1. Materialism/Physicalism

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Physicalism is the metaphysical view that everything that exists is physical, or that everything ultimately depends on, and is determined by physical reality.  In other words, according to physicalism, there is nothing beyond the physical aspects of reality.  This means that all entities, properties, and phenomena including those that seem non-physical, such as mental states are either physical themselves or are entirely derived from physical processes.

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Physicalism proposes that only one kind of substance or fundamental stuff exists: the physical. This stands in contrast to dualism (see below) which supports the notion that both physical and non-physical substances, such as mind and body both exist as totally separate and independent but interacting realms of reality.

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Key Aspects of Physicalism Include:

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• Physicalism asserts that everything, including the mind and mental states, is physical or is derived from the physical.

• It is closely related to materialism, but physicalism is a broader, more modern view encompassing not just matter but also energy, forces, physical laws, space, time, and all other entities described by modern physics.

• An opposing view of physicalism is dualism, which holds that both physical and non-physical (i.e. mental) substances exist.

• Physicalism has not been able to provide an empirical explanation to the "hard problem" of consciousness, how consciousness can arrive from physical brain processes. It makes an assumption that somehow consciousness arises when a certain level complexity of neuronal processes is reached without any empirical evidence of how that might occur. It also does not have an explanation of how organisms without a brain like single celled organisms can exhibit elemental conscious behaviors (actions resulting from threats or opportunities in its environment). 

• For all living beings, at the end of life, all processes associated with that life cease and a state of oblivion (e.g. nothingness) exists for that previously existing entity.

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2. Dualism / Monism

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Dualism is a philosophical concept asserting that reality consists of two fundamentally different kinds of things or principles. In its most influential form, mind-body dualism, it holds that the mind and the body are distinct and separable entities, with the mind being nonphysical and the body being physical. A problem for Dualism is the "interaction problem" which is yet to explain how two separate ontological classes such as mind and body can interact with each other.

 

In Dualism, since the mind is nonphysical, existence continues as a soul or spirit as the physical body dies and ceases to exist. Dualism was originally developped by French philosopher, scientist and mathematician Rene Descartes in the 17th century as a political means to rationalize and separate the church from the affairs of natural philosophy (e.g. science).

 

Dualism contrasts with monism, which posits that only one kind of substance or principle constitutes all reality. In contrast, monism asserts that all of reality is fundamentally one, attributing oneness or singleness to existence. According to monism, everything in the universe whether physical matter, energy, consciousness, or any phenomenon is ultimately a manifestation of a single underlying substance or principle.  Monism stands in contrast to dualism which posits two fundamental substances, such as mind and matter as separate but interacting realms of existence.

 

3. Idealism

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Idealism is a philosophical doctrine asserting that reality is fundamentally mental, spiritual, or otherwise immaterial. Idealism proposes that the mind or consciousness form the ultimate foundation of all reality, or at least that reality as we know it, is deeply shaped by the mind’s activities. This stands in contrast to materialism/physicalism, which claims that physical matter is the primary substance from which all of reality is derived.

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Analytical Idealism is a modern form of Idealism which has its roots in ancient Indian traditions (such as in Vedanta). It is a metaphysical theory that asserts consciousness, rather than physical matter, is the fundamental substance of reality. It was developed from earlier forms of Idealism and popularized by philosopher Bernardo Kastrup in the 21st century.  It proposes that the universe and everything within it exist as experiential contents of a universal consciousness (universal subjectivity), reversing the conventional materialist view that consciousness emerges from physical processes in the brain. Instead, brains and bodies are appearances or representations within individual consciousness itself (in all living entities - entities that metabolize) as third person objective experience.

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Analytic Idealism explains the nature of reality as fundamentally experiential by positing that the universe is not made of mind-independent matter, but rather consists of a single, transpersonal field of subjectivity, a Cosmic Consciousness, of which all experiences and phenomena are modulations or excitations. 

 

Key Aspects of Analytical Idealism include:

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• All phenomena including space, time, matter, energy are excitations, modulations, representations or appearances within Universal (or cosmic) Consciousness.

• There is a single, Universal Consciousness or mind, and individual minds (human or otherwise) are dissociated segments or "alters" of this one mind, similar to how multiple personalities can exist with dissociative identity disorder (DID) in humans. 

• A simplified aspect of consciousness (phenominal consciousness) can exist in all living orgainsms even in those without brains or even nervous systems like single cell organisms.

• The appearance of separate consciousness in living creatures arises from dissociative processes within the Universal Consciousness where the individual consciousness of living entities are just dissociative aspects of the Universal Mind.  All living beings (e.g. beings that metabolize) dissociate from that Universal Mind when life begins.

• At the end of life, the dissociative process ends and various aspects of the entity (phenomenal consciousness including memory of all lived experience) reassociates with Universal Consciousness.

• Reality is not confined to individual minds. Instead, all individual experiences are segments or dissociated parts of a universal, spatially unbound consciousness (Cosmic or Universal Consciousness). This means that what we perceive as the external world and other people are appearances within this broader field of universal subjectivity, not separate from it.

• What we call "matter" (including the brain) is the extrinsic appearance (objective) or representation of conscious inner (subjective) states. For example, brain activity is not the cause of experience, but what conscious processes look like from an external perspective. Thus, the entire physical universe is the outward (objective) appearance of mental or experiential (subjective) processes within Universal Consciousness.

• In Analytic Idealism, reality is made of "felt qualities" rather than abstract quantities (like mass, charge, momentum, etc.). Every aspect of nature is experiential in essence, and all phenomena are reducible to patterns of excitation or modulations within the universal field of subjectivity (similar to dreaming in humans).

• While the world appears objective and independent from our individual viewpoints, its underlying essence is mental and experiential. The apparent objectivity is a result of the regularities in how the Universal Consciousness modulates itself.

• Idealism has yet to adequately explain the dissociation problem how an individual mind separates from Universal Consciousness when life begins.  However, suggestions of how this occurs can be inferred from nature as when  a human mind dissociates when an individual experiences dissociative identity disorder (DID - formally known as multiple personality disorder) as a result of severe mental or emotional trauma.

 

4. Panpsychism

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Panpsychism is the philosophical view that mentality, which is usually interpreted as mind, consciousness, or mind-like qualities, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.  In this framework, some form of mental property or consciousness is present throughout the universe, not just in humans or animals, but in all matter, including the smallest particles even those such as atoms and even subatomic particles. This property is just an additional property of matter and coexists with all other properties of matter. 

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Key Aspects of Panpsychism include: 

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• Panpsychism asserts that mental properties are not exclusive to complex organisms but are distributed throughout the natural world, even at the micro-level such as atoms and even fundamental subatomic particles.

• Mentality is considered ontologically fundamental, meaning it cannot be reduced to or fully explained by anything else, such as physical processes alone.

• While all things may possess some mind-like quality, panpsychists typically argue that human consciousness is a highly developed instance of a more universal property. The mentality in simpler entities (like atoms) is not as complex as in humans.

• Panpsychism has yet to explain the combination problem, how disparate conscious entities such as subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, etc. can come together and combine to form a single unitary experiential state of consciousness for the combined entity.