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Neutral monism

Neutral monism is a philosophical theory in metaphysics and philosophy of mind that posits the fundamental constituents of reality as neither inherently mental nor physical, but neutral elements or a single neutral substance from which both minds and physical objects emerge as different orderings or constructions.^[1] This view seeks to resolve the mind-body problem by rejecting dualism's separation of mind and matter, as well as the reductions of materialism and idealism, proposing instead a unified ontology where mental and physical phenomena are functional variations of the same underlying neutral stuff.^[2] Key to the theory is the idea that these neutral elements possess causal powers but lack intrinsic mentality or physicality until organized into psychological or physical contexts.^[1] The theory traces its origins to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging as a response to mechanistic philosophy and Cartesian dualism.^[1] Ernst Mach laid early groundwork by emphasizing elements that are neutral between sensations and physical processes, influencing subsequent developments.^[1] William James advanced neutral monism through his radical empiricism, arguing in his 1904 essay "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?"—later collected in Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)—that consciousness is not a separate entity but a function of neutral "pure experiences" that can be taken as either mental or physical depending on context.^[3] Bertrand Russell, building directly on James and Mach, formalized the position in his 1921 work The Analysis of Mind, where he described reality as composed of neutral "sensations" and "events" that construct both mind and matter, stating, "The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either."^[4] Russell's formulation evolved further in The Analysis of Matter (1927) and An Outline of Philosophy (1927), incorporating unperceived particulars as neutral events to fully eliminate psycho-physical dualism.^[4] In its traditional versions, neutral monism addresses objections to dualism by unifying ontology while preserving the explanatory distinctness of mental and physical properties, often through dispositional-categorical distinctions where physical laws describe relational structures and phenomenal experiences reveal intrinsic qualities of the neutral substratum.^[2] Contemporary variants, such as those in Russellian monism, extend the theory by positing inscrutable neutral properties as the basis for both, avoiding panpsychism by denying fundamental mentality.^[5] Critics argue it struggles with causal integration or risks collapsing into physicalism, but proponents maintain it satisfies both ontological unity and explanatory demands without privileging one realm over the other.^[5] Overall, neutral monism remains influential in analytic philosophy for bridging empiricism and monism in debates over consciousness and reality.^[1]

Fundamentals

Definition and Core Principles

Neutral monism is a monistic metaphysical theory that holds ultimate reality to be composed of a single kind of neutral substance or elements, which are neither inherently mental nor physical, but from which both mental and physical phenomena arise as different manifestations or constructions. This view rejects the dualistic separation of mind and matter, proposing instead that the distinction between them is a matter of perspective or relational organization rather than ontological difference. Key ideas of the theory were introduced by William James in 1904 as part of his radical empiricism to resolve longstanding mind-body problems without resorting to reductionism, while the term 'neutral monism' was coined by Bertrand Russell in 1921.^[3]^[2] At its core, neutral monism asserts that reality consists of neutral "stuff"—such as events, sensations, or neutral particulars—that can be structured or interpreted in ways that appear mental (e.g., as thoughts or experiences) or physical (e.g., as objects or processes), depending on the context of relations among them. These neutral elements serve as the basic building blocks of the world, avoiding any privileged status for either mental or material descriptions. For instance, James described this neutral foundation as "pure experience," an immediate, pre-categorized flux that underlies both subjective consciousness and objective reality. Similarly, Ernst Mach referred to "elements of sensation" as neutral constituents that form the basis for both psychical and physical domains.^[6] A key distinction of neutral monism from eliminativist positions is that it preserves the validity of both mental and physical discourses without eliminating or reducing one to the other; instead, it grounds them in a common neutral ontology, allowing for the coexistence of introspective and scientific accounts of reality. This approach maintains the explanatory power of ordinary language about minds and bodies while unifying them under a single metaphysical category.^[7]

