Neutral Monism

Neutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things. Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff, in the form of neutral elements that are in themselves neither mental nor physical. These neutral elements might have the properties of color and shape, just as we experience those properties. But these shaped and colored elements do not exist in a mind (considered as a substantial entity, whether dualistically or physicalistically); they exist on their own.

Read more about Neutral Monism:  History, William James, Bertrand Russell, David Chalmers

Famous quotes containing the word neutral:

    The lonely Earth amid the balls
    That hurry through the eternal halls,
    A makeweight flying to the void,
    Supplemental asteroid,
    Or compensatory spark,
    Shoots across the neutral Dark.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)