Dualism can be contrasted with monism, and also with physicalism. It is argued here that what is essential to physicalism
is not just its denial of dualism, but the epistemological and ontological authority it gives to physical science. A physicalist
view of the mind must be reductive in one or both of the following senses: it must identify mental phenomena with physical
phenomena (ontological reduction) or it must give, an explanation of mental phenomena in physical terms (explanatory or conceptual
reduction). There is little reason to call a view which is not reductive in either of these senses “physicalism”. If reduction
is rejected, then a non-physicalist form of monism is still available, which may be called “emergentism”.
Keywords physicalism - dualism - mind - ontology - reductionism