Dual Aspect Monism

Interesting set of unrelated conversations throwing-up unexpected connections in the past week.

After the recent exchange on pan-psychism ended with Massimo Pigliucci conceding ….

I like res informatica. a bit less speculative than panpsychism.

— Massimo Pigliucci (@mpigliucci) January 6, 2019

…. I found in my reading of Mumford in connection with Russell’s metaphysics as a response to idealism, more specifically my doubts about that, I picked-up another passing reference to pan-psychism as another alternative.

Earlier today Philip Goff (also at Durham, like Mumford) interacted on a light-hearted thread about the limitations of sets … so I looked him up.

I see he is also an advocate of pan-psychism – (pan-proto-psychism I prefer) – more specifically as a Dual Aspect Monism. In fact I see he has (a) written a book “Consciousness and Fundamental Reality” and (b) is participating in 2019’s Science of Consciousness event.

“Some Russellian monists adopt panpsychism …”

Goff

That exchange with Pigliucci included me saying this question of what we were really suggesting by pan-psychism – beyond the straw-man that “electrons think” (not) – was really just the old monism / dualism (and in my case maybe “trialism”) debate. Seems to me that Dual Aspect Monism is what I was really trying to say with “trialism”. Two aspects cogitans and extensa of a single underlying res fundamental. Res Informatica in my case.

[As I ended the previous post I need to draw the connections together with Rovelli and Verlinde and include now Goff … in progress.]

[And I really am going to have to recap on Russell and metaphysics going back to starting again from idealism. Sigh.]