Philosophy › Section F · Metaphysics › Topic F.1
Substance: monism, pluralism, naturalism
Before asking what a self is or whether God exists, metaphysics asks a more basic question: what is reality ultimately made of, and how many kinds of basic thing are there? The earliest answers, from Greece and India, still shape how we think about matter, change and science.
In this topic
- Looking for what is really real
- Substance and ontology
- Monism: reality is one
- Pluralism: reality is many
- Atomism in Indian philosophy
- Worked example: why division must stop
- Plato: forms as true being
- Aristotle: form within matter
- Worked example: the four causes of a bowl
- Naturalism and its critics
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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