The Neutral Substrate

In neutral monism, the neutral substrate constitutes the ontologically primitive reality underlying all existence, comprising a fundamental layer of entities that are irreducible to either mental or physical categories. This substrate is often characterized as "neutral stuff," consisting of basic elements such as qualities, events, or pure experiences that form the singular basis from which both mind and matter emerge.^[1] These elements possess intrinsic qualities and dispositional powers, enabling causal interactions without presupposing dualistic divisions.^[1] Neutral elements within this substrate manifest perspectivally as mental or physical depending on their relational context, without embodying an inherent duality. For instance, a single element might appear as a sensation—such as a feeling of warmth—when experienced inwardly through subjective relations, or as a neural process when described outwardly in objective, causal terms.^[8] This perspectival duality arises not from the essence of the elements but from how they are functionally organized or observed, allowing the same neutral reality to support both introspective awareness and external descriptions.^[1] The substrate's core properties render it neither inherently subjective nor objective, transcending traditional categorizations while accommodating both through contextual relations. It operates as a nondual continuum where mental and physical attributes are derivative modes of description, grounded in the substrate's capacity for multiple interpretive frameworks.^[8] In William James's framework, neutral points of "stuff" exemplify this: when related inwardly to a perceiver's stream of consciousness, they constitute mental content, but when related outwardly to environmental causal chains, they function as physical entities.^[6] Epistemologically, the neutral substrate fosters a unified account of knowledge by eliminating Cartesian splits between subject and object, treating both as constructions from the same experiential elements. Knowledge emerges directly from relational transitions within this substrate, verifying concepts through perceptual continuities rather than bridging an ontological gap.^[6] This approach supports a holistic empiricism where perceptual and conceptual understanding cohere without dualistic mediation.^[1]

Comparisons to Other Philosophical Positions

Versus Dualism

Substance dualism, as articulated by René Descartes, posits two fundamentally distinct kinds of substances: res cogitans, the immaterial thinking substance of the mind, and res extensa, the extended material substance of the body.^[9] This framework gives rise to the mind-body interaction problem, wherein it becomes unclear how an immaterial mind can causally influence a material body, or vice versa, given their ontological disconnection and the apparent violation of physical laws such as the conservation of energy.^[9] Neutral monism addresses this issue by rejecting the dualistic commitment to two separate substances, instead proposing a single neutral reality underlying both mental and physical phenomena.^[7] In this view, the fundamental entities—such as events or sensations—are neither inherently mental nor physical but neutral, with mental and physical aspects emerging from different relational or perspectival descriptions of the same underlying stuff.^[7] By unifying ontology in this manner, neutral monism eliminates the need for causal interaction between distinct realms, as there are no separate substances to bridge.^[7] A key advantage of neutral monism over dualism lies in its avoidance of problematic solutions to the interaction issue, such as epiphenomenalism—where mental states are causally inert byproducts of physical processes—or occasionalism, which invokes divine intervention to synchronize mind and body.^[9] Dualism's insistence on two fundamental kinds of reality creates explanatory gaps, particularly in accounting for how non-physical minds could affect physical outcomes without disrupting closed physical causality.^[9] Neutral monism bridges these gaps through its perspectival approach, where the same neutral entity can be described mentally or physically depending on context, thereby preserving causal unity without reduction to either side.^[7] For instance, consider the experience of pain: in substance dualism, pain requires explaining how a mental state interacts with a physical injury, potentially leading to unresolved causal mysteries.^[9] In neutral monism, pain is a neutral event—such as a sensation—that admits both a mental description (as subjective feeling) and a physical one (as neural activity), unified under a single ontological category without necessitating separate interactions.^[7]

