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Summary Russellian monism consists of the following two claims: i) that science describes physical entities structurally but does not capture their intrinsic nature, and  ii) that the intrinsic nature of physical entities is integral to the explanation of phenomenal consciousness.  This view is 'monist' in that both the physical properties described by science and phenomenal properties are ultimately grounded in a single class of property - the intrinsic properties of physical entities. Russellian monist theories vary along a number of dimensions. They differ in their characterisation of the hidden intrinsic properties: panpsychist theories regard them as phenomenal properties while panprotopsychists regard them as non-phenomenal properties that can combine to form conscious states. Among panprotopsychists, some say that these properties are unexperienced phenomenal qualities while others say that their nature is beyond our current conceptual repertoire. Versions of Russellian monism differ in their characterisation of the relationship between these intrinsic properties and phenomenal consciousness: candidates include identity, constitution and combinatorial 'infusion'. Russellian monists also diverge in their characterisation of the relationship between these intrinsic properties and familiar physical properties: they might be regarded as the categorical grounds of physical dispositions, the relata of physical relations or the non-structural implementation of physical structures. These details determine whether or not a Russellian monist theory qualifies as physicalist.
Key works Russellian Monism gets its name from a position most notably espoused in Russell 1927 though it should be remembered that modern versions of the view are quite different to Russell's own (and that there is some ambiguity about what Russell's own position really is). An excellent overview of Russellian Monism is offered by Alter & Nagasawa 2012. For a more detailed overview that goes deeper into the theory's historical roits see chapters 5 and 6 of Pereboom 2013. For panpsychist versions of Russellian Monism, see especially  Strawson 2006 (and the various responses to this paper) and Seager 2006.  For versions of Russellian Monism that deny panpsychism but which claim that phenomenal qualities are ubiquitous, see especially Feigl 1958, Maxwell 1979 and Unger 1998. For versions of Russellian monism that hold that we have no conception of the intrinsic nature of physical entities, see especially Stoljar 2001 (and his later revised position in Stoljar 2006) and Montero 2010.
Introductions An excellent overview of Russellian Monism is offered by Alter & Nagasawa 2012. Besides explaining why Russellian Monism is a promising position, this paper takes a careful look at some of the more subtle questions that a Russellian Monist theory must ultimately be able to answer. Another good place to start is Stoljar 2001. This isn't an introductory paper, but it is a classic case for Russellian Monism that is presented accessibly and convincingly.
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  1. Pan(proto)psychism and the Relative-State Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.Yu Feng - manuscript
    This paper connects the hard problem of consciousness to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. It shows that constitutive Russellian pan(proto)psychism (CRP) is compatible with Everett’s relative-state (RS) interpretation. Despite targeting different problems, CRP and RS are related, for they both establish symmetry between micro- and macrosystems, and both call for a deflationary account of Subject. The paper starts from formal arguments that demonstrate the incompatibility of CRP with alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, followed by showing that RS entails Russellian pan(proto)psychism. (...)
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  2. Does Panpsychism Mean that "We Are All One"?Hedda Hassel Mørch - manuscript
    Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is everywhere. Panpsychism has significant theoretical implications with respect to the mind–body problem, as well as the question of the intrinsic nature of the physical world. This paper considers one of its potential practical or ethical implications; specifically, whether, if panpsychism is true, it follows that “we are all one”, in a sense that implies that egoism (understood as bias towards what we normally, but falsely, take to constitute the self or ego) is not (...)
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  3. The ethical implications of panpsychism.Joseph Gottlieb & Bob Fischer - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    The history of philosophy is a history of moral circle expansion. This history correlates with a history of expansionism about consciousness. Recently, expansionism about consciousness has exploded: to invertebrates, to plants, to logic gates, and to fundamental entities. The last of these expansions stems from a surge of interest in panpsychism. In an exploratory spirit, this paper considers some largely uncharted territory: the ethical implications of panpsychism. Our conclusion is that while panpsychism probably does significantly expand our moral circle, it's (...)
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  4. Review of Erik Banks: Realistic Empiricism (2014). [REVIEW]Mostyn W. Jones - forthcoming - Journal of Consciousness Studies.
    Erik Banks does several things in this slender yet substantial book on realistic empiricism (aka neutral monism). First, he encapsulates the main ideas of this tradition. While he goes into greater depth on some of these ideas than other introductions do, these pages are still accessible to nonspecialists. Second, he traces the the history of this tradition through the Austrian scientist, Ernst Mach, the American psychologist, William James, the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and others. These four chapters are a valuable (...)
