Neutral Monism in the Context of the Discussion Between Realism and Antirealism

In this article, the authors consider neutral monism in the context of the discussion between realism and antirealism. Neutral monism is a theory of mind which opposes both physicalism and dualism: unlike dualism, it does not divide substances; unlike physicalism, it does not deny the existence of qualia. This approach to the mind was developed in works of Bertrand Russell and David Chalmers. Russell argues that physics does not reveal the intrinsic nature of fundamental entities but only the external relations between them. He states that consciousness and physical properties are the same thing, the mere two aspects of neutral entities. Chalmers has elaborated Russell's approach into panprotopsychism. According to this theory, consciousness is constituted by protophenomenal properties which, along with microphysical properties, constitute macrophysical properties. The main problem of panprotopsychism is the combination problem which challenges the existence of constitutive properties. Neutral monism, at first thought, proposes a simple and elegant ontology that might be helpful when dealing with the mind-body problem; although, as Priest pointed, this theory has only one weakness - it does not explain what neutral entities exactly are. Panprotopsychism has a similar one - its defenders offer epistemologically inadequate solutions to the combination problem which do not shed light on the nature of the neutral substance. Therefore, the authors conclude that neutral monism is epistemological antirealism.

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