Versus Panpsychism

Panpsychism posits that mentality is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the world, such that all matter possesses mental properties or proto-mental aspects at its most basic level.^[10] This view leads to the combination problem, which questions how the experiential qualities of micro-level entities, such as fundamental particles, aggregate to form the unified conscious experiences of macro-level beings like humans.^[11] In contrast, neutral monism holds that the fundamental elements of reality are neither inherently mental nor physical but neutral, with mental and physical properties arising relationally from how these elements are structured or perceived.^[12] Unlike panpsychism's proto-mental building blocks, neutral monism's neutral substrate—often described as "presence" or events—allows mentality to emerge through contextual relations rather than being intrinsic to the elements themselves.^[13] This relational ontology avoids the need for combination, as consciousness is not a property to be fused but a perspective on neutral structures.^[12] A key advantage of neutral monism over panpsychism is its ability to sidestep the hard problem of consciousness, which arises from attributing experiential aspects to physical fundamentals in panpsychism, thereby blurring the explanatory gap between physics and mind.^[12] For instance, while panpsychism might ascribe rudimentary experience to electrons, neutral monism treats electrons as neutral events that can be described in physical terms (e.g., as particles with charge and spin) or mental terms (e.g., as perceptual data) depending on the relational context, without positing inherent mentality.^[12] From a neutral monist perspective, panpsychism reintroduces a mental bias into ontology by privileging proto-mentality as fundamental, whereas neutral monism preserves ontological parity between mental and physical by rooting both in an unbiased neutral basis.^[13] This neutrality prevents the absurdities of universal micro-experiences while accommodating the emergence of complex mentality through relational dynamics.^[13]

Versus Materialism and Idealism

Materialism, as a form of reductive monism, posits that mental phenomena are ultimately identical to or emergent from physical processes, such as brain states in identity theory or functional roles in computational systems.^[7] This view faces significant challenges, particularly the "hard problem of consciousness," which questions how subjective experiences or qualia arise from objective physical descriptions.^[7] Neutral monism rejects this reduction, arguing that mentality cannot be fully exhausted by physical accounts alone, as the intrinsic nature of reality transcends purely physical properties.^[7] Idealism, another reductive monism, contends that physical objects and the external world are fundamentally mental constructs or perceptions, encapsulated in the principle that existence consists in being perceived.^[7] This position struggles to account for the apparent independence and persistence of the physical world beyond individual or collective minds, raising issues about unperceived realities.^[7] Neutral monism opposes this by denying that matter can be dissolved into mental terms, maintaining instead that physical descriptions capture valid aspects of a deeper, non-mental substrate.^[7] Neutral monism offers a non-reductive alternative, positing a single underlying reality composed of neutral entities that are neither inherently mental nor physical but can be construed in either way depending on context.^[7] As Bertrand Russell articulated, "both mind and matter are composed of a neutral-stuff, which, in isolation, is neither mental nor material."^[14] This avoids materialism's denial of intrinsic mentality—where consciousness might be dismissed as illusory epiphenomena—and idealism's denial of independent physical structures, unifying both domains as different perspectives on the same neutral configurations.^[7] For instance, while materialism might equate consciousness with specific brain states, neutral monism views such states as neutral events structured in a way that yields mental experience when described from a first-person viewpoint.^[7]

Historical Development

Antecedents and Early Influences

While broader monistic ideas appear in pre-modern philosophy, neutral monism as a distinct position emerges in the 19th century. Ernst Mach developed a sensationalist framework in The Analysis of Sensations (1886), arguing that the fundamental elements of reality are neutral sensations—such as colors or sounds—that can be interpreted as physical when dependent on external conditions or as psychological when related to the perceiver, forming the building blocks of both the external world and inner states.^[7] Mach's approach thus embodies neutral monism by treating these elements as ontologically indifferent, neither inherently mental nor material, and constructing all experience from their functional relations.^[15]

