neutral monism

Neutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the very 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 are like sensory experiences: they 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.

Some subset of these elements form individual minds: the subset of just the experiences that you have for the day, which are accordingly just so many neutral elements that follow upon one another, is your mind as it exists for that day. If instead you described the elements that would constitute the sensory experience of rock by the path, then those elements constitute that rock. They do so even if no one observes the rock. The neutral elements exist, and our minds are constituted by some subset of them, and that subset can also be seen to constitute a set of empirical observations of the objects in the world. All of this, however, is just a matter of grouping the neutral elements in one way or another, according to a physical or a psychological (mental) perspective.

^^ I think this is pretty much what I have always believed

would you say that's how you break it down?

to an extent, yes

That's crazy talk. Next, you'll be saying that 0 is a neutral monad.

I just taught this shit on Thursday! On Spinoza, ultimate neutral monist.

Leibnitz was a nut too FYI.

I'm working my way through Shunryu Suzuki's commentaries on the Sandokai, which is a old ass poem that speaks to this topic.

also loooooooooooooleibniz

these neutral monads exist in spacetime y/n

im chaotic good fwiw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia <--I dig these kinds of articles

is using wikipedia (selectively) as my primary external resource for my spiritual self-journey a good or bad idea

Bad idea, but I am curious where you will end up if you follow this route. My guess is that late Steely Dan will be involved at some point.

In an article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982),[20] Frank Jackson offers what he calls the "Knowledge Argument" for qualia. One example runs as follows:

Mary the colour scientist knows all the physical facts about colour, including every physical fact about the experience of colour in other people, from the behavior a particular colour is likely to elicit to the specific sequence of neurological firings that register that a colour has been seen. However, she has been confined from birth to a room that is black and white, and is only allowed to observe the outside world through a black and white monitor. When she is allowed to leave the room, it must be admitted that she learns something about the colour red the first time she sees it — specifically, she learns what it is like to see that colour

^^^ this is some bullshit because emotion is a neural (physical) process

"emotion" in the sense that encompasses one's reaction to seeing the color red for the first time

neutral moanism

Wikipedia gives good overview but not enough info to make up your own mind. Try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for the hard shit - http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html