I will defend two claims. First, Schaffer's priority monism is in tension with many research programs in quantum gravity. Second, priority monism can be modified into a view more amenable to this physics. The first claim is grounded in the fact that promising approaches to quantum gravity such as loop quantum gravity or string theory deny the fundamental reality of spacetime. Since fundamental spacetime plays an important role in Schaffer's priority monism by being identified with the fundamental (...) structure, namely the cosmos, the disappearance of spacetime in these views might undermine classical priority monism. My second claim is that priority monism can avoid this issue with two moves: first, in dropping one of its core assumptions, namely that the fundamental structure is spatio-temporal, second, by identifying the connection between the non-spatio-temporal structure and the derivative spatio-temporal structure with mereological composition. (shrink)

Monism is the claim that only one object exists. While few contemporary philosophers endorse monism, it has an illustrious history – stretching back to Bradley, Spinoza and Parmenides. In this paper, I show that plausible assumptions about the higher-order logic of property identity entail that monism is true. Given the higher-order framework I operate in, this argument generalizes: it is also possible to establish that there is a single property, proposition, relation, etc. I then show why this (...) form of monism is inconsistent; because all propositions are identical, p is identical to ~p – and so they have the same truth-value. At least one of the assumptions that generate higher-order monism must be rejected. (shrink)

Argument that priority monism is best understood as being a contingent thesis.

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion begins with the classic neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell in the first part of the (...) paper, then considers recent neo-Russellian versions in the second half. The chances for a revival of neutral monism are probably slight; its key ideas and starting points lie far from those in contemporary philosophy of mind. A better route might be through the philosophy of science and a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

Infostructural Monism (ISM) proposes a novel monistic ontology constituted by the singular, eternal Universal Substrate (US). The US possesses two inseparable, co-primordial attributes: Informational Polarity (IP or 0), the atemporal, exhaustive context of all logical possibility, and Structural Polarity (SP or 1), the dynamic, temporal manifestation of bounded content. This necessary antithetical relationship (0/1) functions as the intrinsic binary code of the universe, establishing intelligibility and all logical constraints. Integrating classical monism and contemporary information theory, ISM rests on (...) key axioms: deterministic Universal Sequentialism (a single fixed cosmic timeline called The Sequence) and Cosmological Recyclicalism, which ensures eternal recurrence for exhaustive structural expression. All phenomena—including physical laws, consciousness, and aesthetic judgments—emerge from the US’s necessary execution. By deriving diversity from Maximal Differentiation, ISM achieves absolute Infostructural Coherence, avoiding dualistic inconsistencies. This paper elaborates ISM’s core terminology, polarities, Objects, Agents, and explores implications for metaphysics, cosmology, epistemology, and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Truthmaker monism is the view that the one and only truthmaker is the world. Despite its unpopularity, this view has recently received an admirable defence by Schaffer :307–324, 2010b). Its main defect, I argue, is that it omits partial truthmakers. If we omit partial truthmakers, we lose the intimate connection between a truth and its truthmaker. I further argue that the notion of a minimal truthmaker should be the key notion that plays the role of constraining ontology and that (...) truthmaker monism is not necessary for an appropriate solution to the problem of finding truthmakers for negative truths. I conclude that we should reject truthmaker monism once and for all. (shrink)

This paper is about the relation between two venerable and revisionary metaphysical doctrines: Monism and Qualitativism. Monism says, roughly, that reality is in some sense one. Qualitativism says, roughly, that reality contains no facts about particular objects, but is rather purely qualitative. I distinguish various versions of these two doctrines, and in each case argue that proponents of the Monist doctrine should instead embrace a corresponding Qualitativist doctrine. I conclude that Monism culminates in Qualitativism.

