There is a sense that human consciousness is detached from physical reality.  It is easy to imagine the many wondrous workings of the human mind, feelings, intuition, pain, etc. to be entirely too complex to be the product of purely physical processes.  Notwithstanding, the science and philosophy of the mind have made great strides in understanding not only the purely physical nature of most observable phenomena, but also in the area of theorizing about consciousness itself as a manifestation of the fundamental characteristics of physical reality.  The conceptual nature of these endeavors may make them seem generally inaccessible to the average person, but in reality there are only a few major points that broadly define the ongoing discussion, generally lumped into two underlying schools of thought, physicalism and dualism.  Engaging physicalism is to conceive of reality as having its basis entirely in the physical world, whereas dualists separate reality into two ‘kinds’, one that is physical and another, non-physical reality.  Both physicalists and dualists look to epiphenomenal features that are catalysts for conscious behavior.  Dualists appeal to ideas about epiphenomenal interactions between physical and non-physical realities whereas physicalists consider epiphenomenal features within the context of one purely physical reality.  Physicalism is an incarnation of monism.  Newly emergent ideations of monism, having broad appeal in science and philosophy today, will be the focus of this position paper.

​ Physicalism has multiple types.  A Type-A physicalism defines material reality as constitutive of its physical components, and a Type-B physicalism defines material reality as a function of both its physical components and its qualities. And it is in these qualities where physicalists are sussing out the details of a broadly defined physicalism called panqualityism.  These ideas were given new life in modern times by the philosopher Bertrand Russell in his Theory of Knowledge and Monist articles that appeared between 1910-1920.  Russell defended monism by writing “the whole duality of mind and matter, according to this theory, is a mistake; there is only one kind of stuff out of which the world is made, and this stuff is called mental in one arrangement, physical in the other.” Reflecting on the characteristics of Type-B physicalism some philosophers draw a parallel between the “qualities” of reality in Russell’s “mental” arrangement, and “the deep nature of matter” in Russell’s description of the “physical” and expound on a philosophy of human consciousness known as panqualityism. Goff goes on to explain that panqualityists, by separating out the “qualities in our experience existing unexperienced” can construct a metaphysical framework for consciousness in a world “just like our world in its pure physical structures, composed of richly qualitied matter, but in which there is no subjective experience whatsoever (i.e., none of the qualities are for a subject)”. However, this world is much like the dualist one in which another, non-physical reality is effectuating conscious behavior, leaving physicalists to search for a more complete philosophy of the mind. 

​ As a result, Russellian monists are revisiting Type-A physicalism, with an eye to epiphenomenal effects at both the micro- and macro-levels (cosmopsychism).  And the problem begins to turn on one of constitution – how is the mind constituted and emergent as physical processes are perceived to be?  Philosopher David A. Chalmers has proposed reconsidering the Russellian monist viewpoint of reality in the framework of panprotopsychism. This ‘constitutive Russellian monism’ results in a very similar ideation of the nature of consciousness proposed by panqualityism but additionally recognizes that the emergent properties of reality are bounded by the protophenomenal properties of some fundamental particles.  Quarks, muons, even electrons and neutrinos may have a sort of innate consciousness in the view of a constitutive Russellian panprotopsychic. The metaphysical model of consciousness that is of this constitutive view forms the basis for articulating the qualitative properties of things to be perceived and assigns to the fundamental particles emergentist properties and causal differences that actuate consciousness along the fabric of reality.  As Goff writes, “constitutive Russellian monism is perhaps the ideal, given its capacity to reconcile the causal efficacy of human and animal feelings and emotions with micro-level causal closure.”

References

​CP, Vol. 7, Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript. London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. 1984.

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Goff, Philip. An Elegant Theory of Matter.  Philip Goff Philosophy.

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Goff, Philip. "Bertrand Russell and the Problem of Consciousness". Philip Goff Philosophy.