A CRITIQUE OF BERTRAND RUSSELL’S
NEUTRAL MONISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
In philosophy of the mind, most of
the debate during the past century has turned on the materialist and the
dualist perspectives. Materialists have argued that physical things are really
the only things that exist, and that the mind is a physical thing, and dualists
have argued that the mind and body are immaterial and material things,
respectively (Banks 2003). Both materialism and dualism suffer from well-trod
problems, materialism seems to explain away, rather than explain, the mind, and
dualism notoriously suffers from the interaction problem. How does an
immaterial mind interact with a material brain?. Neutral monism is a position
in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, the classic version of which was
defended by Ernst Mach, William James, and Bertrand Russell (Banks 2003).
Neutral monism arose in a climate
of revolt against the ‘billiard ball’ mechanical philosophy of nature and paralleled
the rise of a scientific psychology in the late nineteenth century. Mach’s
original theory of elements was developed as part of a project to eliminate
unnecessary metaphysical notions of ‘mind’ vs. ‘body’ and to unite physics and
psychology in a general scientific view which could then be applied in any
field of inquiry. The elements that made up minds and bodies were in themselves
neither mental sensation qualities, nor physical objects in space and time, but
rather neutral between both domains and distinguished provisionally by
isolating out one kind of variation of elements as ‘mental’ and one kind of
variation as ‘physical’. In reality, there was no such dualism, either of
elements or variations (Mach 1959). William James developed neutral monism
further into his own direct realist epistemology in the Essays on Radical Empiricism (1977). Russell,
originally an opponent of Mach and James, in a delightful twist, abandoned his
theory of acquaintance and converted to the view himself by 1918 (Hatfield 2002)
and used the elements sometimes under the name of ‘event-particulars’ for a
construction of space and objects from linked perspectives, where perspectives
were obtained by connecting elements to each other via their causal relations.
On Russell’s view, objects could be expressed as sums of their effects or
interactions with observers and with other objects. The object is the sum of
the event-particulars in its causal history, not a substratum in which intrinsic
properties of the thing are grounded, a view very much in line with Mach’s
conception of an object as a stable function of elements: According to the view
that I am suggesting a physical object or piece of matter is a collection of
all those correlated particulars which common sense would regard as its effects
or appearances in different places (Russell 1921).
Bertrand Russell in his long career
as a philosopher has produced a large number of works covering a wide variety
of subjects. He has made important contributions to various fields, has
developed many new ideas and has suggested instructive hypotheses. His
influence on contemporary philosophy, especially in logic, logical analysis,
the philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics, cannot perhaps be
exaggerated. There are few books written on philosophy during the last few
decades, which do not in some way refer to Russell's works or make use of some
of his ideas. This is perhaps the reason why Allan Wood remarked a few years
ago that "there is little of importance in present-day philosophizing
which is not derived from him. The post-Russellians are all propter-Russellians"
(Banks 2004).
Neutral monism is a monistic metaphysics;
it holds that ultimate reality is all of one kind. To this extent neutral
monism is in agreement with the more familiar versions of monism: idealism and
materialism (Blackburn 1992). What distinguishes neutral monism from its
monistic rivals is the claim that the intrinsic nature of ultimate reality is
neither mental nor physical. This negative claim also captures the idea of
neutrality: being intrinsically neither mental nor physical in nature ultimate
reality is said to be neutral between the two. Neutral monism is compatible
with the existence of many neutral entities. And neutral monism is compatible
with the existence of non-neutral entities mental and material entities, for
example, assuming that these non-neutral entities are, in some sense,
derivative of the ultimate neutral entities. Most versions of neutral monism
have been pluralist in both these respects. They were conceived as solutions to
the mind-body problem. The goal was to close the apparent chasm between mental
and physical entities by exhibiting both as consisting of groups of the more
basic neutral entities (Boring 1942).
In the course of the development of
his thought, Russell's views on many topics have undergone changes, sometimes
resulting in opposite ideas at different stages. In spite of this, there is
throughout a unity of purpose and constancy of method. The purpose has always
been to attain as much certainty in knowledge as possible, a passionate search
for truth. The method is that of logical analysis, developed in his
mathematical logic and employed in every branch, of philosophy (Carnap 2003).