Between 1653 and 1655 Margaret Cavendish makes a radical transition in her theory of matter, rejecting her earlier atomism in favour of an infinitely-extended and infinitely-divisible material plenum, with matter being ubiquitously self-moving, sensing, and rational. It is unclear, however, if Cavendish can actually dispense of atomism. One of her arguments against atomism, for example, depends upon the created world being harmonious and orderly, a premise Cavendish herself repeatedly undermines by noting nature’s many disorders. I argue that her supposed difficulties (...) with atomism expose a deeper tension in her work between two fundamental metaphysical commitments each of which has substantial philosophical support: her monist theory of the material world (which maintains that there exists just one natural substance which is the single principal cause) and her occasional theory of causation (which requires multiple finite principal causes in nature -- causes that might be considered individual substances). Her monism undermines atomism while her theory of occasional cause seems to rest on a conception of nature that would be especially friendly to atomism. I argue further that we can solve this tension within a Cavendishian framework in such a way as to preserve her theory of causation and her monism, but that this solution depends upon our taking her monism in a particular (and weak) form. I finally note that we can best make sense of her unique and interesting form of monism by acknowledging her social-political motivations in addition to her motivations in natural philosophy. (shrink)

Russellian monists argue that non-structural properties, or a combination of structural and non-structural properties, necessitate phenomenal properties. Different Russellian monists offer varying accounts of the structural/non-structural distinction, leading to divergent forms of Russellian monism. In this paper, I criticise Derk Pereboom’s characterisation of the structural/non-structural distinction proposed in his Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism and further work. I argue that from Pereboom’s characterisation of structural and non-structural properties, one can formulate general metaphysical principles concerning what structural and non-structural (...) properties necessitate. These principles undermine the claim that non-structural properties—either alone or in combination with structural properties—necessitate phenomenal properties. Moreover, these principles are not affected by our supposed inability to conceive of non-structural properties in a manner conducive to the success of conceivability arguments. (shrink)

Let ‘monism’ be the view that there is only one basic object—the world. Monists face the question of whether there are also non-basic objects. This is in effect the question of whether the world decomposes into parts. Jonathan Schaffer maintains that it does, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč that it does not. In this paper, I propose a compromise view, which I call ‘Kantian monism.’ According to Kantian monism, the world decomposes into parts insofar as an ideal (...) subject under ideal conditions would divide it into parts, but it does not decompose into parts in and of itself, that is, in an entirely mind-independent manner. After articulating Kantian monism more precisely (Section 1), I present a prima facie case for preferring it over more standard varieties of monism (Section 2). (shrink)

Davidson’s anomalous monism, his argument for the identity between mental and physical event tokens, has been frequently attacked, usually demanding a higher degree of physicalist commitment. My objection runs in the opposite direction: the identities inferred by Davidson from mental causation, the nomological character of causality and the anomaly of the mental are philosophically problematic and, more dramatically, incompatible with his famous argument against the third dogma of empiricism, the separation of content from conceptual scheme. Given the anomaly of (...) the mental and the absence of psychophysical laws, there are no conceptual resources to relate mental and physical predicates. We fall in the third dogma if we claim that the very same token event is mental and physical. One of the premises must be rejected: I will claim that we do not need a law to subsume cause and effect to be entitled to speak of causation. Davidson has never offered an argument to back this premise. Against such a dogma I will sketch some ideas pointing towards a different conception of causality, singularist and undetachable from explanatory practices. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.

Monism is a metaphysical view according to which there is only one fundamental object. This paper will explore monism within the context of truthmaker theory, or Truthmaker Monism, a view rarely discussed in literature. Although few truthmaker theorists defend monism, at least explicitly, some theories seem to share the spirit of monism to some extent. Interestingly, they are proposed as solutions for the same problem, called the problem of negative truth. A close examination will show (...) that while each of these solutions can account for the problem, they are unsatisfactory for different reasons. This paper will suggest a novel solution to the problem of negative truth which preserves the advantages of existing solutions while avoiding the difficulties with which they are faced. (shrink)

