Does Hex Casting Subscribe to a Dualist or Monist View of the World? An entry to philosophy.
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2026 4:20 pm
Originally, this was a simple joke I wrote into the Petrak@ discord server because I thought it was funny. I have now written a real (albeit rough) essay on this topic. I hope it enlightens and inspires. 
A few things may seem strange, as this was originally not supposed to go on the forums, and I have edited it slightly after.
Introduction
Dualism and Monism are two positions about the nature of the mind, and reality. They are relatively broad, with varying camps within them as well which disagree between themselves. The first argues that the mind and physical reality are separate, postulating the mind as a completely separate “thing” from objects such as rocks or timber. The second argues that the mind and matter are the same, which you may have already reasoned. Dualism was one of the first, having been conceived by René Descartes a very long time ago (as in, I do not know). He believed that, due to the mind and matter being so irrevocably different, that they must be composed of different substances entirely. By substance, he did not mean elements such as wind or gas, but as two separate metaphysical substances, “consciousness”, and “matter”. One which may be defined as stuff which thinks, being the mind, and another composed of stuff with extension, volume in physical space.
Hex Casting
To be clear, I am writing this because I am doing a philosophy unit and I am genuinely interested in this stuff and also it is 1:29 am in the morning as I am writing this. Anyhow, you may already see how this relates to the topic at hand, of Hex Casting and what position it may fall into. I will not reveal my hand yet and tell you what I personally believe, as I have many thoughts behind both positions. Hex Casting, as we know, has media, a substance which is physical in nature, but which has some kind of a mental aspect to it. It is told to us after enlightenment that media is not the product of thought, but is the essence of thought itself. There is perhaps an ethereal realm where media exists, then, so perhaps this means the world of Hex Casting is indeed dualist? For there is a substance which may have no extension, and by extension must be mental substance. This is where Descartes’ “Substance Dualism” may be looked upon for answers. Descartes believed that the mind and body affected each other, being an Interactionist. An issue lies with this, where the mind and body are such separate systems, how one may believe that this tracks logically. This was brought to Descartes’ attention in a letter by one of his students, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, to which he responded with a rather ineffectual answer, that "interaction occurs anyway".
This is often called the Interaction Problem.
A rather interesting, but unrelated fact is that Descartes believes that the pineal gland was the organ by which the mind affected the body, steering and acting as a sort of directrix for the flow of ethereal substance through the brain as it was one within a symmetrical brain. One may even draw a sort of connection between this and spell circles, but I digress.
Dualistic?
Back again to dualism, are there any points in Hex which may evidence a dualistic reality? We know that media does exist, as real substance that can be manipulated and makes up the mind itself under enlightenment. This feels like damning evidence for Substance Dualism, but would an amethyst shard be similar to a human? After all, it contains mind, and body. It may be controversial to say that an amethyst shard thinks, or has consciousness, however, so what exactly is media? A mental substance cannot have extension as amethyst here so does, so it must comprise of two parts. Can mental substance be unconscious? I do not know. As an aside, the mind and soul are often equated in this way, having originated in a time when God and religion were far more embedded in daily life. When one dies via overcasting in Hex, you die instantly, since that’s what happens when you lose all your health. You may argue that this is simply gameplay limitations, but that’s no fun.
I postulate that the soul of the player, when lost, causes the body to instantly evaporate, or whatever happens when an entity dies.
Does the existence of media directly imply that reality is dualistic in nature? I would argue under Cartesian dualism, that this would be illogical, given the separate natures of mind and matter here that mind may not directly affect matter (eg. The break block spell), or that matter may affect mind (I will be frank and say that I do not have an example for this). Most Cartesian dualists believe that the mind and the body simply interact with each other due to the fact that they are so intimately intertwined.
So, perhaps, then, mind and reality are one and the same?
There are two further subdivisions of Monism, the first and likely most relevant here being idealism, the idea that reality is the same as thought or consciousness. The second is physicalism, stating that the mind is simply a byproduct of physical processes occurring in the brain.