Early 20th-Century Formulations

Neutral monism emerged as a distinct philosophical position in the early 20th century, primarily through the work of William James, who framed it within his doctrine of radical empiricism. In his 1904 essay "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", James argued that traditional distinctions between mind and matter dissolve when reality is understood as composed of "pure experience"—a neutral stuff that is neither inherently mental nor physical but takes on those aspects depending on context and relations.^[16] He contended that what is called consciousness is merely pure experience functioning in a subjective or knowing capacity, while the physical world arises from the same experiences organized objectively. This view rejected dualism by positing a single, experiential continuum as the basis of all reality, emphasizing epistemological continuity over ontological separation. James further developed these ideas in a series of essays collected posthumously as Essays in Radical Empiricism in 1912, where he elaborated on pure experience as the "stuff" of the universe, accessible through direct acquaintance and relational connections. Influenced by earlier thinkers like Ernst Mach, whose 1886 work The Analysis of Sensations (expanded in 1900) described sensations as neutral elements underlying both physical laws and psychical processes, James integrated a pragmatic emphasis on experience's practical efficacy.^[17] Mach's analysis portrayed the physical world as a "complex of sensations," neutral in character and free from metaphysical commitments to matter or mind as primitives.^[18] James's lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston during 1906–1907, later published as Pragmatism, helped popularize these radical empiricist themes among American intellectuals, bridging neutral monism with pragmatist currents.^[19] Bertrand Russell adopted and extended neutral monism in the 1910s and early 1920s, drawing directly from James and Mach while aligning it with his logical atomism. In The Analysis of Mind (1921), Russell proposed "neutral particulars"—basic entities that are neither strictly mental nor material but can be constructed into both through logical relations, such as perspective or causal chains.^[20] This formulation marked a shift from James's primarily epistemological focus on the stream of experience to a more metaphysical ontology, where neutral elements serve as the atoms of logical construction for mind and matter alike. Interactions between James, Russell, and American pragmatists, including Russell's 1914 visit to Harvard where he engaged with James's circle, facilitated this evolution, emphasizing neutral monism's compatibility with empirical science and anti-dualist metaphysics.^[21]

Contemporary Revivals and Extensions

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, neutral monism experienced a revival within analytic philosophy of mind, particularly through its connections to non-reductive physicalism and Russellian monism. David Chalmers, in his explorations of the hard problem of consciousness, has positioned Russellian monism—a contemporary variant of neutral monism—as a viable alternative to reductive physicalism, arguing that the intrinsic nature of physical entities could be proto-phenomenal or neutral, thereby accommodating both physical and experiential properties without reducing one to the other. This framework gained traction in the 1990s and 2010s as philosophers sought to address the explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experience, with neutral elements serving as the underlying substrate that manifests as either physical dispositions or phenomenal qualities depending on context. Extensions of neutral monism have also appeared in cognitive science, notably within enactivism and 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended), where cognition is viewed as arising from dynamic interactions between organisms and their environments without privileging mental or physical substances. Francisco Varela's foundational work in the 1990s emphasized an enactive approach that aligns with neutral monism by treating mind and world as co-emergent from neutral processes, rejecting representationalism in favor of a monistic ontology where perceptual experience and action are unified.^[22] Recent scholarship has further integrated these ideas, proposing that autopoietic enactivism resolves naturalism's challenges by adopting a neutral monist stance, wherein subject-object co-constitution occurs through neutral foundational elements.^[23] From 2020 to 2025, neutral monism has seen renewed interest in quantum interpretations, particularly in efforts to unify mind, matter, and spacetime without dualistic boundaries, as explored in works like Yekutieli's 2020 analysis of neutral monism in relational quantum mechanics.^[24] Proponents argue that neutral monism provides a metaphysical foundation for relational quantum mechanics by positing neutral events as the basic constituents that give rise to observer-dependent outcomes, avoiding the measurement problem through a monistic ontology. As of 2025, ongoing discussions in quantum puzzles continue to reference neutral monist frameworks.^[25] Key figures like Galen Strawson have contributed to this resurgence through critiques of panpsychism and physicalism, inadvertently highlighting neutral monism as a compelling alternative by emphasizing the need for a fundamental reality that is neither strictly mental nor physical yet underlies both.^[26] Strawson's arguments underscore how neutral alternatives avoid the combination problems plaguing panpsychism while preserving monistic unity.^[27] In 2023, publications linked neutral monism to integrated information theory (IIT), proposing that IIT's quantification of consciousness can be grounded in neutral intrinsic properties, where integrated information emerges from neutral substrates rather than purely physical ones.^[28] Post-2010 interdisciplinary links to neuroscience, particularly predictive processing models, have further extended neutral monism by framing neural representations as neutral constructs that bridge prediction-error minimization with experiential content. In these models, the brain's predictive mechanisms operate on neutral elements that manifest as both physical inferences and phenomenal perceptions, updating outdated views of mind-brain relations. This integration highlights neutral monism's role in resolving tensions between computational neuroscience and phenomenology.^[29]

