antidualist

Antidualism is a philosophical stance that rejects dualism, particularly mind-body dualism. Dualism, in its most common form, posits that reality is composed of two fundamental kinds of substance: mental and physical. Antidualists, therefore, argue that this separation is either mistaken or unnecessary. There are various forms of antidualism, each offering different explanations for the relationship between mental and physical phenomena.

One prominent form is physicalism, also known as materialism, which asserts that everything that exists is physical or ultimately reducible to the physical. In this view, mental states, such as thoughts, feelings, and consciousness, are not distinct entities but are rather physical processes occurring in the brain. Another approach is idealism, which suggests that reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual, and the physical world is either an illusion or a manifestation of mind. Neutral monism proposes that there is a single underlying substance that is neither purely mental nor purely physical, and both mental and physical aspects arise from this fundamental reality.

Antidualist arguments often challenge the coherence of dualistic explanations, questioning how two fundamentally different substances could interact. They may point to the success of neuroscience in explaining mental phenomena through brain activity as evidence for a unified physical reality. While antidualism offers a simpler ontological framework by avoiding the introduction of a separate mental substance, it faces its own challenges in fully accounting for subjective experience and consciousness.