Idealism
If we consider idealism, we may draw inspiration from Descartes once again, who, in his Meditations came to the realisation that there was very nearly absolutely nothing he could hold certain, if he did not hold any assumptions of the things that he could hold certain (such as that he could be quite certain that his eyes were truly seeing a campfire, and that his eyes existed at all). He came to the final conclusion, through a thought experiment with a deceitful devil, that if he were able to be deceived or persuaded that such things existed, that he then absolutely existed. After all, you cannot deceive thin air. This is where the phrase “Cogito ergo sum”
originates. If we consider Minecraft as a game, and its story, particularly the end poem, we may come across the idea that reality is itself a dream, a delusion which we wake from and fall into time and time again. It can be said then, that matter is swallowed up by mind, much in the same way that your mom-
Idealism is an attractive option, as it places the mind in an elevated position, which philosophers in the past staked much of their claim in before advances in the material sciences (note, not Material Science, the science of materials) put their ideas into jeopardy. Much of this is in the realm of pure speculation in regards to Hex Casting, as lore is written and may be added onto by others. I say this but I genuinely have not read the lore fragments yet I’m going to be so for real.
My personal headcanon is that reality and mediacal space are intersecting planes in hyper dimensional space and that the set of all realities which contain Hex Casting contains this mediacal space. This doesn’t exactly explicitly say whether reality and this other space are of different substances. Hexal adds the Nexus, which allows for the conversion of matter to media, and vice versa. Does this imply they are one and the same substance? Perhaps, though conversion of forms is not covered by Descartes.
Another form of Idealism is that of Platonic Idealism, which holds that reality is but the emanation from a realm of perfect, “platonic”, ideals. It could be posited that the realm which media originates is a form of this platonic realm, with media itself informing reality, rather than being away from it. Entity reference iotas are required for a few spells, impulse, the zeniths and nadirs, etcetera. It can be said that these iotas are simply references which point towards the entity, but what if these iotas truly are the entity in mediacal space? Of course, there is no evidence to suggest this, given the fact one can’t actually change the details of an entity using an iota itself. The effects produced with hexes are purely physical, so this may be the crux of the problem. A little more on this platonic idealism, we know that ideas can remain coherent in the platonic realm, with circles as an example being beamed into the player’s head once enlightened, or the horror of mindflaying. This does, I believe, act as a minor sort of evidence towards the platonic realm existing in some form.
Physicalism
Now we consider the opposite end of the spectrum. Suppose that media were just the arrangement of silicon and oxygen which finds itself appearing like and behaving like amethyst gems. Suppose that the mind is a product of flesh and this kind of arrangement. It may be possible that such phenomena as mind flaying, exploding, etc, are all just the physical interaction of the mind expressing itself in reality. This solves the interaction problem, but we now run into a new problem of defining the physicality of media. It also does not answer the question of how one, through enlightenment, gains new and terrible knowledge. In the real world, the knowledge problem is also quite troubling. Simply knowing all physical facts of something is still incomplete knowledge, being that consciousness, the "What-its-like"-ness of being a living, breathing, thinking thing. This may be the weakest position within Hex Casting, but it is still quite strong in our own reality, where advances in neuroscience and general science have brought the idea that the mind is an ephemeral object into question. In Hex, however, we can see real and genuine proof that the mind has a substance, and that it is media, being that it may be used in health casting to convert what may be considered the mind into magical fuel. We see another form of this mind-physical relationship in the villagers and allays, whose inert but still living bodies survive post mindflay. We know thusly that the mind can produce physical substance as amethyst buds. What does this mean? Not totally sure.
Prior to enlightenment the player character believes that media is the byproduct of thought, which may have been a particularly good argument for a physical view of the world as it would mean the two dualist substances are unified. One may not convert one form of substance into the other if they are truly separate substances. Budding amethyst, quenched allay, create water and lava all produce matter from media. This argues that as you can convert mental substance into material substance, then they are the same. However, one may also argue that this is not truly production, but rather simply the movement of water or lava into a position. Even still, there is a physical effect from a mental cause.