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  5. Russellian Monism and Ignorance of Non-structural Properties.Justin Mendelow - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-28.
    Russellian monists argue that non-structural properties, or a combination of structural and non-structural properties, necessitate phenomenal properties. Different Russellian monists offer varying accounts of the structural/non-structural distinction, leading to divergent forms of Russellian monism. In this paper, I criticise Derk Pereboom’s characterisation of the structural/non-structural distinction proposed in his Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism and further work. I argue that from Pereboom’s characterisation of structural and non-structural properties, one can formulate general metaphysical principles concerning what structural and non-structural properties (...)
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  6. Panquidditist Monism.Giovanni Merlo - forthcoming - In Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    According to Russellian monism (RM), the quiddities which underlie the fundamental causal structure of the physical world are also responsible for the existence of phenomenal consciousness. This view has been argued to provide an attractive alternative to physicalism and dualism, but it is plagued by the so-called ‘combination problem’ – namely, the problem of explaining how the quiddities underlying the microphysical structure of a macroscopic conscious agent (e.g., a human being) combine together to constitute his or her phenomenal experiences. In (...)
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  7. First-Order Representationalist Panqualityism.Harry Rosenberg - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-16.
    Panqualityism, recently defended by Sam Coleman, is a variety of Russellian monism on which the categorical properties of fundamental physical entities are qualities, or, in Coleman’s exposition, unconscious qualia. Coleman defends a quotationalist, higher-order thought version of panqualityism. The aim of this paper is, first, to demonstrate that a first-order representationalist panqualityism is also available, and to argue positively in its favor. For it shall become apparent that quotationalist and first-order representationalist panqualityism are, in spite of their close similarities, radically (...)
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  8. Strawson's realistic monism.Daniel Stoljar - forthcoming - Journal of Consciousness Studies.
    There is at least one element in Strawson.
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  9. Deflating the hard problem of consciousness by multiplying explanatory gaps.Işık Sarıhan - 2024 - Ratio 37 (1):1-13.
    Recent philosophy has seen a resurgence of the realist view of sensible qualities such as colour. The view holds that experienced qualities are properties of the objects in the physical environment, not mentally instantiated properties like qualia or merely intentional, illusory ones. Some suggest that this move rids us of the explanatory gap between physical properties and the qualitative features of consciousness. Others say it just relocates the problem of qualities to physical objects in the environment, given that such qualities (...)
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  10. Science of Consciousness in Panpsychism Metaphysical Critique.Nadia Elasalama - 2023 - Dissertation, Universitas Gadjah Mada
    The science of consciousness is an interdisciplinary study aimed at understanding the relationship between mental aspects, such as the mind, and physical aspects, such as the brain. While scientists engage in the scientific exploration of consciousness, philosophers also contribute to the philosophy of mind. So far, there are metaphysical questions that remain unanswered by the science of consciousness, which adopts a physicalism framework: How can the mind animate the body, or how do the mind and body interact? Panpsychism is a (...)
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  11. What is Consciousness?Amy Kind & Daniel Stoljar - 2023 - New York: Routledge.
    What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version of dualism (...)
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  12. Reflections on the Foundations of Russellian Physicalism.Mirza Mehmedovic - 2023 - Giornale di Metafisica. Nuova Serie Torino 1 (Il Processo e l'Idea):195-211.
    Russellian monism is the doctrine according to which physical properties, usually described as structural and dynamic, are grounded in categorical properties, often characterised as phenomenal or proto-phenomenal properties, of which physics leaves us ignorant, and therefore often called inscrutables or quiddities. Several authors claim that this doctrine derives its raison d’être from an attempt to overcome the insuperable difficulties posed to physicalism by the conceivability and knowledge arguments. There are several versions of this doctrine, the best known of which is (...)
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  13. Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness.Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and (...)
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  14. Neutral Monism.Leopold Stubenberg & Donovan Wishon - 2023 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  15. Consciousness, physicalism, and the problem of mental causation.Christian Coseru - 2022 - In Itay Shani & Susanne Kathrin Beiweis (eds.), Cross-cultural approaches to consciousness: mind, nature and ultimate reality. Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
    Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on (...)
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  16. Schlick, Carnap and Feigl on the Mind-Body Problem.Sean Crawford - 2022 - In Thomas Uebel and Christoph Limbeck (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 238-247.
    Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feig are the most prominent of the positivists to formulate views on the mind-body problem (aside from Hempel’s one-off treatment in 1935). While their views differed from each other and changed over time they were all committed to some form of scientific physicalism, though a linguistic or conceptual rather than ontological form of it. In focus here are their views during the heyday of logical positivism and its immediate aftermath, though some initial scene-setting of (...)
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  17. Panprotopsychism Instantiated.Daniel Giberman - 2022 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 (2):238-258.
    The problem of many-over-one asks how it can be thatmanyproperties are ever instantiated byoneobject. A putative solution might, for example, claim that the properties are appropriately bundled, or somehow tied to a bare particular. In this essay, the author argues that, surprisingly, an extant candidate solution to this problem is at the same time an independently developed candidate solution to the mind-body problem. Specifically, what is argued here to be the best version of the relata-specific bundle theory—the thesis that each (...)
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  18. Which Bodies Have Minds? Feminism, Panpsychism, and the Attribution Question.Jennifer McWeeny - 2022 - In Keya Maitra & Jennifer McWeeny (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 272-293.
    Theories about what a mind is entail views about who (or what) has a mind and vice versa. This chapter reframes the classic problem of how the mind interacts with the body in terms of the question of mental attribution: Which bodies have minds? Critical social theorists’ descriptions of mental attribution associated with the bodies of women, Black people, colonized people, laborers, and others, reveals three metaphysical components of mental attribution that are respectively associated with experiences of immanence and non-being, (...)
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  19. Panqualityism, Awareness and the Explanatory Gap.Jakub Mihálik - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (3):1423-1445.
    According to panqualityism, a form of Russellian monism defended by Sam Coleman and others, consciousness is grounded in fundamental qualities, i.e. unexperienced qualia. Despite panqualityism’s significant promise, according to David Chalmers panqualityism fails as a theory of consciousness since the reductive approach to awareness of qualities it proposes fails to account for the specific phenomenology associated with awareness. I investigate Coleman’s reasoning against this kind of phenomenology and conclude that he successfully shows that its existence is controversial, and so Chalmers’s (...)
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  20. Eden Benumbed: A Critique of Panqualityism and the Disclosure View of Consciousness.Itay Shani - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (1):233-256.
    In the marketplace of opinions concerning the metaphysics of mind and consciousness panqualityism (PQ) occupies an interesting position. It is a distinct variant of neutral monism, as well as of protophenomenalism, and as such it strives to carve out a conceptual niche midway between physicalism and mentalism. It is also a brand of Russellian monism, advocated by its supporters as a less costly and less extravagant alternative to panpsychism. Being clearly articulated and relatively well-developed it constitutes an intriguing view. Nonetheless, (...)
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  21. Two Problems in Spinoza's Theory of Mind.James Van Cleve - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 2:337-378.
    My aim in what follows is to expound and (if possible) resolve two problems in Spinoza’s theory of mind. The first problem is how Spinoza can accept a key premise in Descartes’s argument for dualism—that thought and extension are separately conceivable, “one without the help of the other”—without accepting Descartes’s conclusion that no substance is both thinking and extended. Resolving this problem will require us to consider a crucial ambiguity in the notion of conceiving one thing without another, the credentials (...)
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  22. Russellian Physicalism and its Dilemma.Lok-Chi Chan - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178:2043-2062.
    Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927/1992) – is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (2001a, 2001b), Strawson (2008), Montero (2010, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (2012), and Chalmers (2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the (...)
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  23. Towards a Unitary Case for Russellian Panpsychism.Luca Dondoni - 2021 - Philosophia 2021 (1):1-22.
    One of the most pressing challenges that occupy the Russellian panpsychist’s agenda is to come up with a way to reconcile the traditional argument from categorical properties (Seager, 2006; Alter & Nagasawa, 2015) with H. H. Mørch’s dispositionalism-friendly argument from the experience of causation (2014, 2018, 2020) — on the way to a unitary, all-encompassing case for the view. In this regard, Mørch claims that, via the commitment to the Identity theory of properties, one can consistently hold both panpsychist arguments (...)
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  24. The Decombination Problem for Cosmopsychism is not the Heterogeneity Problem for Priority Monism.Gregory Miller - 2021 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (3-4):112-115.
