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Monism
View that attributes oneness or singleness to a concept / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the academic journal, see The Monist. For the legal concept, see Monism and dualism in international law.
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
- Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One.[1] In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.
- Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.[2]
- Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.[3] Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind.
- Dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance.
- Neutral monism believes the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".
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