Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

Russellian Monism" is a name given 1 to a family of views in philosophy of mind.The family is exciting because it seems to present an alternative both to materialism and to dualism.After briefly setting out the need for this alternative, I will in what follows distinguish four different kinds of Russellian Monism (RM), and assess their pros and cons.My own feeling, as will emerge in the final section of the paper, is that only the fourth of these represents a viable version of the view.But my main aim is less to state my feelings than to get clear on the different versions of the view and on what is involved in choosing among them. Motivating RMIt is not hard to motivate the thought that neither materialism nor dualism is very attractive and that it would be better in principle if we could make out some alternative.The problem for materialism is that it is on the face of it incomplete, for it seems to leave out properties constitutive of consciousness.A good way to bring this out is to operate with the following simple definition: 2 M1.Materialism is true at a possible world w if and only if for every property G instantiated at w, there is some physical property (or some complex of physical properties) F instantiated at w such that F (metaphysically) necessitates G.This provides an account of what it is for materialism to be true at some possible world or other; philosophers who are materialists believe that materialism is true at one world in particular, viz., the actual world.

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