Nature's Complexity Alive

Farewell to Several Unificatory Cosmological Arguments for Monism

Bibliographic Data

ID21364207
AuthorsLok‐Chi Chan (0000-0002-9777-0604, Department of Philosophy National Taiwan University Taipei Taiwan, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-06-18
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNoûs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0029-4624 • E-ISSN: 1468-0068
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/nous.70051
OpenAlexW7165171965
LanguageEN
References cited46

Throughout history, numerous thinkers have claimed that monism—in the form of priority monism, existence monism, monotheistic monism, or versions that posit an extra‐cosmic ultimate being—theoretically surpasses pluralism, above all by positing a unified universe. This view re‐emerges in recent metaphysics through what I call cosmological arguments from parsimony (CAPs) and cosmological arguments from relations (CARs). According to CAPs, monism is more ontologically parsimonious than pluralism because it posits only one fundamental entity. According to CARs, the single fundamental object in monism serves as a required metaphysical explanans for how things in the universe can form certain relations with each other. I argue that this longstanding tradition of arguments spanning Neoplatonism, early and late modern philosophy, analytic philosophy, and even some Eastern traditions fails: monistic frameworks largely fail to reduce the universe's ontological complexity as alleged, and the remaining ones fail to show any theoretical advantage over pluralism for related reasons. Drawing on the broader materialist tradition, the article also offers a positive case for several theoretical merits of pluralism and ends with a takeaway concerning how best to inquire into the universe's unity

Materialism · Metaphysics · Monism · Object (grammar) · Pluralism (philosophy) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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