I am attempting to summarize last week's presentation of neutral monism by Gary S. This will be difficult but I will include some definitions and some of Gary's statements here from the notes I took and also some definitions that I have looked up. Hopefully this information will provide some base for this week's continuing discussion of this topic.
Neutral monism definitions: According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/ " 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 idealism AND materialism. What distinguishes neutral monism from its better known 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."
In considering this theory, we end up with three questions according to the article cited above from the Stanford Encyclopedia:
1.) What is the nature of the neutral entities that form ultimate reality? 2) What is the relationship of these neutral entities to matter? and 3) What is the relationship of these neutral entities to mind?
Required in this theory is a way for mental and physical phenomena that are real to be either reducible to or constructable from the underlying neutral level. This means that some unit of these phenomena must be able to go either way, be reduced to and be constructed from. Theorists have determined that the usual units of matter such as electrons and neutrons can not be both. Can thoughts be these units of entity that can go both ways? Probably not. Therefore some of the theorists have postulated that this unit of phenomena could be information. Gary talked about this at some length during his presentation and I think will talk more about this in the coming week's session.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia article cited: "The main task of a neutral monist theory is therefore to show how, given a certain notion of mind and body, a class of neutral entities can be specified and how mental and physical states can be reduced to/constructed from these entities. The success of a given version of neutral monism should be judged primarily on the basis of how well it handles these problems.
The article at Stanford Encyclopedia referenced lists quite a list of neutral monistic theorists. We have heard some of their names in the presentation. Certainly their writings would be further source for looking into these philosophical ideas further. These names include Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677); Ernst Mach (1838-1916); Richard Avenarius (1843-96); Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929); and then more known William James (184201910); Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957); Edwin B. Holt (1873-1946); Bertrand Rrussel (1872-1970).
A current philosopher is Kenneth Sayre who after working in the cybernetics and artificial intelligence area has also delved into some philosophy of mind work. His book is "Cybernetics and the Philosophy of mind (1976, reprinted in 2014)". From Wikipedia: "One widely discussed view in this book is Sayre's version of neutral monism. As he defines it, neutral monism is the thesis that mind and matter are both reducible to an ontologically more basic "neutral" principle. The more basic principle in his account is information, in the technical sense of information theory. Sayre's version has been recognized by several recent authors as one of the more credible forms of neutral monism available to date."
From the Stanford Encyclopedia article cited: "Among contemporary and recent philosophers who either are neo-Russellians or are sympathetic to neo-Russellian ideas we find David Chalmers (who Gary has quoted), the only "mere" sympathizer in the lineup) and Daniel Stoljar. They belong into the group pinning their hope on a third, as yet unknown, set of properties that constitute both mind and matter."
Here I wanted to provide a summary of Gary's presentation as I usually do. I took 6 pages of notes during his talk last week. I thought I could just go back and offer some definitions and brief summaries of this presentation. But I found that I couldn't make much sense at all of my notes. There are just a lot of big words and big word combinations from the world of philosophy and consciousness theory. My brain ran out of energy. I could not wrap it around these ideas. Perhaps this coming week's discussion and Gary's second presentation will clear some of this up.
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