Key Arguments and Criticisms

Arguments Supporting Neutral Monism

One key argument for neutral monism is its epistemological advantage in providing a unified base for knowledge of both mental and physical phenomena. By positing a neutral substrate—such as William James's "pure experience"—that serves as the common material from which both minds and objects are constructed through relational contexts, neutral monism eliminates the dualist barrier that separates subjective awareness from objective reality. James argued that "if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure experience,’ then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter." This framework, defended on pragmatist grounds, allows for direct access to a shared experiential continuum, where the same element can function as a thought in one context and a thing in another, thus resolving how knowledge bridges the apparent mind-body divide without invoking separate substances.^[3] Neutral monism also gains support from ontological parsimony, offering a simpler metaphysics than dualism's two substances or reductivist materialism's denial of qualia. Bertrand Russell emphasized this by viewing the world as composed of a single kind of "stuff," namely neutral events, from which both mental and physical entities emerge as functional groupings. He described neutral monism as achieving a "great simplification," reducing the explanatory burden by treating mind and matter as alternative organizations of the same underlying events rather than distinct realms. This avoids the proliferation of entities in dualism while preserving the reality of conscious experience, unlike eliminativist or identity-based reductions that struggle to account for subjective qualities. The position aligns closely with scientific practice, particularly physics, which neutral monists argue describes relational structures rather than intrinsic natures, leaving room for a neutral foundation. Russell contended that physics reveals only "certain mathematical characteristics of the material with which it deals" and "does not tell us anything as to the intrinsic character of this material," treating entities like electrons as logical structures composed of neutral events. These events remain neutral between mind and matter, enabling a unified scientific ontology where percepts and physical occurrences fit into the same causal scheme without contradiction. Such compatibility underscores neutral monism's ability to integrate empirical findings from physics and psychology under one framework.^[30] In addressing the hard problem of consciousness—why physical processes give rise to subjective experience—neutral monism proposes that mental properties emerge from arrangements or relations within the neutral substrate, sidestepping the mysteries of emergentism in materialism. For Russell, sensations and qualia arise from the intrinsic properties of neutral events that ground both physical structures and phenomenal awareness, such that "events themselves were neutral as between mind and matter." Similarly, James's pure experience functions relationally to produce consciousness without requiring an inexplicable leap from non-conscious matter, as the neutral base inherently supports both objective and subjective aspects through contextual organization. This relational emergence preserves qualia as real while avoiding the dualist's interaction problems or the materialist's explanatory gap.^[30]^[3] Finally, empirical support for neutral monism draws from introspection, which reveals experiences as neutral prior to their categorization as mental or physical. James highlighted how raw sensations—such as the initial perception of a color or shape—exist as undifferentiated "pure experience" before being interpreted through subjective or objective lenses, suggesting that the neutral elements are the foundational data of awareness. This introspective evidence aligns with neutral monism's claim that the mind-body distinction is secondary, derived from how neutral stuff is relationally configured rather than inherent to the stuff itself.^[3]