For him, every philosophical problem is a problem of analysis, and the business
of philosophy is essentially that of logical analysis followed by logical
synthesis. Truth, Russell believes, can only be obtained from the understanding
of the world as a whole, not simply the little world of human mind and
experience. He has often complained against philosophers of "cosmic
impiety", of being too much concerned with this petty planet and with
"the different ways in which silly people can say silly things", and
not trying to understand the world. He finds little satisfaction "in
contemplating the human race and its follies". He says, "Those who
attempt to make a religion of humanism which recognises nothing greater than
man, do not satisfy my emotions. And yet I am unable to believe that, in the
world as known, there is anything that I can value outside human beings”
(Chalmers 1996). This conflict shows the attitude he has taken to philosophy in
general. He has tried to obtain a philosophy of the world in which man and
other things are seen in their proper places. His attempts, like those of any
other philosopher, have been a failure in the sense that he has not been able
to get the certain impersonal truth which he set out to find. But they are also
a success in the sense that he has been able to show that such impersonal
absolute truth is not attainable, at any rate on purely empirical grounds. And
in his search for truth he has developed a philosophical method which gives
valuable knowledge, though not absolute certainty, and which enables the
philosophers employing it to argue and concur in respect of exact hypotheses,
all compatible with the existing evidence (Davidson 1993).
Neutral monism had been maintained
by some philosophers before Russell. He accepted it in 1919 and has since then
advocated it continuously. This theory has been his metaphysical faith for
nearly half a century now, a period which has witnessed some of the results of
his mature philosophical thought. It is therefore important to understand his
theory of neutral monism both because the theory itself is important and
instructive, and because a study of it is a valuable help in gaining an insight
into his philosophy in general (Friedman 1989). However, Russell's philosophy
in general, and his neutral monism in particular, have not gone unopposed.
There are a good number of reviews, articles and short references here and
there in which his neutral monism has been criticised, and sometimes rather
severely. There are two things that one finds about these criticisms. First,
there is in some cases a lack of recognition of the different stages of the
development of the theory with the result that attacks have been directed to a
position which Russell had already criticised and abandoned. Secondly,
criticisms have sometimes been made on the basis of some interpretations of
some his ideas, which he would not perhaps recognise as adequate
interpretations at all. The latter has arisen from two things. On the one hand,
Russell himself has not always been as precise and unambiguous as one might
wish, thus leaving room for alternative interpretations to suit a commentator's
special bias (Dretske 1993).
Now, besides criticising his own
earlier positions at subsequent stages, Russell has also tried to clarify his
position in defensive articles and replies. We have, therefore, a complex situation
about his theory of neutral monism: he has developed it in different phases by
making important changes at different times, and thus his views are to be found
in, number of books and articles; his critics and commentators have represented
him in ways which he often disapproves (and sometimes rightly) and which are
mostly partial; and there are his own replies and clarifications (Feigl 1967).
A proper understanding of his theory will now require a consideration of these
various developments. There is, however, no single book either of Russell himself
or of anyone else, which offers a brief account of the theory, an account that
shows the development of the theory in its different phases and contains
references to these various sources (Garfinkel 1990).
It is clear that there is a case for a study of Russell's neutral monism in the manner indicated above, and that this would be a valuable contribution to the understanding not only of his metaphysical position, but also of his philosophy in general to some extent. At present the study is also important from another point of view (Holman 2008). Since long Russell has maintained as an aspect of his neutral monism a theory of the relation of mind and body (brain in particular) which in a somewhat modified form is much in vogue now-a-days. In recent years it has been called the 'mind-body identity theory’, which is sometimes maintained without proper recognition of its original form or source. But it is useful to know it in its original form and original context. A study of the development of Russell's neutral monism will reveal that the identity theory owes its origin to his neutral monistic construction of mind and brain (Garfinkel 1990). This study therefore seeks to criticize the Bertrand Russell’s neutral monistic philosophy of the mind.
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