Ideas of materialism, idealism and the three dualisms

Materialism

Monism

reality is ultimately one unified all-encompassing thing (matter or mind).

Dualism

Dualism, by contrast, is the view that reality consists ultimately of two fundamentally different kinds of things or properties: minds and matter, or mental states and physical states. There are three main versions of dualism.

Interactionist substance dualism (René Descartes)

* holds that reality consists of two fundamentally different types of substances: thinking things such as minds)
* and things that take up space (extended things, such as brains, cars, and pieces of wax).
* These substances causally interact with each other.

Property dualism

holds that reality consists of some kind of physical thing that produces both physical and mental properties such as beliefs, desires, and feelings.

Sphenomenalism

Thomas Huxley and Frank Jackson)

* hold, and states of mind are merely by-products of physical states of the brain, As such, states of mind have no influence on physical states.

Subjective idealism

This view holds that only the individual's mind and its perceptions are ultimately real, and that everything else is a product of the individual's imagination. This means that the external world, other people, and even the individual's own body are all ultimately illusions created by the mind.

objective idealism

which asserts that reality is ultimately a product of a universal mind or consciousness. According to this view, the physical world is not independent of consciousness but is rather a manifestation of it. This means that the physical world is ultimately a product of a divine or cosmic mind.

Transcendental idealism

This view holds that the physical world is ultimately a product of the mind, but that the mind itself is limited by certain a priori concepts and categories. In other words, the mind creates the world as we know it, but it is limited by the way it structures reality.