Materialism vs Neutral Monism

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

Materialism says the world is made up of physical matter. The world is made up of one substance - physical matter.

Neutral monism says the world is made up of one substance. This substance is neither physical nor mental. We can view everything as physical or everything as mental because this one substance has both mental and physical properties. More specifically, mental and physical are subsets of this one substance. Although normally I would dismiss such as idea, Russell, apparently, supported this view (though he may have disowned it, I do not know). Hence, I am more inclined to give it a closer look.

Thoughts?

[RevolutionaryMarxist]

Materialism

Mental is just matter, and so "mental and physical" properties don't really apply. Unless it's something like electricity, which I'm unsure of

[Bretty123]

What if the mental is electric impulses?

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Dooga

Neutral monism says the world is made up of one substance. This substance is neither physical nor mental. Not physical? Contradicts materialism, even scientific materialism, thus contradicts even the most basic tenents of science. I would go with materialism.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Neutral Monism says looking at all things as physical or all things as thoughts is ok. They are both different uses of language that attempt to reflect the realities of our world.

[Clarksist]

It doesn't matter. Materialism or neutral monism, it is all philosophy that plainly doesn't change the way we look at things. I don't see why monists have moaned on and on about how everything can be divided down to the exact same thing, and I don't see why materialists fell into the trap and coped out with "physical matter". That is ridiculous, of course everything is made up of physical matter! The question is, what element of physical matter can monist preach as the fundamental one?

It is a silly subject to debate upon, when in the end it changes no ones life. Philosophers should think more about existentialism and political/economic Marxism and leave the meaningless questions without justification.

[gilhyle]

Neutral Monism is, in my view, a cop out.

The claim that all reality is made up of physical matter (only one of the possible variant fundamental materialist theses), needs to be understood in a certain social and political context - in summary the huge influence of religious and neo-religious views which seek to suggest a dualist view of reality.

Within Marxism, the materialist thesis is essentially negative and critical. What it does is to say that there is no fundamentally dualist character to reality.

Now you might think that if I say that, I am closer to the neutral monist than the materialist.....and I would be, if it wasnt for the fact that I recognise that as part of the critical enterprise it is necessary to criticise ALL views that create a space for discrete arguments from the nature of mind.

Neutral Monism does operate to facilitate those arguments in practice and they must be rejected. Mind does not have any developmental or ontological character of its own independently from physical reality.

Strictly speaking one might formulate a neutral monism that facilitated the criticism of all idealist arguments, but in practice, neutral monism is used to avoid the issue of idealism.

[rouchambeau]

False dichotomy.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

I think I see my mistake. Neutral monism is a metaphysical conceptualization of the world, like idealism and dualism, and, consequently, the opposite of materialism. I am back on the winning team.