According to Russellian monism (RM), the quiddities which underlie the fundamental causal structure of the physical world are also responsible for the existence of phenomenal consciousness. This view has been argued to provide an attractive alternative to physicalism and dualism, but it is plagued by the so-called ‘combination problem’ – namely, the problem of explaining how the quiddities underlying the microphysical structure of a macroscopic conscious agent (e.g., a human being) combine together to constitute his or her phenomenal experiences. (...) In this paper, I will explore a type of monism that avoids the combination problem altogether. According to this view – which I shall call panquidditist monism – all causal roles, and not just the fundamental ones, stand in need of quiddities realizing them. Moreover, the quiddities that realize causal roles at one physical level should not in general be seen as grounded in, or otherwise derivative on, the quiddities that realize causal roles at lower levels. Crucial to the tenability of this view is a distinction between two varieties of grounding – one aiming to metaphysically explain the causal properties of various objects ‘from below’ (vertical grounding), the other aiming to metaphysically explaining them ‘from the inside’ (horizontal grounding). I will argue that, thanks to the distinction between vertical and horizontal grounds, panquidditist monism is well-placed to secure the advantages that RM promises – but, because of the combination problem, fails to deliver – vis-à-vis physicalism and dualism. (shrink)

I argue that dispositional monism is at risk of collapsing into a form of quiditism about properties.

This is an overview of Davidson's theory of anomalous monism. Objections and replies are also detailed.

_Monism_is the view that there exists just one fundamental object—the whole world. Monism (and the opposing view, _Pluralism_) can be placed in a framework of metaphysical priority whereby parts or wholes are then derived from whatever is fundamental. A supposed advantage of monism over pluralism is that it is better suited to accommodate _gunk worlds_, where each object has further parts. But on closer inspection, appeal to gunk worlds does not give monism a clear cut advantage over (...) pluralism. Either monism faces worries similar to those of pluralism, or else it cannot explain how properties of composite objects supervene on those of their parts. So an appeal to gunk worlds does not support monism over pluralism. (shrink)

Consequentialists often assume rational monism: the thesis that options are always made rationally permissible by the maximization of the selfsame quantity. This essay argues that consequentialists should reject rational monism and instead accept rational pluralism: the thesis that, on different occasions, options are made rationally permissible by the maximization of different quantities. The essay then develops a systematic form of rational pluralism which, unlike its rivals, is capable of handling both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory (...) and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory. (shrink)

Logical monism is the view that there is ‘One True Logic’. This is the default position, against which pluralists react. If there were not ‘One True Logic’, it is hard to see how there could be one true theory of anything. A theory is closed under a logic! But what is logical monism? In this article, I consider semantic, logical, modal, scientific, and metaphysical proposals. I argue that, on no ‘factualist’ analysis (according to which ‘there is One True (...) Logic’ expresses a factual claim, rather than an attitude like approval), does the doctrine have both metaphysical and methodological import. Metaphysically, logics abound. Methodologically, what to infer from what is not settled by the facts, even the normative ones. I conclude that the only interesting sense in which there could be One True Logic is noncognitive. The same may be true of monism about normative areas, like moral, epistemic, and prudential ones, generally. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ontological necessity of the operator NOT within the framework of Meta-Monism ontology. While earlier work described autonegation as the destruction of supersymmetry, the present essay asks: why is negation required at all? We argue that NOT arises from redundancy. Chaos, understood as a plenitude of ndistinguishable possibilities, accumulates infinite self-identity. This “too perfect sameness” generates structural instability, forcing a transition from quantitative saturation to qualitative rupture. Negation is the minimal act by which redundancy collapses into (...) difference. We further argue that the first difference must be binary: multiplicity presupposes already existing distinctions, while binary opposition (A, ¬A) is the only minimal form of “otherness.” Thus autonegation is both necessary and necessarily dual. (shrink)

Freud introduces his dualistic theory of the life and death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Much of that essay is devoted to the justification of the death drive, while little is said in defense of the introduction of “life drives” and “Eros,” which he claims are simply an extension of his libido theory from the psychological into the biological realm. In this essay, I argue that Eros is, on the contrary, fundamentally incompatible with Freud’s metapsychology. I first show that (...) Freud’s theory of society permits the production and preservation of social bonds only through the restraint of sexual aims rather than, as the theory of Eros would require, through the satisfaction of sexual drives. I then demonstrate that Eros is incompatible with three key elements of Freud’s metapsychology: the theories of the drives, the pleasure principle, and the principle of constancy. Finally, I argue that the death drive is indistinguishable from the early and late theories of the principle of constancy. Consequently, it is the death drive, and not Eros, that is merely an extension of the original libido theory. Because Eros is incompatible with the very foundations of Freud’s metapsychology, his drive theory can only consistently be interpreted as a monism of the death drive. (shrink)

