PSY270H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Neutral Monism, David Chalmers, Christian Mortalism

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY270H1
• Professor: Christine Millicent Burton

Document Summary

Mind-body problem: the question of how mental events, such as thoughts, beliefs and sensations are related to, or caused by, physical mechanisms taking place in the body, such as cellular or molecular processes in the brain. For much of recorded history, it appears that most people subscribed to some form of dualism as the response to the mind-body problem. Dualism: the view that the mind and body consist of fundamentally different kinds of substances or properties. Monism: the idea that there is only one kind of basic substance" in the world. This could be the position that there is only physical matter - physicalism or materialism - or, alternatively that only the mind is real, a view known as idealism. Neutral monism holds that there is only one kind of substance and that mind and body are the same thing. Dualism is related to the idea of the soul" or spirit" as the source of mental activity and subjective experience.