Monism

People are monists, dualists or pluralists depending on whether or not they believe that reality is composed of one, two or more substances. These positions may be represented as here indicated.

Hindus, Buddhists and Animists are for the most part monists. They believe that reality is one and that everything that exists is a functioning part of that whole which is spirit. Western man for the most part may be called a monist also as he believes that God is dead and matter is the only substance to reality. Bible believing Christians would be pluralists.

In philosophy of mind, monism is usually contrasted with the dualist position that mind and matter are deeply different. Thus, monism is the claim that mind and matter essentially the same. However, this 'sameness' has come in a number of different and contradictory varieties. For example, Hobbes felt that the mental is merely and epiphenomena of the physical, thus the physical is the one real substance (Contemporary materialism is also a form of physicalistic monism (see Churchland, 1996). In direct contrast, Berkeley postulated that the physical is just a collection of ideas (hence, idealism) and thus the mental is the only thing that really exists. Finally, there are a number of positions similar to Spinoza's property dualism, often referred to as dual-aspect theory. Spinoza held a position in which the mental and the physical are simply two modes of a more basic substance (it should be noted that strictly speaking, Spinoza was not a property dualist as he held that the mental and the physical were two of a possible infinite number of modes of the basic substance, nevertheless he is typically labeled as one). For Spinoza, this basic substance was God. Thus the only real thing is God, who is neither physical nor mental. Spinoza's position is similar to that of Russell's neutral monism, however the latter is not committed to the belief that a supreme being is the more basic substance.

General Information

Monism is any doctrine based on the assumption of a single underlying principle. Metaphysical monism allows that only one being or type of being exists. A substantial metaphysical monism asserts that the variety in our phenomenal experience is due to the different states of a single all-encompassing substance, for example, Parmenides' Plenum or Baruch Spinoza's God or Nature. An attributive monism admits many substances but asserts that they are all of the same kind, for example, atoms or G. W. von Leibniz's monads.

Epistemological monism identifies that which is immediately present to the knowing mind with the real object known. Either the content of the mind is equated with the object known (epistemological realism), or the object known is equated with the knowing mind (epistemological idealism). Monism as a philosophical term was first used by Christian Wolff to designate philosophies that attempted to eliminate the mind-body dichotomy.

Monism (Greek monos,"single"), in philosophy, is a doctrine that ultimate reality is entirely of one substance. Monism is thus opposed to both dualism and pluralism. Three basic types of monism are recognized: materialistic monism, idealistic monism, and the mind-stuff theory. According to the first doctrine, everything in the universe, including mental phenomena, is reduced to the one category of matter. In the second doctrine, matter is regarded as a form of manifestation of mind; and in the third doctrine, matter and mind are considered merely aspects of each other. Although monistic philosophies date from ancient Greece, the term monism is comparatively recent. It was first used by the 18th-century German philosopher Christian von Wolff to designate types of philosophical thought in which the attempt was made