Objections and Responses

One major objection to neutral monism concerns the vagueness of the neutral substrate, with critics arguing that it fails to specify what exactly constitutes this fundamental reality beyond being neither mental nor physical. Logical positivists, including Rudolf Carnap in the 1930s, incorporated elements of neutral monism into their constructional systems but ultimately critiqued its metaphysical commitments as overly abstract and empirically unverifiable, rendering the "neutral elements" more a placeholder than a substantive ontology. Proponents respond by viewing neutrality not as an ontological commitment to an unknowable essence but as a provisional stance awaiting scientific discovery of intrinsic properties underlying relational structures described by physics. Bertrand Russell, in his later formulations, treated the neutral substrate as comprising undiscovered intrinsic properties of fundamental entities, which science currently accesses only through their dispositional or relational manifestations, thereby bridging the gap between empirical observation and deeper reality. Another prominent criticism is that neutral monism fails to adequately explain the causal closure of the physical domain, as neutral events or elements would need to ground physical laws without reducing to them, potentially introducing non-physical causation that violates the completeness of physics. This objection highlights how sensations or neutral constituents might interfere with deterministic physical chains without empirical warrant for such interactions. In response, advocates maintain that physical laws pertain solely to the relational structures among neutral events, ensuring compatibility with causation by treating dispositions and causal powers as emergent from these relations rather than requiring separate mental intervention. Russell emphasized that the causal efficacy of neutral elements aligns with conservation principles, allowing psychical aspects to influence outcomes without net energy violation or reduction to purely physical terms. A further objection posits that neutral monism risks collapsing into idealism if the neutral substrate is construed as too akin to experience or sensation, thereby privileging mental descriptions over objective physical ones. Some critics have argued that such formulations blur the distinction between mind-dependent phenomena and independent reality, echoing idealist tendencies by making the world contingent on perceptual organization.^[7] Defenders counter this by stressing the symmetry between mental and physical perspectives: both are valid orderings of the same neutral reality, with neither ontologically prior, thus avoiding idealistic reduction. Recent formulations in the 2020s integrate neutral monism with structural realism, positing that intrinsic neutral properties underpin relational structures knowable through science, thereby safeguarding against idealist collapse while accommodating empirical objectivity.

Variants and Extensions

Radical Empiricism

Radical empiricism, as formulated by William James, is the doctrine that the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are as much a matter of direct particular experience as are the things themselves, with the further claim that the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience.^[3] This view posits experience as fundamentally neutral and relational, where truth emerges as what proves effective or satisfactory within the stream of pure experience, rejecting abstract intellectualist constructions in favor of immediate, practical verification.^[3] Key features of radical empiricism include its rejection of the copy theory of knowledge, which posits mental representations as duplicates of external objects; instead, James argues that knowledge arises through direct conjunctive transitions in experience, where sensations are identical with the things known, not mere images of them.^[3] Relations are as real as the terms they connect—for instance, the statement "blue is between red and green" experiences the relation of "betweenness" as directly as the colors themselves, without rational mediation.^[3] This approach embodies neutral monism by identifying pure experience as the single, neutral "stuff" of reality, which functions as either mental or physical depending on context, thereby avoiding the subject-object split inherent in dualism; experience forms a continuous field where knower and known fuse, such as when perceiving a wall constitutes both the sensation and the object.^[3] A distinct aspect of radical empiricism lies in its pragmatic test for neutrality: a concept or hypothesis qualifies as neutral if it unifies mental and physical aspects of experience without contradiction, assessed by whether it leads to satisfactory practical outcomes or maximal concrete adhesions in the experiential stream—for example, a scientific proposition supersedes a perceptual one when it better integrates transitions and resolves discrepancies.^[3] Radical empiricism influenced the development of American philosophy, particularly by advancing pragmatism's emphasis on pluralism, experiential validation of religious and heterodox beliefs, and a functionalist psychology that integrates subjective and objective dimensions, shaping thinkers like John Dewey through its commitment to lived relations and epistemic fallibilism.^[31] However, it has been critiqued for risking solipsism, as its focus on individual streams of pure experience might isolate minds from a shared transcendent reality; James counters this by emphasizing that experiences intersect through common objects and real conjunctive transitions, such as one person's percept of another's body enabling mutual knowledge without reducing to private subjectivity.^[3]^[31]

