Ideas of materialism, idealism and the three dualisms

Materialism

%%Materialism holds that reality ultimately consists of matter.%% Materialists gathered at the banquet would suggest that matter could be atoms or energy force fields or some other basic stuff that, in itself, is not mind-like or intelligent or conscious. But, you might ask, are thoughts, feelings, and consciousness also matter? Materialists believe that consciousness, mind, intelligence, and self are just complex material phenomena that can be fully explained in terms of matter. As with idealism, there are many versions of materialism proposed by different philosophers throughout the world, but they all agree that matter is the ultimate reality.

Monism

^^Both idealism and materialism are diverging branches of a wider metaphysical view called monism. According to monism, reality is ultimately one unified all-encompassing thing (matter or mind).^^

All particular things are transient manifestations, modifications, or expressions of this one thing. Materialists consider this one thing to be entirely material, and idealists consider it to be entirely mental. Neutral monists consider it to be neither material nor mental, but something even more basic than mind and matter (of which mind and body are aspects or expressions of it). Versions of monism are found in many of the world's major religious traditions, including branches of Islam, Sufism, and Buddhism. One of the difficult questions facing monists is how to account for the individuality and multiplicity of things without force-fitting all things into one thing.

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.

Idealism

 \n Idealism is a philosophical position that asserts that reality is ultimately mental or spiritual in nature. In other words, idealists believe that the physical world is ultimately a product of the mind or consciousness. This view stands in contrast to materialism, which asserts that the physical world is the ultimate reality and that consciousness is a product of matter.

One of the most influential forms of idealism in metaphysics is subjective idealism, also known as solipsism. 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.

Another form of idealism is 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.

A related form of idealism is transcendental idealism, which was developed by Immanuel Kant. 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.