ABSTRACT
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. As such, the issue of the nature of human beings arises and, in particular, how the human mind is related to the human body. Are we exclusively physical things with a physical mind (or brain)? Are our minds something over and above our physical bodies? Can our conscious minds continue to exist after bodily death? There are two broad traditional and competing metaphysical views concerning the nature of the mind and conscious mental states: dualism and materialism. While there are many versions of each, the former generally holds that the conscious mind, or a conscious mental state, is non-physical in some sense. On the other hand, materialists typically hold that the mind is the brain or that conscious mental activity is identical to neural activity. More generally, one can define materialism as the view that everything is material. One might instead opt for the somewhat weaker claim that mental activity depends upon brain activity without being identical or reducible to it.
