ABSTRACT
Materialism as a philosophical stance proposes that everything in the world is comprised of matter. Cartesian materialism refers to the relation between the immaterial and material. Global supervenience, or supervenience physicalism, holds that physicalism is true of a possible world if and only if there is an identical world that is duplicate in every respect to the actual world. Minimal physicalism asserts that physicalism is true of a minimal possible world if and only if there is a minimally identical world to the actual world. Physicalism presents a number of different physicalist notions for the study of culture. Token and type physicalism reflect a philosophical stance consistent with processes of cultural change in the world. Physicalism represents a philosophical stance that describes how physical laws guide the mind and the world. Cultural systems reflect physical processes that expand the mind into the world.
