Can Monism be Neutral?

Abstract

The paper examines Mach’s and Schlick’s solution to the mind-body problem. It does not trace their lineage from historically given philosophical schools but tries to draw on the rational reconstruction of the problem within recent philosophy of mind to locate the authors’ positions within the logical space of possible solutions to the problem. This suggests that they belong to same class of solutions. Furthermore the main originality of both solution is based on the rejection of the primary/secondary qualities distinction. Nonetheless, Mach and Schlick construe that rejection in different ways: the former identifies the object of perception with the object of physics, the latter distinguishes them and appeals to a causal theory of perception. Either theory has to sacrifice some intuitive, pre-philosophical belief, thus rendering the very idea of a philosophical “one best way”, let alone a scientific solution of the problem doubtful.