John Harvey

The mind-body problem today resembles a battle-zone in which warring camps, including physicalists, property dualists, panpsychists (Shan 2003), and emergentists (Gonzalez, Broens, and Haselager 2004) clash on a darkling plain, each side regarding the others' positions as radically unacceptable. Amid this struggle, neutral monism lies as a neglected option, treated as a historical position that has somehow failed. The purpose of this essay is suggest that neutral monism is indeed the solution to the problem, and to outline a form of that theory which avoids some of the drawbacks of previous versions. Defining Physicalism In affirming neutral monism, I shall be denying physicalism, and therefore it would be good to know that the denial (and affirmation) of physicalism has content. More trouble has been generated than necessary over the vagueness in the term physicalism. Critics have pointed out that to assert that mind can be explained in terms of present-day physics is a booby-trapped theory, inasmuch as historical extrapolation strongly suggests that our physical theories will eventually be discarded in favor of new theories. Therefore it has been suggested that physicalism is the doctrine that consciousness will be explicable by a "completed physics."1 But there is no reason to think that there is or ever will be such a thing as a completed physics. We could as well say that the solution to the mind-body problem is whatever answer Santa will bring us this year. Yet to say more vaguely that mind will be explained in terms of some future physics is still an empty position, since we do not know what conceptual transformations physics (that is, the future science that will be called physics) will undergo.2 Therefore this physicalism reduces to saying that mind will be explained in terms of something or other. We should note also a graver danger than vagueness. We can foresee the possibility that mind will be explained physically by cheating; that is, that the palette of fundamental ideas used in physics will be enlarged by the addition of mental entities. That the new, augmented physics will be able to account for the mind will produce the bogus appearance that some epoch-making reduction has occurred. But semantic changes wrought by future generations are not our concern. We are no more responsible for applications our grandchildren may make of the term "physics" than Kant was for the crop of occult books that currently resides beneath the label "Metaphysics" in bookstores. Yet a perfectly coherent and meaningful theory can be formulated by humbly adopting a definition of "physics" from the American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.) and defining physicalism as: "The doctrine that mind can be explained in terms of the science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two." This is clear enough, at least if we remember to use the physicists' definition of "energy": "the capacity for doing work," and steer clear of the New Age use in which energy is a modish re-labeling of the supernatural force that anthropologists call mana.3 As for matter, I stress that it is essentially an object, that is something derived from perception by abstracting away the subject. The proposed definition of physicalism avoids two perilous shoals. On the one hand, it disentangles us from responsibility for how our descendants use the word "physics." On the other hand, by refraining from specifying any particular physical theory, but only mapping out a kind of theory, the definition does not tie us to any perishable propositions.4 Having defined physicalism, it is now possible meaningfully to deny it and seek a better alternative. Problems with Physicalism I shall not attempt a comprehensive refutation of physicalism here. My aim is different. I shall only refer to a couple of the points that may be made against physicalism as a way of motivating the alternative theory I wish to present. …

The mind-body problem today resembles a battle-zone in which warring camps, including physicalists, property dualists, panpsychists (Shan 2003), and emergentists (Gonzalez, Broens, and Haselager 2004) clash on a darkling plain, each side regarding the others' positions as radically unacceptable. Amid this struggle, neutral monism lies as a neglected option, treated as a historical position that has somehow failed. The purpose of this essay is suggest that neutral monism is indeed the solution to the problem, and to outline a form of that theory which avoids some of the drawbacks of previous versions.