I say that yes we have “material” and “immaterial” aspects, not differing substances, to us but in everyday life these aspects are so unified that no discernable difference can be made. From a theoretical perspective though we can study the different aspects of a thing in theory but that implies no metaphysical separation at all. I can say ponder about the chemical aspect, how it was made, of a bottle of wine and then ponder the economic aspect of it but while I’m standing in line to buy it those aspects are one and the same in everyday experience.
No they aren't. My consideration when purchasing a bottle of wine is whether the chemical/aesthetic value outweighs the economic value (the price tag). Of course I'm making that distinction in ordinary life!
The same goes for mind/body. I can make the distinction between my mental state and my physical state quite easily in ordinary life and do so all the time. When I talk about, for instance, my spiritual state and relationship to God, I am obviously not talking about physical things. Similarly, prayer is obviously not a physical act, though at times it may include physical actions such as speaking or kneeling. There are, after alll, mental actions.
I'm sorry, but the law of the excluded middle rather limits your options here: you end up being one of three things, a metaphysical reductionist (materialism/physicalism, or subjective idealism), a dualist (of one sort or another), or else a linguistic reductionist (Wittgenstein). And I submit that reducing everything to language is simply wishing the problem away and pretending that it doesn't exist.
The contradiction lies in the referential fallacy, that is (to those who may not know this) that a word must refer to some object to be meaningful, that it commits because it assumes that mind language must refer to some substance to be meaningful.
I'm not a referentialist about language. I simply think that it this case, the kind of language-games we are playing are referential in nature and involve two different referents. Where's the contradiction? I'm not going to go down the path of linguistic reductionism here.
We are composed of a “material” and “immaterial” nature but that they are so unified that we can only make a linguistic distinction between them that is two different language games.
But it isn't merely a linguistic distinction: it's a real distinction. The two natures (ousia or substantiae in Latin) are two different kinds of thing, not merely two different language-games for the same thing.
You know as well as I do that philosophers have abandoned this way of thinking.
Some philosophers, but not all in the post-Quine post-Wittgenstein era.
Again I think that the mystery of the incarnation prevents us from drawing any conclusions here.
Didn't stop the Church Fathers. Mystery or not, we have to wrestle with it. I would suggest also that the interaction of mind and body may turn out to be a mystery.
And here is that Nietzsche quote I promised, with commentary by myself.
I wouldn't call the problem he is addressing "mind/body," nor do I think his critique is even of substance metaphysics, but of the Platonic Cave. But the Platonic Cave is not necessary to substance metaphysics. Further, with language-games (and linguistic reductionism), Wittgenstein simply offers us a (community) tour of Plato's cave and claims that he's described reality.