Concept
Neutral monism
Overview
Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind, concerning the relation of mind to matter. These theories take the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".
Neutral monism has gained prominence as a potential solution to theoretical issues within the philosophy of mind, specifically the mind–body problem and the hard problem of consciousness. The mind–body problem is the problem of explaining how mind relates to matter. The hard problem is a related philosophical problem targeted at physicalist theories of mind specifically: the problem arises because it is not obvious how a purely physical universe could give rise to conscious experience. This is because physical explanations are mechanistic: that is, they explain phenomena by appealing to underlying functions and structures. And, though explanations of this sort seem to work well for a wide variety of phenomena, conscious experience seems uniquely resistant to functional explanations. As the philosopher David Chalmers has put it: "even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?".
With this, there has been growing demand for alternative ontologies (such as neutral monism) that may provide explanatory frameworks more suitable for explaining the existence of consciousness. It has been accepted by several prominent English-speaking philosophers, such as William James and Bertrand Russell.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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He holds that there are “thoughts”, which perform the function of “knowing”, but that thoughts are not made of any different “stuff” from that of which material objects are made. He thus laid the foundations for what is called “neutral monism”, a view advocated by most American realists. This is the view advocated in the present volume.
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
States what Neutral monism is; the author is tied to Neutral monism in the knowledge graph.
It remains to ask whether there are any general philosophical arguments enabling us to say that, if matter is real, it must be of such and such a nature. As explained above, very many philosophers, perhaps most, have held that whatever is real must be in some sense mental, or at any rate that whatever we can know anything about must be in some sense mental. Such philosophers are called 'idealists'. Idealists tell us…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
States what Neutral monism is; the author is tied to Neutral monism in the knowledge graph.
I call a conception problematical which contains in itself no contradiction, and which is connected with other cognitions as a limitation of given conceptions, but whose objective reality cannot be cognized in any manner. The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding), is not self-contradictory, for…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Neutral monism is; the author is tied to Neutral monism in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Neutral monism
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Fundamental interaction
- Mind–body problem
- G. E. Moore
- Immanuel Kant
- John Searle
- Ad hoc
- Philosophical Studies
- Mind–body dualism
- Max Tegmark
- Metaphysics
- Materialism
- Ontology
- Property dualism
- Arthur Eddington
- PhilPapers
- Sense data
- David Chalmers
- H. H. Price
- Spinoza's Ethics
- Problem of other minds
- Intrinsic and extrinsic properties
- Indian philosophy
- Edward Craig (philosopher)
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
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