The Physical-Mental Identity in the Doctrines of Bertrand Russell’s and William James’s Neutral Monism

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the scattered links of the concept of neutrality as they were formulated by W. James and B. Russell in their particular versions of the Neutral Monism Theory. We analyze the twofold hypothesis according to which, on the one hand, the pure experience or sensation is a neutral concept and, on the other, it is such a concept what allows us to dispense with the ontological mindbody dichotomy. Next we emphasize Russell's mind-brain identity proposal and the unquestionable influence of Spinoza's philosophy on it. Finally we suggest that such a proposal, from an empirical perspective, should be considered as the first antecedent of the contemporary Psychophysical Identity Theory.