Schaffer (2010) argues that the internal relatedness of all things, no matter how it is conceived, entails priority monism. He claims that a sufficiently pervasive internal relation among objects implies the priority of the whole, understood as a concrete object. This paper shows that at least in the case of an internal relatedness of all things conceived in terms of physical intentionality - one way to understand dispositions - priority monism not only doesn't follow but also is precluded. (...) We conclude that the internal relatedness of all things is compatible with several different ontologies (including varieties of pluralism) but entails nothing concerning dependence between concrete objects. (shrink)

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 to be no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. Recently however, a growing number of proponents of Russellian monism have suggested that their view promises to show us a new way forward. Insofar as Russellian monism (...) might allow us to break out of the current gridlock, it's no wonder that it's become "hot stuff." To my mind, however, the excitement about Russellian monism is misplaced. Though some version of Russellian monism might well be true, I do not believe that it enables us to break free of the dualism/physicalism divide. As I will argue, once we properly understand what's required to flesh out an adequate monistic story, we will see that we are in an important way right back where we started. (shrink)

MCL (Monism of Limited Consciousness) is a disciplined monist ontology designed to resolve two aporiae that typically motivate the transition from naive solipsism to robust realism: (i) the experienced resistance and law-likeness of the world, and (ii) the stable, correction-sensitive appearance of other minds. Rather than positing an ontologically independent res extensa, MCL posits a single fundamental reality C (ground) whose presentation admits a functional partition into a non-phenomenal generative stratum G and a finite phenomenal stratum F. A central (...) commitment is an epistemic barrier B: F lacks global access to G, thereby preserving surprise, learning, and non-trivial agency. World-resistance follows because phenomenal will does not legislate global stabilization; law-likeness follows because G privileges diachronic continuity, counterfactual robustness, and compressibility. Within this architecture, facts are treated as stabilized facts-of-appearance: events integrated into public and diachronic coherence via validation rather than mere assent. The article develops the ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, and pragmatic-ethical consequences of MCL, articulates its methodological status relative to falsifiability, and answers standard objections (unfalsifiability, arbitrariness, semantic externalism, and realist competition). (shrink)

Steinberg has recently proposed an argument against Schaffer’s priority monism. The argument assumes the principle of Necessity of Monism, which states that if priority monism is true, then it is necessarily true. In this paper, I argue that Steinberg’s objection can be eluded by giving up Necessity of Monism for an alternative principle, that I call Essentiality of Fundamentality, and that such a principle is to be preferred to Necessity of Monism on other grounds as (...) well. (shrink)

During his Jena period, Fichte endorses a curious dictum: ‘the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is’. How can Fichte’s dictum support a vindication of German idealism over Spinozism, which he also calls ‘dogmatism’? I will show that the answer to this seemingly straightforward question reveals a rather complex series of metametaphysical objections that shape the development of the entire German idealist tradition. Ultimately, as I will suggest, the series of metametaphysical questions that shape (...) the German idealist tradition must culminate in the question of how to understand the relation between philosophy and its presuppositions. I will conclude by briefly considering a hermeneutical response to this question. (shrink)

An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are (...) indefinite and sempiternal, but argued that perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that in Spinoza’s system, an infinite and eternal substance could cause such indefinite, sempiternal entities. But if such eternal-durational causation is denied, then it seems harder to see how Spinoza’s system could be coherent: if Spinoza holds that the infinite, eternal substance cannot cause anything that is not infinite and not eternal, then how can he also hold that all things are modes immanently caused by substance (E1p15, E1p18, E1p25)? In this essay, I explain how Spinoza’s system could be understood in light of a denial of eternal-durational causation. On the interpretation I offer, God is the cause of all things and all things are modes because the essences of all things follow from the divine nature and all essences enjoy infinite, eternal reality as modes immanently caused by the infinite, eternal substance. The same non-substantial essences can also be conceived as enjoying non-infinite, non-eternal reality, but so conceived, they are enduring, finite (or sempiternal, indefinite) entities that cannot be conceived as modes caused by and inhering in the one infinite, eternal substance. I conclude by pointing out that if we take this interpretive route, we do have to understand Spinoza as committed to acosmism, or a denial of the reality of the world – at least the world of enduring, finite things. (shrink)

