The Unfortunate Dualism

My view of dualism is accurately depicted through Raymond Smullyan’s story “The unfortunate dualist.” Smullyan states the dualist belief that mind and matter are separate substances, however the dualist cannot explain how this phenomenon works. The problem I found with Smullyan story is that he fails to state whether the dualist is a substance dualist or property dualist. This makes a difference because the substance dualist believes that mind and body are separate and independent substances, while the property dualist believes that there is only one substance. Although, I find Smullyan’s paper to be amusing, I believe that he started his paper by mischaracterizing the dualist. Smullyan made him into the straw man by stating that the dualist believes that the mind and the body are separate substances, but that the dualist might find that the miracle drug, made of material substance, can rid him of a non-material substance, his soul.
The story is about a man who eagerly wishes to rid his body of his soul, and to
The difference between suicide, which would entail killing the body, and simply taking a drug to eliminate your soul, is essentially the same thing. Killing his body, which may or may not include the soul, or killing only his soul would be the same thing. If he believes in the afterlife, then he would still suffer eternal punishment, if there is such a thing, because he still annihilated it. If the dualist believes that the mind and the body are separate substances independent of each other, then killing the body would not make a difference because the soul was not a part of the body to begin with. His soul could not be affected by the drug because for all we know it might not even exist. This causes some confusion as to what exactly it would mean to kill the