Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Return to Chapter 2 Index
|
(These are excerpts from, or extensions to, the material published in my book "The Nature of Consciousness")
Monism Baruch Spinoza; Bertrand Russell There is an obvious
alternative to dualism: monism. According to monism, body and mind (matter and
thought) are made of the same substance: “idealists” think that everything is
mental, “materialists” think that everything is material. So monism mainly
divides into idealism and materialism. But the "one"
substance that everything is made of can also be something else than matter or
mind. The Dutch philosopher Baruch
Spinoza (17th century), for example, believed that only one
substance exists, and that “the” substance has two properties: it is conscious
and it has extension. Individuals are parts of that substance, which is
ultimately God. God is all that exists (he is what is), there is nothing that
is not God. The British philosopher
Bertrand Russell was also a monist of sort, because he believed that everything
in the universe is made of spacetime events which are neither mental nor
physical. (Edited in 2013 by Sean Champagne from Piero Scaruffi's book and subsequent revisions) |
| 
| 
| 
|