Pessimism About Russellian Monism

Abstract

According to traditional versions of idealism, everything that exists is mental; according to traditional versions of physicalism, everything that exists is physical. In postulating the existence of only one kind of thing, both idealism and physicalism are versions of monism. However, there has recently been a resurgence of interest in a monism of a different sort, one that does not seem appropriately characterized as either idealism or physicalism, at least not as these views are usually understood. This resurgence began largely with the publication of David Chalmers ’ The Conscious Mind in 1996.1 In arguing there for the fundamentality of consciousness, Chalmers cast himself as arguing for a version of property dualism but left open the possibility that the fundamentality of consciousness would be best captured by a version of monism: “Perhaps the physical and the phenomenal will turn out to be two different aspects of a single encompassing kind, in something like the way that matter and energy turn out to be two aspects of a single kind. ” (Chalmers 1996, 129) From the perspective of many philosophers of mind in these early years of the 21st Century, the debate between dualism and physicalism has seemed to have stalled, if not to have come to a complete standstill. There seems no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. But now enters – or perhaps, re-enters – Russellian monism, which promises to show us a new way forward. As Torin

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