Dualism Vs Monism Essay

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The world is made up of two types of ‘things’- mental and material. While material things are characterized by physical properties such as shape, mass, and color, and are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, mental things are made up of properties such as consciousness, awareness, beliefs, and desires, all of which are not limited to space (Fieser, 2008; Yang, 2012). Philosophy of mind is concerned with the relationship between these two sets of properties and tries to explain whether there are such things as minds, such properties as mental properties, and whether mental and physical bodies interact with each other (Mandik, 2010).

Mind-body theories can be divided into two categories: monistic and dualistic. On the one hand, physical monism argues that the world can be explained in purely physical terms. That is, every individual, their properties, and behavior can be described and explained by physics. So, when someone refers to ‘being alive’ or ‘experiencing happiness’, they are expressing a complex relation between a collection of physical particles (Jaworski, 2011). Mental monism or idealism on the other hand, claims that “material objects are colonies of rudimentary souls” (Leibniz in Armstrong, 2002, p. 5). Physical bodies such as stones and tables are believed to have no existence independent of one’s perceptions or ideas of them. Things simply stop existing once they are no longer known, perceived or remembered. …show more content…

While the main problem for dualism is explaining how two distinctly different properties of mind and body enter into causal relationships, the ongoing mind-body debate has spawned many more problems relating to subjective experience and free will (Hardnad, 1992; Jaworski,

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