, both of which are discussed above the link I just gave.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is great, but the narrators sometimes take liberties that I have found to actually be wrong sometimes.

Do you disagree with their description of "substance parallelism here? To the extent that it is accurate, then my explanation gave you some pretty strong reasons for not confusing parallelism with property dualism, and I simply have no idea why you continue to find the distinction difficult to understand. Apart from saying that the Stanford Encyclopedia sometimes gets things wrong, you didn't identify a specific problem with my description of how they differed. Do you think that the concept of "downward causation" is compatible with parallelism? I don't. And that is ignoring the fact that substance parallelism tends to be associated with a theistic perspective, whereas property dualism is incompatible with most (perhaps all) religions. I just don't see why you have a problem distinguishing property dualism from parallelism.

Anyways, my issue is that I really don't see a difference between parallelism and property dualism. They both seem to run parallel, substance or not. They both have a one-to-one correspondence and no interaction (except for PD being the source of higher properties). In either case one can ask the same question of how this emergent property got there in the first place.

I realize that you aren't interested in following up on my reading recommendation, and I have no problem with that. But that is exactly what Bloom's book tries to answer. That is, in essence, the "God Problem" that the title refers to. Anyway, I do think he did a masterful job of explaining the issues in very non-technical terms. The way he worked into explaining cellular automaton theory and its relevance to solving problems associated with deterministic chaotic systems was especially nice.

 

[ryan]

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is great, but the narrators sometimes take liberties that I have found to actually be wrong sometimes.

Do you disagree with their description of "substance parallelism here?

I sure don't.

To the extent that it is accurate, then my explanation gave you some pretty strong reasons for not confusing parallelism with property dualism, and I simply have no idea why you continue to find the distinction difficult to understand. Apart from saying that the Stanford Encyclopedia sometimes gets things wrong, you didn't identify a specific problem with my description of how they differed.

Okay, I see what you mean. I will be more specific. Before I begin, usually people talk about the epiphenomenal or parallel dualism because top down interaction is a different kind of argument. So my concern was really about the difference between SD and PD of the more popular interaction type epiphenomenalism and less popular interaction type parallelism.

Next, an explanation for parallelism is a deity, but parallelism itself does not require a deity.

Furthermore, property dualism has the consciousness and brain running parallel with no explanation of how (at least not yet). And parallelism has the brain and the consciousness running parallel with no convincing explanation of how. Some have proposed a deity for the latter, but we don't have to go with that proposal. One can also propose a deity for how the property of consciousness runs parallel with the brain for property dualism, but we don't have to use that proposal for PD either.

For property dualism vs substance dualism in general, I have a hard time telling the exact difference between the mind as a property vs a substance and why this difference matters.

But the main focus is substance vs properties. So from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I found this quote attempting to differentiate between properties and substances,

"One natural response to the question of what distinguishes substances from properties is that properties depend for their existence on substances, for they are properties of objects (that is, of individual substances), but that substances do not similarly depend on properties for their existence. The point cannot be made quite so simply, however. Properties could not exist without objects to be properties of, but neither could substances exist without properties, so the dependence appears to be mutual.

This problem can be overcome by more careful expression of the point, making it clear that we are not talking about properties in general and substances in general, but about particular instances or cases of a property and the particular objects to which they belong. A particular property instance cannot exist and could not have existed without the substance of which it is a property, but the particular substance can exist and could have existed without that property instance. Thus, a particular instance of colour cannot exist, and could not have existed, without the object of which it is the colour, but the object can exist without the colour instance, for it may change colour and remain the same object, or it could have had a different colour from the start.".

There is so much in here that is assumed and hardly relevant to physical science, especially the part of colour and object. This is where physics/science complicates things with a more exact description of colour and object.

Anyways, I can only ask if you or anyone reading this can explain exact differences between properties and substances in terms of consciousness.

Do you think that the concept of "downward causation" is compatible with parallelism?

Absolutely not, parallelism has no causation.

Anyways, my issue is that I really don't see a difference between parallelism and property dualism. They both seem to run parallel, substance or not. They both have a one-to-one correspondence and no interaction (except for PD being the source of higher properties). In either case one can ask the same question of how this emergent property got there in the first place.

I realize that you aren't interested in following up on my reading recommendation, and I have no problem with that. But that is exactly what Bloom's book tries to answer. That is, in essence, the "God Problem" that the title refers to. Anyway, I do think he did a masterful job of explaining the issues in very non-technical terms. The way he worked into explaining cellular automaton theory and its relevance to solving problems associated with deterministic chaotic systems was especially nice.

Copericus1, I will hold out hope that someone will put it on a platter for me. It's just that I have to read all day for my studies, and then I am on here reading this and that. If I have to read one more book than I have to I am going to go to crazy. I wish I had more time.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Black ink on paper or white chalk on black board.

The human mind needs distinction to talk about the world. The distinction is created within the human mind. It doesn't exist outside. What is so distinguished only exists in our representation of the world. It's a simplification. Reality would be much too complicated and complex to be faithfully modelled within our brain. So we use distinctive symbols to make symbolic distinctions, black ink on paper or white chalk on black board. Yin on Yang, or Yang on Yin.