And again, it can be seen in budding amethyst that it endlessly generates media without input, though perhaps the nature of media and therefore mental substance, is that it can generate new substance in violation of the conservation of matter. Then, can we still rightly say mental substance is physical?
Evidence through Observation
We have examined a few parts of the Hex Casting world already, but let us place a bit more attention on the rest of it. Firstly, what the hell is a geode? I have heard that the geodes in lore are mass mindflay graves, produced by an ancient civilisation ages ago. Alright, so they are “living” minds. Do these minds still think? Are they conscious? Perhaps it would answer a few questions to say they are or are not. I should really read the lore fragments. Lol. We know that the use of media allows one to gain knowledge of the world, whether through raycasts or zone distillations. There are also ways to physically affect the world, the very first spell in the game being explode. We do not know if the explosion conjures anything other than force. Again, we have to ask the Cartesian, where does interaction occur here? I argue that perhaps instead of the mind being impotent within Hex, it is able to pierce into the material realm with sufficient mental substance, such as in the case of explode.
I go back to Descartes’ explanation of the interaction between mind and body, of his pineal gland. Earlier, I merely joked that perhaps a directrix contained the pineal gland of the villager, but now it does seem, after careful consideration, a quaint possibility. Consider that media is this ephemeral substance which animates the body. It too flows down magical leylines and acts to work cause onto the world. Considering the inanimate but still living corpse of the flain villagers, this does seem distinctly logical. I’m not terribly certain what an impetus may represent, but perhaps the mind itself is also torn from its seat in the mind and placed inside the slate cradle.
Conclusions
This essay was written over the course of 2 days and very little sleep, in between college classes. It is not structured well. This has been purely for fun. I have aimed, in this essay to bring into the conversation of Hex Casting lore, new views informed by centuries old perspectives. I hope in bringing forth the positions of Cartesian Substance Dualism, Idealism, Platonism, Physicalism, that I spark new and interesting discussion within the Petrak@’s Mods discord server. Thanks for reading!
A few things may seem strange, as this was originally not supposed to go on the forums, and I have edited it slightly after.Introduction
Dualism and Monism are two positions about the nature of the mind, and reality. They are relatively broad, with varying camps within them as well which disagree between themselves. The first argues that the mind and physical reality are separate, postulating the mind as a completely separate “thing” from objects such as rocks or timber. The second argues that the mind and matter are the same, which you may have already reasoned. Dualism was one of the first, having been conceived by René Descartes a very long time ago (as in, I do not know). He believed that, due to the mind and matter being so irrevocably different, that they must be composed of different substances entirely. By substance, he did not mean elements such as wind or gas, but as two separate metaphysical substances, “consciousness”, and “matter”. One which may be defined as stuff which thinks, being the mind, and another composed of stuff with extension, volume in physical space.
Hex Casting
To be clear, I am writing this because I am doing a philosophy unit and I am genuinely interested in this stuff and also it is 1:29 am in the morning as I am writing this. Anyhow, you may already see how this relates to the topic at hand, of Hex Casting and what position it may fall into. I will not reveal my hand yet and tell you what I personally believe, as I have many thoughts behind both positions. Hex Casting, as we know, has media, a substance which is physical in nature, but which has some kind of a mental aspect to it. It is told to us after enlightenment that media is not the product of thought, but is the essence of thought itself. There is perhaps an ethereal realm where media exists, then, so perhaps this means the world of Hex Casting is indeed dualist? For there is a substance which may have no extension, and by extension must be mental substance. This is where Descartes’ “Substance Dualism” may be looked upon for answers. Descartes believed that the mind and body affected each other, being an Interactionist. An issue lies with this, where the mind and body are such separate systems, how one may believe that this tracks logically. This was brought to Descartes’ attention in a letter by one of his students, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, to which he responded with a rather ineffectual answer, that "interaction occurs anyway".