Russellian Monism

Russellian monism refers to Bertrand Russell's formulation of neutral monism, which posits that the fundamental constituents of reality are neutral particulars—neither inherently mental nor physical—that serve as logical atoms from which both mind and matter are constructed. In his 1921 work, The Analysis of Mind, Russell argues that these particulars, such as sensations and images, form the "stuff" of the universe, with mental and physical phenomena emerging as logical constructions or groupings of them. For instance, a physical object like a table is not a substance but a system of such particulars organized by continuity and causal correlations, while minds arise from biographical series of these events tied to specific perspectives.^[20] This view is further elaborated in Russell's later writings, including Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), where he identifies events as the neutral entities underlying both domains, emphasizing that "both mind and matter are constituted of entities of only one sort... 'events'." Sensibilia—neutral data like visual patches or auditory impressions—bridge the psychological and physical, known directly through acquaintance rather than inference, ensuring compatibility with empiricism. Acquaintance provides immediate access to these neutral elements, allowing knowledge of their intrinsic qualities without relying on abstract propositions alone.^[32] A key aspect of Russell's approach integrates neutral monism with physics, highlighting that scientific knowledge captures only the structural or dispositional properties of reality—mathematical relations and causal patterns—while leaving intrinsic natures (quiddities) undisclosed. In The Analysis of Matter (1927), Russell contends that physics describes entities like electrons through equations governing their behavior, such as energy interchanges and world-lines, but reveals nothing about their categorical essence beyond these structures. These quiddities, posited as neutral, fill the explanatory gap in physics by providing the intrinsic properties that ground dispositional laws, ensuring that physical entities are not merely abstract relations but concretely realized through neutral stuff.^[30] Over time, Russell's neutral monism evolved into what is now termed the Russellian variant, distinguishing sharply between dispositional properties (captured by science) and categorical quiddities (neutral intrinsics). This distinction underscores that while physics excels at relational structures, the neutral quiddities—potentially experiential or otherwise—account for the non-structural aspects of reality, avoiding both reductive materialism and idealism.^[33] In contemporary philosophy, Russellian monism has influenced debates on type-B physicalism, where phenomenal consciousness is reconciled with physical structures via unknowable quiddities, as explored in post-2000 works like David Chalmers's analyses of the hard problem. It also informs property dualism discussions, offering a middle ground where intrinsic properties might be phenomenal without positing separate substances, as seen in Daniel Stoljar's categorization of its variants.^[34]^[35]

Neutral Monism in Analytic Philosophy of Mind

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, neutral monism has evolved as a middle-ground position that seeks to reconcile physicalism and dualism by positing neutral entities as the fundamental basis for both mental and physical phenomena, thereby avoiding the explanatory gaps associated with reductive materialism or property dualism. This development emphasizes conceptual analysis to clarify how neutral properties can ground qualia and intentionality without invoking irreducible mental substances. For instance, neo-Russellian formulations extend the idea by treating physical structures as constructions from neutral causal powers, offering a non-panpsychist framework that aligns with empirical science while addressing the hard problem of consciousness. Neutral monism connects to theories of consciousness by providing neutral vehicles for phenomenal experience, particularly in models where consciousness arises from relational structures rather than intrinsic mental properties. In higher-order representational approaches, neutral elements can serve as the substrate for meta-representations that distinguish conscious from unconscious states, allowing qualia to emerge through organizational complexity without dualistic commitments. Drawing on its pragmatist roots, neutral monism has been explored in relation to enactive theories of cognition, where mind is understood as embodied interaction, potentially unifying sensory and motor processes through neutral relational structures.^[36] Exploratory applications have been proposed to the extended mind thesis, suggesting that cognitive processes might extend into environmental interactions via neutral causal relations, thus blurring boundaries between internal and external elements of mentality in a manner compatible with empirical findings on cognitive scaffolding. Similarly, links to predictive processing frameworks have been suggested since around 2010, where neutral representations could facilitate error minimization across perception and action in Bayesian-inferential models, though these remain areas of ongoing debate rather than established integrations. Recent works as of 2025 continue to revive neutral monism, particularly in addressing the hard problem of consciousness through perspectival or relational models.^[37]^[38] Analytic proponents underscore neutral monism's strength in conceptual precision, using logical analysis to demonstrate how neutral primitives resolve mind-body dualities without speculative ontology, as seen in extensions of Russell's foundational insights to contemporary debates.

