Dualism has a terrible reputation in cognitive science, and for good reason: the tacit belief that the mind is distinct from the body wreaks havoc on reasoning and distorts our understanding of who we are. The “innateness wars” and the “hard problem of consciousness” could well be among its casualties. Notwithstanding its many tolls, however, Dualism might be natural and adaptive. I will show that Dualism likely arises from the tension between the two innate systems of core knowledge that guide reasoning about objects and the minds of others. Moreover. the mind delusion could play a critical adaptive role in affective processing; its demonstrable role in psychopathology— in gender dysphoria and self-injury—hints at this possibility. More broadly, these results show how the perceptual systems of core knowledge scaffold our self-understanding, with implications for cognition, affective processing, consciousness, and psychopathology.

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