Are the sculpture and the mass of gold which permanently makes it up one object or two? In this article, we argue that the monist, who answers ‘one object’, cannot accommodate the asymmetry of material constitution. To say ‘the mass of gold materially constitutes the sculpture, whereas the sculpture does not materially constitute the mass of gold’, the monist must treat ‘materially constitutes’ as an Abelardian predicate, whose denotation is sensitive to the linguistic context in which it appears. We motivate (...) this approach in terms of modal analyses of material constitution, but argue that ultimately it fails. The monist must instead accept a deflationary, symmetrical use of ‘materially constitutes’. We argue that this is a serious cost for her approach. (shrink)

This paper substantiates the thesis that in an infinite Universe, strict Laplacean determinism is fundamentally impossible, while free will and randomness are regular forms of ontological dynamics. Using metamonistic ontology of sustained conflict (A = A′ + (−A′0)) and the field of differences ∇U, we demonstrate that causal chains in infinity are fundamentally incomplete, measurements are limitedly precise, and computational predictability is fundamentally incomplete. We develop the method of reverse decomposition: from complex empirical phenomena to simple ontological invariants. Twelve detailed (...) examples demonstrate how freedom and randomness manifest as regularities in physics, cosmology, biology, consciousness, mathematics, and social systems. Thus, determinism gives way to a more general ontology of sustained conflict, where freedom and randomness are not failures but operating modes of the universal law of being [1, 3, 26]. (shrink)

In the last few decades, there has been a resurgence of monistic theories of consciousness. Among the most notable ones receiving renewed attention are panpsychism, cosmopsychism, dual-aspect monism, and some variants of idealism. This article argues that while each of these frameworks accounts for some aspects of the relationship between consciousness and reality, they can be integrated into a perspective that can naturally accommodate and extend them to a broader ontology. The philosophical approach termed ‘integral monism’ extends these (...) to a theory of universal consciousness based on a monistic, panentheistic, teleological, spiritual evolutionary emergentist metaphysical cosmology stemming from a multi-dimensional and trans-rational ontology of universal planes of existence. An ontology inspired by Sri Aurobindo's integral cosmology, adapted to the context of contemporary science and Western philosophy. The paper will also discuss how and why this extension has a greater explanatory power applicable to problems of contemporary natural philosophy and science, in particular to evolutionary biology and consciousness studies. Nonetheless, this philosophical manifesto does not present itself as a definitive theoretical framework; rather, it is offered as a working hypothesis and preliminary guiding principle that could provide a broader platform for reconciling science and metaphysics, allowing us to explore where it may lead. (shrink)

Neutral monism aims at solving the hard problem of consciousness by positing entities that are neither mental nor physical. Benovsky has recently argued for the slightly different account that, rather than being neutral, natural entities are both mental and physical by having different aspects, and then argued in favour of an anti-realist interpretation of those aspects. In this essay, operating under the assumption of dual-aspect monism, I argue to the contrary in favour of a realist interpretation of these (...) aspects by showing that the anti-realist interpretation collapses into neutral monism and that the realist interpretation is an interesting alternative. I close with a discussion of the realist interpretation of the aspects and its relation with panpsychism. (shrink)

The intuitions at the core of environmental ethics and of other neglected value realms put pressure on traditional anthropocentric ethics based on monistic value theories. Such pressure is so severe that it has led many to give up on the idea of monistic value theories altogether. I argue that value monism is still preferable to value pluralism and that, indeed, these new challenges are opportunities to vastly improve impoverished traditional theories. I suggest an alternative monistic theory, Richness Theory, and (...) show how it provides an opportunity to capture the needs of both environmental ethics and of our traditional ethics. (shrink)

