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monism there is only one kind of thing generally divided into three basic kinds idealism neutral monism materialism

idealism holds that everything is mental; only minds and objects of the mind exist or everything is composed of mental realities plato was a type of idealist in that he believed that everything that was Real was an Idea. everything else is a mere reflection, appearance, or distortion berkely was an empirical idealist. he believed that everything was composed of the mental, but the only way we could know such things was to have some experience of them. for him things only existed if they had some possibility of being experienced

neutral monism says there is something that underlies both the mental and the material, and both are merely expressions of this ultimate substance most famous proponent was spinoza extension and thought are just different ways of talking about this primal substance

materialism simple definition is the idea that matter and the laws of physics make up and govern the whole world non-reductive materialism this can be the same as predicate dualism; whether you describe yourself as some sort of monistic materialist or weak dualist simply depends on where you put the emphasis reductionism eliminativism

reductionism holds that mental events have a one-to-one correspondence with brain events; mental events bear the same relation to brain events as water does to H 2 O the belief “i am holding this bottle of water” corresponds to some firing of neurons (or some activation of some neuronal net, or whatever) in my brain

materialist arguments against multiple realizability this is the argument put forward by functionalists idea is that any particular mental event has the possibility of being instantiated in a variety of ways. as such, it is unlikely that every pain bears a strict correspondence to c-fibers firing argues against type reduction but not token reduction type reduction is the idea that, for example, pains are a certain type of thing that always reduce in the same way token reduction is the idea that, though there may be some particular instantiation of matter that makes up some event, there is no guarantee that it would always be that way (think of the hurricane again)

eliminativism like reductionism holds that the material world is all that exists. unlike reductionism does not attempt to reduce beliefs, desires, will, etc to brain events. rather, holds that such things do not actually exist. there are only brain events and describing them in traditional terms is misleading and likely to result in error think of the traditional notion of an elan vital (lifeforce). it is not the case that such a thing can be reduced to something physical. rather, it is the case that such a thing does not exist at all. also, think of the ether that is no longer discussed in physics, but which was considered absolutely indispensable at one time mental talk is the result of a flawed folk psychology that should done away with reasons one might think f.p. is flawed is its failure to account for things such as the nature and dynamics of mental illness, the faculty of creative imagination, the ground of intelligence differences between individuals, our utter ignorance of the nature and psychological functions of sleep, perceptual illusions, the nature of memory, etc

arguments against “mental talk” is helpful and divides the world at the appropriate joints eliminativism is self-refuting in that it makes use of the very concepts it hopes of which it hopes to displace, e.g. belief and other propositional attitudes entire endeavor is science fiction and not possible

why materialism lesion studies injuries to the brain in general seem to result in alterations to mental life medical studies of brain activity fMRI and PET scans seem to be able to measure mental (brain) activity. at least, mental events have explicit correspondence with brain events, and the simplest explanation is that the mental events are the brain events everyday experience drug use, alcohol use, exhaustion, etc all seem to affect not just brain activity but mental activity as well

arguments against phenomenal experience there seems to be something that is not captured by appeals to material explanations at all. consciousness and conscious experiences seem to be missing (top of p. 188 in [p]) leibniz’s law for any two entities x and y, if they are really the same, then if x has property P, y must also have it matter is extended, empirically observable, subject to the laws of physics consciousness and phenomenal experience are not subject to the same

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