This is often called the Interaction Problem.A rather interesting, but unrelated fact is that Descartes believes that the pineal gland was the organ by which the mind affected the body, steering and acting as a sort of directrix for the flow of ethereal substance through the brain as it was one within a symmetrical brain. One may even draw a sort of connection between this and spell circles, but I digress.
Dualistic?
Back again to dualism, are there any points in Hex which may evidence a dualistic reality? We know that media does exist, as real substance that can be manipulated and makes up the mind itself under enlightenment. This feels like damning evidence for Substance Dualism, but would an amethyst shard be similar to a human? After all, it contains mind, and body. It may be controversial to say that an amethyst shard thinks, or has consciousness, however, so what exactly is media? A mental substance cannot have extension as amethyst here so does, so it must comprise of two parts. Can mental substance be unconscious? I do not know. As an aside, the mind and soul are often equated in this way, having originated in a time when God and religion were far more embedded in daily life. When one dies via overcasting in Hex, you die instantly, since that’s what happens when you lose all your health. You may argue that this is simply gameplay limitations, but that’s no fun.
I postulate that the soul of the player, when lost, causes the body to instantly evaporate, or whatever happens when an entity dies.Does the existence of media directly imply that reality is dualistic in nature? I would argue under Cartesian dualism, that this would be illogical, given the separate natures of mind and matter here that mind may not directly affect matter (eg. The break block spell), or that matter may affect mind (I will be frank and say that I do not have an example for this). Most Cartesian dualists believe that the mind and the body simply interact with each other due to the fact that they are so intimately intertwined.
So, perhaps, then, mind and reality are one and the same?
There are two further subdivisions of Monism, the first and likely most relevant here being idealism, the idea that reality is the same as thought or consciousness. The second is physicalism, stating that the mind is simply a byproduct of physical processes occurring in the brain.Idealism
If we consider idealism, we may draw inspiration from Descartes once again, who, in his Meditations came to the realisation that there was very nearly absolutely nothing he could hold certain, if he did not hold any assumptions of the things that he could hold certain (such as that he could be quite certain that his eyes were truly seeing a campfire, and that his eyes existed at all). He came to the final conclusion, through a thought experiment with a deceitful devil, that if he were able to be deceived or persuaded that such things existed, that he then absolutely existed. After all, you cannot deceive thin air. This is where the phrase “Cogito ergo sum”
originates. If we consider Minecraft as a game, and its story, particularly the end poem, we may come across the idea that reality is itself a dream, a delusion which we wake from and fall into time and time again. It can be said then, that matter is swallowed up by mind, much in the same way that your mom- Idealism is an attractive option, as it places the mind in an elevated position, which philosophers in the past staked much of their claim in before advances in the material sciences (note, not Material Science, the science of materials) put their ideas into jeopardy. Much of this is in the realm of pure speculation in regards to Hex Casting, as lore is written and may be added onto by others. I say this but I genuinely have not read the lore fragments yet I’m going to be so for real.
My personal headcanon is that reality and mediacal space are intersecting planes in hyper dimensional space and that the set of all realities which contain Hex Casting contains this mediacal space. This doesn’t exactly explicitly say whether reality and this other space are of different substances. Hexal adds the Nexus, which allows for the conversion of matter to media, and vice versa. Does this imply they are one and the same substance? Perhaps, though conversion of forms is not covered by Descartes.Another form of Idealism is that of Platonic Idealism, which holds that reality is but the emanation from a realm of perfect, “platonic”, ideals. It could be posited that the realm which media originates is a form of this platonic realm, with media itself informing reality, rather than being away from it. Entity reference iotas are required for a few spells, impulse, the zeniths and nadirs, etcetera. It can be said that these iotas are simply references which point towards the entity, but what if these iotas truly are the entity in mediacal space? Of course, there is no evidence to suggest this, given the fact one can’t actually change the details of an entity using an iota itself. The effects produced with hexes are purely physical, so this may be the crux of the problem. A little more on this platonic idealism, we know that ideas can remain coherent in the platonic realm, with circles as an example being beamed into the player’s head once enlightened, or the horror of mindflaying. This does, I believe, act as a minor sort of evidence towards the platonic realm existing in some form.