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[22]
The Pull of Pragmatism on Russell
Abstract. In this chapter, we see that there were significant exchanges between Russell and pragmatism, during his 1914 trip to Harvard.
[23]
Autopoietic Enactivism, Phenomenology, and the Problem of ...
Then I propose to complement phenomenology and enactivism with a form of neutral monism, which conceives of the co-constitution of subject and object as ...
[24]
[PDF] Pragmatism as the foundation of cognitive enactivism
Clearly, this is a 'neutral monism' position in metaphysics. Second, both pragmatism and enactivism empha- size the biological roots of cognition. Pragmatists.
[25]
(PDF) Re-Thinking the World with Neutral Monism:Removing the ...
Apr 18, 2025 · Thus, starting with two axioms grounded in our characterization of neutral monism, we will sketch out a derivation of and explanation for some ...
[26]
[PDF] Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism Galen Strawson
What the two views have in common as monisms is that they want to accord the same reality status to E being and H being while remaining monist. Can neutral ...
[27]
[PDF] Strawson, G (2006) 'Realistic monism - David Chalmers
what is sometimes called 'neutral monism.' The central idea of neutral monism is that there is a fundamental, correct way of conceiving things – let us say ...
[28]
(PDF) The Brain as a Filter: Introducing a Quantum Ground into ...
Dec 11, 2023 · PDF | Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is an influential ... neutral monism. Recently a particularly influential path follows ...
[29]
[PDF] Simultaneity of consciousness with physical reality: the key ... - arXiv
Artificial Intelligence, Computation, Physical Law, and Consciousness. ... neutral-monism/>. Tegmark, M., (2000), Importance of quantum decoherence in ...
[30]
[PDF] The Analysis of Matter - Strange beautiful grass of green
The Analysis of Matter does not present the reader with the sort of grand ... PHYSICS AND NEUTRAL MONISM. XXXVIII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION -. INDEX.
[31]
[PDF] WILLIAM JAMES'S EARLY RADICAL EMPIRICISM - Temple University
“William James's Early Radical Empiricism: Psychical Research, Religion, and the 'Spirit of Inner Tolerance'” offers a revisionist reading that prioritizes the.
[32]
[PDF] Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
While studying William James with the intention of refuting him, Russell persuaded himself that James's theory of neutral monism that both mind and matter are ...
[33]
[PDF] A DILLEMMA FOR RUSSELLIAN MONISTS ABOUT ...
On Russellian monism, our conscious properties, are quiddity- involving in two ways. First of all, their instantiation is, at least partly, grounded in ...
[34]
[PDF] Panpsychism and Russellian Monism
Russellian monists reject the doctrine that they believe leads materialists to disregard or distort the distinctive features of consciousness: the doctrine that.
[35]
[PDF] 1 Four Kinds of Russellian Monism* Daniel Stoljar, ANU “Russellian ...
“Russellian Monism” is a name given1 to a family of views in philosophy of mind. The family is exciting because it seems to present an alternative both to ...Missing: post- scholarly
[36]
Pragmatism, enactivism, and ecological psychology - jstor
Feb 2, 2019 · This pragmatist approach relies on radical empiri- cism, neutral monism, and the active character of agents that establish organic coordi-.