The dissertation begins with a question: Are the mind and brain the same or different? -/- I spend Chapter 1 showing how this simple question leads to a philosophical puzzle known as the mind-body problem. By way of explaining the puzzle, I show that there are two demands that a satisfactory solution to the puzzle must meet – what I call the Ontological and Explanatory Demands. I also explain why ontological idealism is not an attractive solution to the problem. Along (...) the way, I refine the starting question into something more familiar to current discussions of the mind-body problem: Are phenomenal properties fundamentally the same or fundamentally different from physical properties? -/- Chapter 2 develops the impasse that contemporary philosophers find themselves in by discussing the Causal Argument against dualism and the Epistemic Argument against materialism. Neither materialism nor dualism seem capable of meeting both demands from Chapter 1. Thus, the rest of the dissertation is an exploration of a fourth, non-standard solution – neutral monism – that hopes to meet these demands. -/- Chapter 3 shows how the most popular way to develop neutral monism, called Russellian monism, does not work. The basic problem is that most ways to develop this view falls to a dilemma such that it is either incoherent or really just one of the more standard solutions to the puzzle in new dressing. The final two options – Reductionist Russellian Monism and Epistemic Russellian Monism – have the capacity to accomplish the goal of neutral monism, but the uniquely Russellian aspects of the views do nothing to help accomplish this. As such, I leave Russellian monism behind and focus on non-Russellian views. -/- Chapter 4 argues that reductionist neutral monism cannot work. Since it relies on reductionism, it faces a different dilemma. Either the phenomenal can be reduced or it cannot. If it cannot, then obviously reductionist neutral monism is false. If it can, then there is no motivation for supposing that it reduces to some neutral stuff rather than reducing to the physical. So, the only possibility is to attempt to develop an epistemic neutral monism. I spend the majority of the chapter explaining what this style of solution might look like, paying close attention to very similar types of answers known as a posteriori physicalism and the powerful qualities view. The result is that epistemic neutral monism as standardly employed also can’t be made to work, but I suggest one final possibility that relies on a conventionalist metaphysics. -/- Chapter 5 is where I develop an account of conventionalist neutral monism and explain how it avoids the common dilemma raised against Russellian monism. Here I show how a conventionalist neutral monism is both coherent and substantially different from the other solutions to the mind-body problem. -/- Chapter 6 relates the solution developed in Chapter 5 to the question raised at the beginning of the dissertation and shows how a conventionalist neutral monist ought to answer the question. This answer does two things. First, it helps explain what goes wrong with the standard understanding of the Causal Argument and the Epistemic Argument that creates the appearance of an impasse. Second, it shows how conventionalist neutral monism successfully meets the demands developed in Chapter 1. (shrink)

The year 1801 marked an important year for Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's (1775-1854) philosophical thought. It saw the publication of Schelling's Presentation of My System of Philosophy which would stand as the marker of a new era of idealism, that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) would coin as objective idealism. The 1801 Presentation represents a clear shift away from Schelling's seminal System of Transcendental Idealism; and the official beginning of Schelling's own Identity Philosophy which occurred through several major works from (...) 1801 to 1806. The Presentation also characterizes a decisive genesis in Schelling's mature metaphysics of identity. The metaphysics of identity's central aim was to capture the concept of absolute identity realized as the totality of the cosmos. Using Spinoza's (1632-1677) Ethics as his guide and model, Schelling revealed a meticulous systematic philosophy that offered distinct propositions and definitions, each following one another to develop an elaborate organic whole. However, the works that makeup Schelling's identity philosophy would receive a series of philosophical backlashes from several of his interlocuters, which included: Karl August von Eschenmayer (1768-1852), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This criticism would reach forward into the contemporary scholarship. The accusations made against Schelling were directed at his monistic system and surrounded his conception of the absolute. According to Schelling's critics, his systematic concept of the absolute swallowed reality into a homogenous whole leaving no room for philosophical difference. These erroneous accusations would have several implications which would cast a long shadow on Schelling's identity philosophy with the infamous remarks describing Schelling's project eclipsed in the dark night of the absolute. The following paper is divided in two main parts. The first, will evaluate the historical context and philosophical importance behind the structure of Schelling's 1801 Presentation. The second, will addresses Schelling's numerous critics and attempt to explicate the essence behind Schelling's C. Satoor-75 metaphysics of identity. This paper will thus conclude by showing how difference plays an integral part for Schelling, as the realm of finitude, and the ground of all phenomena. These important parts of the whole system are connected in a subterranean like fashion in primordial identity. Thus, grounding Schelling's own novel, philosophical creation, an identity-monism. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depend. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism, and specify the conditions under which this (...) is possible. (shrink)