    In this paper I look at a recent proposal from Yujin Nagasawa and Khai Wager to avoid the de-combination problem for the view called ‘cosmopsychism’. The pair suggest that the de-combination problem can be solved in the same way that the problem of heterogeneity for Schaffer’s priority monism can be solved. I suggest that this is not the case. They are not the same problem and the solutions to the heterogeneity problem do not work for the de-combination problem.
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  25. Mach’s Neutral Monism.Mark Textor - 2021 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 11 (1):143-165.
    The father of neutral monism, Ernst Mach, argued that the fundamental constituents of the world are neither mental nor physical and that the distinction between the mental and physical ought to be erased. This article offers a reconstruction of Mach’s view. There is a “pure drive for knowledge” (reiner Erkenntnistrieb), and satisfying it, Mach argues, requires abandoning the mental/physical distinction. The reconstruction given will help to articulate and assess the differences between Mach’s position and Russell’s neutral monism, in which the (...)
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  26. Physicalisme et monisme russellien.Victor Tremblay-Baillargeon - 2021 - Ithaque 28:119-137.
    Dans cet article, je propose de défendre le monisme russellien, une théorie posant l’existence de quiddités phénoménologiques au fondement de la réalité. Je propose en particulier de montrer que le monisme russellien échappe aux objections qui en font une version inadéquate du physicalisme. Pour ce faire, j’identifie les trois raisons qui motivent le physicalisme, c’est-à-dire la parcimonie, le naturalisme et l’argument de la clôture causale, et j’argumente qu’il faut considérer que le monisme russellien satisfait ces trois motivations. Ainsi, si j’ai (...)
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  27. Radical Empiricism, Neutral Monism, and the Elements of Mind.Donovan Wishon - 2021 - The Monist 104 (1):125-151.
    Neutral monism is the view that both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are grounded in a more fundamental form of reality that is intrinsically neither mental nor material. It has often been treated as an odd fringe theory deserving of at most a footnote in the broader philosophical debates. Yet such attitudes do a grave disservice to its sophistications and significance for late nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosophy of mind and psychology. This paper sheds light on this neglected view by situating it (...)
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  28. Can the Russellian Monist Escape the Epiphenomenalist’s Paradox?Lok-Chi Chan - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1093-1102.
    Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...)
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  29. Introduction: Mental Powers.Matteo Grasso & Anna Marmodoro - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1017-1020.
    The metaphysics of powers (Shoemaker, 1980; Mumford, 2004; Marmodoro, 2009; Heil, 2012 among many others) is a promising conceptual framework that has been successfully put to use in many philosophical and scientific domains, but surprisingly its potential applications in the contemporary philosophy of mind are still under-investigated. This thematic issue aims to show that power ontology has implications concerning major questions in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as: what is the metaphysical relationship between consciousness and the physical? Are phenomenal (...)
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  30. The Epistemic Approach to the Problem of Consciousness.Daniel Stoljar - 2020 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford, UK:
  31. Panpsychism and Cosmopsychism.Khai Wager - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    This collection of papers centres around a novel approach to the problem of phenomenal consciousness called cosmopsychism. A simple version of cosmopsychism says that the cosmos as a whole is conscious. In this collection, I focus on a comparison between arguably the most promising versions of cosmopsychism and panpsychism, called constitutive cosmopsychism and constitutive panpsychism, respectively. -/- The first paper, ‘A Blueprint for Cosmopsychism’ offers a blueprint for a cosmopsychist approach, comparing it to the panpsychist approach. It highlights how following (...)
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  32. Russell’s Neutral Monism and Panpsychism.Donovan Wishon - 2020 - In William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism. New York, NY, USA: Routledge. pp. 87-102.
    Bertrand Russell’s writings on neutral monism continue to exercise a profound influence on much work on panpsychism. In fact, many interpret his neutral monism as ultimately constituting, entailing, or strongly suggesting some form of panpsychism. But the relationship between Russell’s theory and contemporary panpsychism is complicated. On one hand, his analysis of matter has a number of features that are congenial to panpsychism. On the other hand, his naturalistic analysis of mind is largely at odds with panpsychism. Though Russell agrees (...)
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  33. Against the Middle Ground: Why Russellian Monism is Unstable.Brian Cutter - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (2):109-129.
  34. IIT vs. Russellian Monism: A Metaphysical Showdown on the Content of Experience.M. Grasso - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):48-75.
