HPS100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Monism, Subjective Idealism, Materialism
Document Summary
Contemporary worldview: the period of the history of science since the 1920s, since general. Quantum physics, general relativity, cosmology, chemistry, genetics, biology, neuroscience, Question: how do we explain psychological phenomena, such as ideas, thoughts, emotions, etc. Nowadays, we believe that psychological phenomena are produced by processes in the brain. Essentially, the processes in the brain are interactions between neurons. Although we do not quite understand how networks of neurons produce complex chains of reasoning, we do believe that everything in the mind is produced by brain processes. Note: individually, we may have different views on the subject. What we are interested in here is the view implicit in our contemporary scientific mosaic. Neuroscience: the mind is a product of brain processes. Materialism (ontological physicalism): there is only one substance matter. Materialism contradicts the idea of dualism which is implicit in newtonian and cartesian worldview. Dualism: there are 2 substances matter and mind.