There are passages of Conway’s Principles that treat all of creation as one integrated substance, but others that treat creation as constituted by indefinitely many substances. Recent work attempts to assuage the tension between these possibilities by arguing that Conway is a priority monist about creation, while other work has pushed back on this position, holding that Conway is better interpreted as a straightforward pluralist. In defense of the priority monist reading, this paper entertains a radical thesis: that Conway’s Christ (...) is the most fundamental created substance of which all other created substances are proper parts. On this reading, Christ is identical to the whole of creation, despite Conway’s commitment to substantial distinction between Christ and creatures on the basis of their mutability. While creatures are mutable for better and worse, Christ is only mutable toward the good. Since the proposed view identifies Christ with the mereological totality of created beings, it holds that the world is perpetually increasing in goodness, though any of its parts may intermittently deteriorate. (shrink)

This essay supports a so-called identification-oriented interpretation of the argument for substance monism. It emphasizes the conceptual barrier between different attributes and the conceptual-independence condition in the definition of substance. It argues that certain features of Spinoza’s notion of attributes enable him to defend his argument for substance monism from a number of challenges: the fact that, for Spinoza, each attribute of a substance, independently of the modes of the substance and independently of other attributes, is sufficient for (...) conceiving of the substance; and the fact that, for Spinoza, because of the conceptual independence of the attributes, no attribute of a substance can prevent that substance from having any other attribute. (shrink)

According to “existence monism,” there is only one concrete particular, the cosmos as a whole (Horgan and Potrč 2000, 2008). According to “priority monism,” there are many concrete particulars, but all are ontologically dependent upon the cosmos as a whole, which accordingly is the only fundamental concrete particular (Schaffer 2010a, 2010b). In essence, the difference between them is that existence monism does not recognize any parts of the cosmos, whereas priority monism does – it just insists (...) that the parts are ontologically dependent upon the whole in this case. Brentano never maintained either of these views. But in the last two years of his life, he seems to have held the following approximation: there is only one physical substance, namely, the material universe as a whole. This is twice removed from existence or priority monism: first, it allows for a plurality of mental substances (souls); secondly, it allows for a plurality of physical accidents, which in Brentano’s reistic ontology are also concrete particulars. Still, the view that the only physical substance is the universe as a whole is quite radical and finds little precedent in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

An analysis of the physical implications of abstractness reveals the reality of three interconnected modes of existence: abstract, virtual and concrete, corresponding in physics to information, energy and matter. This triple-aspect monism clarifies the ontological status of subatomic quantum particles. It also provides a non-spooky solution to the weirdness of quantum physics and a new outlook for the mind-body problem. The ontological implications are profound for both physics and philosophy.

This paper tries to study philosophical standpoints of Shankara and Spinoza in comparative manner. Though these two philosophers are from totally different cultures, their philosophical method has certain similarities.

Abstract. The neutral monism suggested by Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a theoretical frame intended to match the general idea of Kant’s apriorism with the results reached by physics and psychology at the beginning of the 20th Key words: transcendental aesthetic; consciousness in general; empirical consciousness; psychophysical parallelism; phenomenal ontology; scientistic ontology.