    Integrated information theory attempts to account for both the quantitative and the phenomenal aspects of consciousness, and in taking consciousness as fundamental and widespread it bears similarities to panpsychist Russellian monism. In this paper I compare IIT's and RM's response to the conceivability argument, and their metaphysical account of conscious experience. I start by claiming that RM neutralizes the conceivability argument, but that by virtue of its commitment to categoricalism it doesn't exclude fickle qualia scenarios. I argue that IIT's core (...)
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  35. Dispositional and categorical properties, and Russellian Monism.Eric Hiddleston - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (1):65-92.
    This paper has two main aims. The first is to present a general approach for understanding “dispositional” and “categorical” properties; the second aim is to use this approach to criticize Russellian Monism. On the approach I suggest, what are usually thought of as “dispositional” and “categorical” properties are really just the extreme ends of a spectrum of options. The approach allows for a number of options between these extremes, and it is plausible, I suggest, that just about everything of scientific (...)
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  36. Mach and Panqualityism.Tomas Hribek - 2019 - In Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence. Cham: Springer Verlag. pp. 165-176.
    The chapter discusses the rejuvenation of an interest in Mach in the recent metaphysics and philosophy of mind. In the early twentieth century, Mach had been interpreted as a phenomenalist, but phenomenalism fell out of favor in the 1950s. In the later decades, he received praise for his naturalism, but his contributions to metaphysics or philosophy of mind were regarded as misbegotten or irrelevant. With the search for a monistic alternative to both materialism and dualism in the recent philosophy of (...)
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  37. Growing Evidence that Perceptual Qualia are Neuroelectrical Not Computational.Mostyn W. Jones - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (5-6):89-116.
    Computational neuroscience attributes coloured areas and other perceptual qualia to calculations that are realizable in multiple cellular forms. This faces serious issues in explaining how the various qualia arise and how they bind to form overall perceptions. Qualia may instead be neuroelectrical. Growing evidence indicates that perceptions correlate with neuroelectrical activity spotted by locally activated EEGs, the different qualia correlate with the different electrochemistries of unique detector cells, a unified neural-electromagnetic field binds this activity to form overall perceptions, and this (...)
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  38. How Subjects Can Emerge from Neurons.Eric LaRock & Mostyn Jones - 2019 - Process Studies 48 (1):40-58.
    We pose a foundational problem for those who claim that subjects are ontologically irreducible, but causally reducible (weak emergence). This problem is neuroscience’s notorious binding problem, which concerns how distributed neural areas produce unified mental objects (such as perceptions) and the unified subject that experiences them. Synchrony, synapses and other mechanisms cannot explain this. We argue that this problem seriously threatens popular claims that mental causality is reducible to neural causality. Weak emergence additionally raises evolutionary worries about how we’ve survived (...)
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  39. The Microstructure of Experience.Andrew Y. Lee - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (3):286-305.
    I argue that experiences can have microphenomenal structures, where the macrophenomenal properties we introspect are realized by non-introspectible microphenomenal properties. After explaining what it means to ascribe a microstructure to experience, I defend the thesis against its principal philosophical challenge, discuss how the thesis interacts with other philosophical issues about experience, and consider our prospects for investigating the microphenomenal realm.
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  40. Is Consciousness Intrinsic?: A Problem for the Integrated Information Theory.Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):133-162(30).
    The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) claims that consciousness is identical to maximal integrated information, or maximal Φ. One objection to IIT is based on what may be called the intrinsicality problem: consciousness is an intrinsic property, but maximal Φ is an extrinsic property; therefore, they cannot be identical. In this paper, I show that this problem is not unique to IIT, but rather derives from a trilemma that confronts almost any theory of consciousness. Given most theories of consciousness, (...)
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  41. Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Compatible with Russellian Panpsychism?Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (5):1065-1085.
    The Integrated Information Theory is a leading scientific theory of consciousness, which implies a kind of panpsychism. In this paper, I consider whether IIT is compatible with a particular kind of panpsychism, known as Russellian panpsychism, which purports to avoid the main problems of both physicalism and dualism. I will first show that if IIT were compatible with Russellian panpsychism, it would contribute to solving Russellian panpsychism’s combination problem, which threatens to show that the view does not avoid the main (...)
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  42. Austrian Identity Theory and Russellian Monism: Schlick, Russell and Chalmers.Gergely Ambrus - 2018 - Hungarian Philosophical Review 62 (4):97-116.
