ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author assumes that the totality of basic contingent facts, which forms the factual component of ultimate reality, is, in a certain sense, exhaustive: that it encompasses, explicitly or implicitly, all that contingently obtains – that every contingent fact (every state of affairs) is either an element of this totality or sustained by it. Ultimate contingent reality is then the totality of ultimate contingent entities and ultimate (i.e. basic, unsustained) contingent facts. The common sense view is that ultimate reality includes a portion which is both physical and non-mental. Mentalism claims that ultimate reality is wholly mental and anti-realism claims that it is wholly non-physical. Realism divides into the exclusive and exhaustive alternatives of standard realism, which takes ultimate physical reality to be (at least in part) non-mental, and mentalistic realism, which takes it to be wholly mental.
