Act/Content/Object, Act/Object, or Just Object?

Thus chapter revolves around the act/content/object distinction. Russell characterized Austrian Psychology, Cambridge Realism, Idealism, and Neutral Monism with respect to their different treatments of this distinction. The Cambridge Realists like Russell and Moore argued that the distinction between act and object is given introspectively, but that there is no distinction between content and object. The Neutral Monists (American Realists) like James argued that there is no act/object distinction and that, consequently, there is no intrinsic distinction between the mental and physical. Russell changed tack by arguing for the existence of the distinction on the basis of ‘hypotheses’. He held a hybrid position: there is no act/object distinction in sensation, but the full act/content/object distinction in thought. The chapter assesses arguments in favour of the act/object distinction and against the act/content/object distinction.

The Intentionality Challenge

The chapter introduces and assesses Brentano’s and Marty’s arguments against Mach’s Neutral Monism. These arguments concern the intentionality of sensation and the intentionality of expectation.

A Skeptical View on the Physics-Consciousness Explanatory Gap

The epistemological chasm between how we (implicitly and subjectively) perceive or imagine the actual world and how we (explicitly and “objectively”) think of its underlying entities has motivated perhaps the most disconcerting impasse in human thought: the explanatory gap between the phenomenal and physical properties of the world. Here, I advocate a combination of philosophical skepticism and simplicity as an informed approach to arbitrate among theories of consciousness. I argue that the explanatory gap is rightly a gap in our understanding, but one that is not surprising; and we being observers biased by our first-person perspective and our existence may both hinder and (the realization we have them) assist our reasoning. Further, I unfold the concept of observer into two distinct notions based on its functional and phenomenal aspects, and exploit this device to elucidate the subject-observer relationship. Then, I proceed to analyze the philosophical zombie dilemma. Lastly, I contend that from a skeptical viewpoint, panpsychism (or neutral monism) is the most parsimonious doctrine accounting for the explanatory gap, and suggest that it would be possible to make headway in the hard problem of consciousness by uncovering non-trivial causal relationships between qualia states and functional states, if routine and controlled manipulation of neural circuits were easily available.

Panqualityism as the Version of Russellian Monism

Panqualityism is based on the assumption that the intrinsic nature of all matter has something like phenomenal unexperienced qualities. Consciousness is formed by the awareness of some of these qualities. The type of panqualityism offered by the main proponent of this view today, S. Coleman, is the one considered in this article. His panqualityism is described as a version of Russellian monism, panpsychism or panprotopsychism, neutral monism as well as physicalism. As it is shown, panqualityism is close to all the above-mentioned views because of the unknowability of intrinsic properties of matter in Russellian monism, the view on which Coleman's panqualityism is based. However, the closest version of interpretation appears to be panprotopsychism, which also shows disadvan­tages of this theory. Coleman's panqualityism draws on the impossibility of the subject’s summing claim, but his concept of subject raises concerns, because of its vagueness. It is noted that the definition of the status of a subject to solve the combination problem is closely connected with approaches used to solve the personal identity problem and can be related to it.

William James's Philosophy of Mind: Between Neutral Monism and Panpsychism

This paper is an introduction to William James' philosophy of mind and is intended to prepare the reader for his work “How Two Minds Can Know One Thing”. The views of William James on three topics in the philosophy of mind are considered: panpsychism, neutral monism, and combination problem. There is a very deep connection between the modern analytical philosophy of mind and the philosophy of this author. A variety of neutral monism, to which James adhered, is analyzed, including the problem of neutrality of substance. Neutral monism in practice does not provide complete independence of a substance from mental and physical properties, and therefore neutral monism may tend to panpsychism if we are not talking about its idealistic varieties. The author concerns the relationship between panpsychism and neutral monism as two approaches to the combination problem. James's panpsychism is analyzed in terms of modern classification. Paper selectively considers individual episodes in James's philosophy in which he adhered to such panpsychism varieties as panexperientialism and panqualityism. The following is a question of the influence of James's combination problem on his philosophy as well as on modern analytical philosophy of mind. At different periods of time, James took, at first glance, mutually exclusive viewpoints on these issues. It is shown that the analysis of James's concept, taking into account the modern development of panpsychism, allows seeing an additional internal consistency in his systematic consideration of the phenomenon of consciousness.