    This papes discusses Moritz Schlick’s “Austrian” psychophysical identity theory, formulated in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, and compares it to the similar views of Russell and to contemporary Russellian monism. A close similarity between Russell’s and Schlick’s views was already stated by Herbert Feigl long ago; beyond investigating this relation, my aim is also to identify features contemporary Russellian monists may have in common with their historical ancestors. I argue that they share some fundamental assumptions: linguistic physicalism, an ontology that may be (...)
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  43. Mind and Matter: Panpsychism, Dual-Aspect Monism, and the Combination Problem.Jiri Benovsky - 2018 - Cham: Springer Verlag.
    In this book, Jiri Benovsky takes a stand for a variant of panpsychism as being the best solution available to the mind-body problem. More exactly, he defends a view that can be labelled 'dual-aspect-pan-proto-psychism'. Panpsychism claims that mentality is ubiquitous to reality, and in combination with dual-aspect monism it claims that anything, from fundamental particles to rocks, trees, and human animals, has two aspects: a physical aspect and a mental aspect. In short, the view is that the nature of reality (...)
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  44. Paradise Regained: A Non-Reductive Realist Account of the Sensible Qualities.Brian Cutter - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):38-52.
    This paper defends a non-reductive realist view of the sensible qualities—roughly, the view that the sensible qualities are really instantiated by the external objects of perception, and not reducible to response-independent physical properties or response-dependent relational properties. I begin by clarifying and motivating the non-reductive realist view. I then consider some familiar difficulties for the view. Addressing these difficulties leads to the development and defence of a general theory, inspired by Russellian Monist theories of consciousness, of how the sensible qualities (...)
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  45. Alternatives to Physicalism: Memoirs of a Friend.Peter E. Ells - 2018 - In Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason: Essays, in Honour of Hermínio Martins, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 69-74.
    This memoir recalls friendly discussions with Hermínio Martins regarding the essential character of the furniture of the universe. Physicalism, despite the successes of the natural sciences, fails to account for experiences such as pain. As will be shown, Martins and the writer preferred alternative metaphysical systems that avoid such pitfalls.
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  46. Russelliánský monismus jako svébytné metafyzické stanovisko.Jakub Mihálik - 2018 - Filosofie Dnes 9 (2):23-43.
    The paper critically discusses the treatment of Russellian monism in Tomáš Hříbek’s monograph Jaké to je, nebo o čem to je? (What It’s Like, or What It’s About?). According to Hříbek, Russellian monism, the approach to phenomenal consciousness inspired by the insights of Bertrand Russell, is not a real alternative to materialism, dualism and idealism. I argue that Russellian monism, on the contrary, can be viewed as a self-standing philosophical position which, moreover, avoids the main problems of these traditional approaches. (...)
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  47. Can Subjects Be Proper Parts of Subjects? The De‐Combination Problem.Gregory Miller - 2018 - Ratio 31 (2):137-154.
    Growing concern with the panpsychist's ostensive inability to solve the ‘combination problem’ has led some authors to adopt a view titled ‘Cosmopsychism’. This position turns panpsychism on its head: rather than many tiny atomic minds, there is instead one cosmos-sized mind. It is supposed that this view voids the combination problem, however I argue that it does not. I argue that there is a ‘de-combination problem’ facing the cosmopsychist, which is equivalent to the combination problem as they are both concerned (...)
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  48. Does Dispositionalism Entail Panpsychism?Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2018 - Topoi 39 (5):1073-1088.
    According to recent arguments for panpsychism, all physical properties are dispositional, dispositions require categorical grounds, and the only categorical properties we know are phenomenal properties. Therefore, phenomenal properties can be posited as the categorical grounds of all physical properties—in order to solve the mind–body problem and/or in order avoid noumenalism about the grounds of the physical world. One challenge to this case comes from dispositionalism, which agrees that all physical properties are dispositional, but denies that dispositions require categorical grounds. In (...)
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  49. Russellian Monism and Epiphenomenalism.William S. Robinson - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (1):100-117.
    Contemporaries often reject epiphenomenalism out of hand, while Russellian Monism is regarded as worthy of further development. It is argued here that this difference of attitudes is indefensible, because the easy rejection of EPI is due to its violating a certain Causal Intuition, and RM implicitly violates that same intuition. An enriched version of RM mitigates the violation, but the same mitigation results if we make a parallel enrichment of EPI. If RM and EPI are approached on a level playing (...)
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  50. Philip Goff: Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. [REVIEW]Daniel Stoljar - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1.
    This is a review of Philip Goff's *Consciousness and Fundamental Reality*.
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