Dualism
In epistemology, dualism means that there is a barrier between a person and the world around them. This barrier splits the world into two for that person, into 'myself' and 'the world'. Each person can see, hear, taste, smell and touch the world but cannot know it directly. For example, somebody cannot know just by looking that things are made up of many atoms. This means that something could happen in the world that we would not know about because we could not see, hear, taste, smell or touch it. A non-dualist idea is that a person is just another part of the world and that there is no barrier. For example, it could be said that if somebody cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell something then it does not affect them.