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William James and Mind-Body Neutrality II

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In yesterday's post I laid out three "neutralist" theories and said something about the relationship of William James' thought to each. I'd like to tie that line of inquiry up a bit today.

Again, the theories are: neutral monism; dual aspect theory; panpsychism.

What they maintain in each case is that there is some stuff that is neither mental nor physical, and that the mental and physical realms are constructions out of this stuff, so that we can allow for mind-body interaction without freaking out over HOW?

For a neutral monist, the stuff is an underlying collection of data or unclassified facts such as an image of a piece of paper.

For a dual aspect theory, the stuff is God, the Universe, Everything Considered as a Totality.

For a panpsychist, the stuff is, well, mindful matter. Which includes all matter (and, likely enough, all mind.)

I shared yesterday, too, my own impression that the first listed of those three arises out of a principle of parsimony, the Ockhamist impulse to build the world out of the fewest components. The third of those arises rather out of metaphysical exuberance, gleefully dispensing with parsimony. The middle term, Monism, may be considered middle in precisely this regard.

This brings us to the paradox we might face if we study James' texts with this typology in mind. We seem to see a close resemblance between views A, B, and C, which escaped him. Moreover, he discussed both A and C, both favorably though without decisive adoption as his own view, Yet his discussions of A seem to take place in a different compartment of his mind (or body!) from his discussions of C. They don't come in contact,

Moreover, he had a visceral opposition to B. It was "the Absolute" -- the "upper dogmatism,"

So: what is going on here?

Perhaps we should regard the plausibility of neutralist theories of mind and body as akin to the temperature of coffee. One can like hot coffee (in certain contexts), like iced coffee as well (in other contexts) yet reject and disdain lukewarm coffee.

James' philosophy was in large part an effort to prove that human deliberations matter. "To think is the only moral act." Our deliberations are not forced or predetermined, and the actions into which they issue can change our lives and the lives of others around us in which for which there is no limit. We can get to that self-conception either by heating up the coffee or by cooling it down, James suspected, and he was willing to entertain either approach.

The lukewarm coffee? Despite its family resemblance to the good stuff(s), it wouldn't get the job done, and the only way to pretend that it did, was to go over to the other side.

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