17 theories
Neutral Monism: theories of consciousness
Reality is made of one basic kind of stuff that is neither mental nor physical. Mind and matter are two aspects, or two constructions, of that single neutral base.
Open Neutral Monism on the mapAll theories A–Z
Neutral monism agrees with materialism and idealism that reality is built from one kind of stuff. It disagrees about what that stuff is. The base is neutral, and the mental and the physical are both organizations or aspects of it. This promises to avoid the interaction problem of dualism, the trouble materialism has with experience, and the trouble idealism has explaining how one cosmic mind divides into many.
The classic versions come from William James, who called the neutral stuff ‘pure experience’, and Bertrand Russell, whose ideas lie behind today’s Russellian monism. Ernst Mach built a similar picture out of sensations. Dual-aspect theories make the same move in another form. Spinoza described one substance known under the attributes of thought and extension, and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, with Carl Jung, treated the mental and the physical as complementary aspects of one reality, an idea Harald Atmanspacher develops today.
The family is broad. It includes Max Velmans’s reflexive monism, Galen Strawson’s realistic monism, Max Tegmark’s proposal that consciousness is a state of matter defined by how it processes information, and the Qualia Research Institute’s attempt to give experience a precise mathematical formalism. Leibniz and Davidson are borderline members. Leibniz’s monads are mental and Davidson’s base is physical, yet each treats the mental and the physical as two coordinated descriptions of one order.
The weak point is the neutral base itself. Its defenders say little about what it is like in itself, and if it has experiential qualities, the view slides toward panpsychism, which differs mainly in calling the base mind-like from the start.
Good places to start
- James’s Radical Empiricism of Monistic Pure Experience Consciousness as a Function Within Pure Experience
- Russellian Monism Phenomenal properties are the intrinsic nature of fundamental matter
- Spinoza’s One Reality: Embodied Mind and Graded Consciousness Mind as the Idea of the Body
- Atmanspacher’s Dual-Aspect Monism Mind and Matter as Aspects of Neutral Reality
- Tegmark’s State of Matter Consciousness as a State of Matter: Perceptronium
All 17 theories
- Spinoza’s One Reality: Embodied Mind and Graded Consciousness Mind as the Idea of the Body
- Leibniz's Monads Consciousness as Reflective Perception in Simple Substances
- James’s Radical Empiricism of Monistic Pure Experience Consciousness as a Function Within Pure Experience
- Whitehead's Experience is Fundamental, Consciousness is Not Consciousness as the Rare Crown of Universal Experience
- Russellian Monism Phenomenal properties are the intrinsic nature of fundamental matter
- Davidson’s Anomalous Monism Mental Tokens are Physical, Mental Types are Anomalous
- Velmans’s Reflexive Monism The Brain is the Mind Viewed from the Third Person
- Strawson’s Realistic Monism and Real Materialism Theory Consciousness is Wholly Physical and Experiential
- Polkinghorne’s Dual-Aspect Monism Mind and Matter as Complementary Aspects of a Unitary Being
- Teilhard de Chardin’s Evolving Consciousness Consciousness as the Withinness of Matter
- Pauli’s One World, Two Aspects: Psychophysical Complementarity Consciousness as the Psychic Aspect of One World
- Atmanspacher’s Dual-Aspect Monism Mind and Matter as Aspects of Neutral Reality
- Pereira’s Triple-Aspect Monism Consciousness as Feeling Co-Emerging From Three Aspects
- Ramachandran’s New Physics and Neuroscience Consciousness Entwined with New Physical Laws
- Tegmark’s State of Matter Consciousness as a State of Matter: Perceptronium
- QRI’s State-Space, Qualia Formalism, Valence Realism Consciousness as Mathematically Representable State-Space and Valence
- Leslie's Consciousness Inside an Infinite Mind Consciousness as Eternal Contemplation of Value