Nothing ontological about it, though.
EB

Can you expand on that?

There isn't much to expand on that I haven't already made clear. What people see as entities somehow existing out there are in fact mere mental representations created within our mind presumably to ensure we can make sense of the complex world that exits out there without risking information overload. This implies that we are bound to understand the world as interplay of these entities. We see a bird perch on a branch. We think the branch supports the weight of the bird. We hear the song of the bird and take it to be a message to other birds. The world is thus made simple enough. It's very much like a cartoon. It's an illusion. What we take to be a tree existing in its own right in the world out there is in effect a mental image that can only exists therefore within our mind. The image probably represents something that is in the world but this something isn't going to be a tree. To think it's really a tree is a naïve misunderstanding of our position as observer. Assuming we are that.

So our mind contains distinctions to represent and interpret the world, and these distinctions, like black and white, hot and cold, close and far etc. have no ontological import, i.e. they don't show things that exist in the world out there. As representations, they can exist only within our mind (although, as such they are absolutely real). Their import is epistemological. They represent.
EB

 

[Copernicus]

Do you disagree with their description of "substance parallelism here?

I sure don't.

Then you read and agreed with the part that said parallelism makes no sense from a non-theistic perspective. If the brain and the mind really operated independently of each other, then it would be something of a miracle that they stayed in parallel. They have nothing to do with each other.

...an explanation for parallelism is a deity, but parallelism itself does not require a deity.

Unless you require it to make any sense at all. Remember--you did say you agreed with the Stanford explanation of parallelism.

Furthermore, property dualism has the consciousness and brain running parallel with no explanation of how (at least not yet). And parallelism has the brain and the consciousness running parallel with no convincing explanation of how. Some have proposed a deity for the latter, but we don't have to go with that proposal. One can also propose a deity for how the property of consciousness runs parallel with the brain for property dualism, but we don't have to use that proposal for PD either.

This is where you seem to equivocate on the word "parallelism". A picture on a movie screen runs in parallel with a movie projector's activity, but it is not the same kind of parallelism as the mind-body hypothesis because the movie projector actually causes the movie to appear. There is an interaction. Philosophical parallelism claims that there is no interaction. Property dualism posits total interaction between the brain and the mind. Not only does the brain produce the systemic effect of a mind, but the mind itself can have a downward causal effect on physical brain activity in the same sense that a wave in the ocean causally "recruits" water molecules by incorporating them into its systemic behavior.

For property dualism vs substance dualism in general, I have a hard time telling the exact difference between the mind as a property vs a substance and why this difference matters.

But the main focus is substance vs properties. So from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I found this quote attempting to differentiate between properties and substances,

"One natural response to the question of what distinguishes substances from properties is that properties depend for their existence on substances, for they are properties of objects (that is, of individual substances), but that substances do not similarly depend on properties for their existence. The point cannot be made quite so simply, however. Properties could not exist without objects to be properties of, but neither could substances exist without properties, so the dependence appears to be mutual.

This problem can be overcome by more careful expression of the point, making it clear that we are not talking about properties in general and substances in general, but about particular instances or cases of a property and the particular objects to which they belong. A particular property instance cannot exist and could not have existed without the substance of which it is a property, but the particular substance can exist and could have existed without that property instance. Thus, a particular instance of colour cannot exist, and could not have existed, without the object of which it is the colour, but the object can exist without the colour instance, for it may change colour and remain the same object, or it could have had a different colour from the start.".

No wonder you are confused. I think that the author makes a big mistake in talking about attributes as if they existed in the same sense as the things they are attributes of. He seems to realize the mistake and repair it, but he didn't need to go down that rabbit hole in the first place. Properties are abstractions. That is, we recognize them by comparing objects for sameness. To paraphrase Aristotle, we recognize whiteness by ignoring all of the differences that exist across the set of objects that are white. That is basically what the author is trying to say, but he said it in a very convoluted way. However, there is a broader sense of "property" that is linguistic in nature, and he is just talking about one type of property. "Property dualism" is about a different sense of the term--a supervenience relationship. What that means (to me, at least) is that mental events and physical events have different sets of properties, but the mind is fully dependent on (supervenes on) brain activity. We can't use the same language to describe physical and mental events, although one flow of events necessarily causes the other.

Anyways, I can only ask if you or anyone reading this can explain exact differences between properties and substances in terms of consciousness.

That may seem like a fair question, but I'm not exactly sure what you think an answer would look like. To begin with, there is the question of what you take "consciousness" to mean. It is a highly ambiguous term. Properties are abstractions that can be attributed to conceptual entities, and not necessarily just physical ones. They are essentially linguistic constructs. However, property dualism is about systemic correspondences, where the physical and mental correspondences have different property attributes. We use a different language to describe them precisely because they do not belong to the same category of entity. The properties of a wave have something to do with the H20 molecules that comprise the wave, but it makes no sense to talk about a wave in terms of the properties of an H20 molecule. They are different types of entities.

Do you think that the concept of "downward causation" is compatible with parallelism?

Absolutely not, parallelism has no causation.

OK, then you understand that brain activity causes a mind to exist, not vice versa. You should not be confusing property dualism and parallelism.