Physicalism
Now we consider the opposite end of the spectrum. Suppose that media were just the arrangement of silicon and oxygen which finds itself appearing like and behaving like amethyst gems. Suppose that the mind is a product of flesh and this kind of arrangement. It may be possible that such phenomena as mind flaying, exploding, etc, are all just the physical interaction of the mind expressing itself in reality. This solves the interaction problem, but we now run into a new problem of defining the physicality of media. It also does not answer the question of how one, through enlightenment, gains new and terrible knowledge. In the real world, the knowledge problem is also quite troubling. Simply knowing all physical facts of something is still incomplete knowledge, being that consciousness, the "What-its-like"-ness of being a living, breathing, thinking thing. This may be the weakest position within Hex Casting, but it is still quite strong in our own reality, where advances in neuroscience and general science have brought the idea that the mind is an ephemeral object into question. In Hex, however, we can see real and genuine proof that the mind has a substance, and that it is media, being that it may be used in health casting to convert what may be considered the mind into magical fuel. We see another form of this mind-physical relationship in the villagers and allays, whose inert but still living bodies survive post mindflay. We know thusly that the mind can produce physical substance as amethyst buds. What does this mean? Not totally sure.
Prior to enlightenment the player character believes that media is the byproduct of thought, which may have been a particularly good argument for a physical view of the world as it would mean the two dualist substances are unified. One may not convert one form of substance into the other if they are truly separate substances. Budding amethyst, quenched allay, create water and lava all produce matter from media. This argues that as you can convert mental substance into material substance, then they are the same. However, one may also argue that this is not truly production, but rather simply the movement of water or lava into a position. Even still, there is a physical effect from a mental cause.
And again, it can be seen in budding amethyst that it endlessly generates media without input, though perhaps the nature of media and therefore mental substance, is that it can generate new substance in violation of the conservation of matter. Then, can we still rightly say mental substance is physical?
Evidence through Observation
We have examined a few parts of the Hex Casting world already, but let us place a bit more attention on the rest of it. Firstly, what the hell is a geode? I have heard that the geodes in lore are mass mindflay graves, produced by an ancient civilisation ages ago. Alright, so they are “living” minds. Do these minds still think? Are they conscious? Perhaps it would answer a few questions to say they are or are not. I should really read the lore fragments. Lol. We know that the use of media allows one to gain knowledge of the world, whether through raycasts or zone distillations. There are also ways to physically affect the world, the very first spell in the game being explode. We do not know if the explosion conjures anything other than force. Again, we have to ask the Cartesian, where does interaction occur here? I argue that perhaps instead of the mind being impotent within Hex, it is able to pierce into the material realm with sufficient mental substance, such as in the case of explode.
I go back to Descartes’ explanation of the interaction between mind and body, of his pineal gland. Earlier, I merely joked that perhaps a directrix contained the pineal gland of the villager, but now it does seem, after careful consideration, a quaint possibility. Consider that media is this ephemeral substance which animates the body. It too flows down magical leylines and acts to work cause onto the world. Considering the inanimate but still living corpse of the flain villagers, this does seem distinctly logical. I’m not terribly certain what an impetus may represent, but perhaps the mind itself is also torn from its seat in the mind and placed inside the slate cradle.
Conclusions
This essay was written over the course of 2 days and very little sleep, in between college classes. It is not structured well. This has been purely for fun. I have aimed, in this essay to bring into the conversation of Hex Casting lore, new views informed by centuries old perspectives. I hope in bringing forth the positions of Cartesian Substance Dualism, Idealism, Platonism, Physicalism, that I spark new and interesting discussion within the Petrak@’s Mods discord server. Thanks for reading!