Compare And Contrast Dualism And Monism

Dualism is the concept of the universe where the belief is that the entire universe is composed of two types of substances. The first kind is the mind; a non-physical substance and the second being physical matter such as math and body. The opposing theory to Dualism is Monism which is the belief that the universe is entirely composed of one substance. Under Monism there are two beliefs to what this one substance could be. The first and more popular belief is Physicalism, the belief that everything is build out of physical matter. The second less popular belief is Idealism, which is the belief that everything is mental and built out of ideas. Not many took Monism seriously but one argument for it was we exist because God is thinking about us.

In Descartes sixth Meditation he argues for dualism and Gods existence which furthers his argument. He begins his argument with trying to get some back from his method of doubt and begins with what you can conclude from it. That being “I exist” and because he exists and knows he exists he can deduce that he is a thinking thing. He states that

The truth question stating is it true that everything is physical? Also the interpretation question which has two sub questions, named the completeness question and the condition question. The completeness question is what does it mean to say that everything is physical. While the condition question is what does it mean to say that everything is physical. The completeness question is named this because it is asking about everything in completeness, while the condition question is named this because it is asking about the physical aspect. Stoljar continuous with the concept of supervenience and uses an example of a dot matrix picture to explain it. The large picture or “Global features” of the dox matrix picture supervenes on the dot pattern. Stoljar then uses this as a metaphor to how the world works in which all large scale things in our world supervene on atoms. The picture is to its dots as the physical world is to atoms, therefore everything is atoms. He then goes on to say that in physicalism we are a complex array of atoms and other universes with the same exact atomical make up will be identical in all ways. One of the only ways to doubt physicalism is some say that consciousness will not be governed by atoms and you can think how you like. Going back to the completeness question, the answer to it is