The mind-body problem remains a central challenge in consciousness studies, with physicalist monism – the view that all mental phenomena are ultimately physical – serving as a dominant paradigm. This paper investigates the limits of physicalist monism in explaining subjective experience by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates phenomenological philosophy and neuroscience. From the phenomenological perspective, first-person analyses reveal fundamental features of consciousness (such as qualia, intentionality, temporality, and embodiment) that resist reduction to purely physical processes. Neuroscientific findings, (...) while illuminating the neural correlates and functional mechanisms of mind, continue to confront the “hard problem” of explaining why brain activity is accompanied by an inner qualitative life. Through a critique that spans phenomenology’s rich descriptions of experience and neuroscience’s empirical insights, the paper argues that reductive materialist accounts fall short of bridging the explanatory gap between objective brain states and the lived reality of experience. This analysis carries significant implications for the mind-body problem and for consciousness research: a purely physical ontology appears insufficient to fully account for mind. The findings call for a more nuanced framework that accommodates the irreducible first-person dimension of consciousness, potentially through new philosophical models or integrative methodologies (e.g. neurophenomenology) that can more comprehensively address the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Few these days dispute that the knowledge argument demonstrates an epistemic gap between the physical facts and the facts about experience. It is much more contentious whether that epistemic gap can be used to demonstrate a metaphysical gap of a kind that is inconsistent with physicalism. In this paper I will explore two attempts to block the inference from an epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap – the first from the phenomenal concept strategy, the second from Russellian monism – (...) and suggest how the proponent of the knowledge argument might respond to each of these challenges. In doing so, I will draw on recent discussions of grounding and essence in the metaphysics literature. (shrink)

Although a substantial number of papers is published on the topic of consciousness, there is still little consensus on what its nature is and how the physical and phenomenal worlds are connected. Most published research establishes a causal relation between the brain and the mind, but it lacks a cogent theory of how this relation comes to be. In contrast, this paper uses a set of thought experiments grounded in quantum information theory to derive a framework for resolving the hard (...) problem of consciousness. Despite the common tendency to treat the problem purely philosophically, in this paper, consciousness and qualia are analyzed through established formal theory deriving conclusions regarding their relation which provide counter-arguments for the commonly held dualist view. Through the informational monism framework, a case is made for a fundamentally phenomenal nature of information. (shrink)

Dualism can be contrasted with monism, and also with physicalism. It is argued here that what is essential to physicalism is not just its denial of dualism, but the epistemological and ontological authority it gives to physical science. A physicalist view of the mind must be reductive in one or both of the following senses: it must identify mental phenomena with physical phenomena or it must give an explanation of mental phenomena in physical terms. There is little reason to (...) call a view which is not reductive in either of these senses “physicalism”. If reduction is rejected, then a non-physicalist form of monism is still available, which may be called “emergentism”. (shrink)

This article makes the case that a more capacious understanding of the philosophy of naturalistic monism can place in a new light some of the chief intellectual, cultural, religious and political questions and conflicts in the period between the 1840s and 1940s, making this in many ways a “monist century.” It approaches this task from two directions. First, the article argues that monism represented a peculiar type of socially embodied knowledge that is little understood and yet which illuminates (...) one of the important ways in which religion, science, and philosophy coalesced in social and political movements in this period. It approaches this task through an analysis of two key terms in Ernst Haeckel’s epoch-making book "The Riddle of the Universe" (1899). Haeckel invoked the term “world riddles” to identify those points of conflict between dualistic and monist philosophical systems and to claim that the latter had solved this riddles through science. By contrast, this article identifies in the riddles the nodal points upon which the entire monist edifice was erected. Turning to the social embodiment of monism, I argue that rather than approaching monism as philosophy, religion, scientific paradigm or ideology, it is best understood as a novel formation of knowledge captured in the second key term “worldview.” Indeed, in many ways the German concept of Weltanschauung developed in tandem with and through the history of monism, so that monism offers a particularly rich avenue for exploring what made the monist century also an age of worldviews. (shrink)

In this paper I try to combine the objectology of Meinong with a neutral substance monism of the kind originally proposed by Spinoza (deus sive natura). Yet Spinoza was still stuck in the Cartesian paradigm and therefore rather gave a dual monism (extensio et intellectus) than a proper neutral monism. I propose that there are only two attributes of the one substance: existence and non-existence. Everything else is/are mere modes of them.

This chapter provides an introduction to panpsychism, panprotopsychism, and neutral monism to an interdisciplinary audience.