Neutral Monism is at least mentioned alongside more popular positions based primarily on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And, of course, it's mentioned whereas the position I have been putting in the mouth of my character the Teacher of Righteousness is still wandering in the wilderness. Therefore, it will be interesting for me to lay out where the Teacher stands with respect to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Wittgenstein.

"The notion of neutrality once occupied a central position in the discussion of the mind-body problem. No less than nine of the seventeen possible types of mind-body theory on C.D. Broad's famous list of 1925 (Broad 1925) are classified as forms of "neutralism." An updated version of this list would most likely not even contain the term "neutrality" (or any of its cognates). The notion of neutrality, and hence the doctrine of neutral monism, play no role in the current debate. It lives on only as an obscure encyclopedia entry."

"...In the course of weighing arguments raised in support of each of these opposing positions, it will be seen that even though classical dualism is not adequate for what it is about, the lures and arguments that could be amassed in its favor are not something that materialism will find easy to dispel and counter. The mind-body problem in particular stands in the way. Besides, as far as philosophy is concerned, what also stands in the way is the challenge of immaterialism, and a phenomenalistic theory called neutral monism. Immaterialism contends that the nature of reality is mental. Neutral monism contends that human reality could be understood as constituted of nothing other than sensory data. For materialism to hold its ground therefore, the basis of immaterialism and neutral monism will also have to be examined and disposed..."

It strikes me as interesting that Both Spinoza and Wittgenstein have been accused of being Neutral Monists . It is interesting because Neutral Monism is not such a neglected position and sometimes is considered a viable alternative in the philosophical disputes about knowledge and morality. So, in current discussions of materialism and the scientific explanation of mental abilities, we hear from Peter Chan the following,

First of all, the Teacher should be seen as the direct nemesis of Socrates over the issue of what we must determine to be the means and ends of life. Socrates advocates the surprising view that the end or purpose of life is to survive, and to survive at the expense of all other goals. The means of successfully reaching that goal is by force. That is, in order to assure that one will survive one must be willing and able to use violence, stealth, and deceit.

This characterization of Socrates will be surprising because it seems that Socrates portrays himself as one who would first promote reason as the means of attaining whatever one's life's goals were, and that whatever the purpose of life, it would involve making one's soul better. Mere survival would seem a menial task for him. So we are lead to believe by Plato in his Apology . (See here, here, here, here, and here for commentary.)

However, according to Socrates, he is the only person who knows anything, and that one thing is that no one, including himself, knows anything. His practice involved showing that people were unable to explain what they meant by knowledge, truth, justice, and all the other disputed terms that philosophers had puzzled over. As they could not explain what they meant, they were unable to claim they actually had knowledge, or could recognize what was true, or could have justice, and so forth. The picture that Socrates gives us is one of deep skepticism about what we can understand about our lives.

The claim I've made about Socrates can be understood by contrasting what Socrates claims about the means and ends of life with what I claim on behalf of the Teacher. The Teacher claims that the end or purpose of life is to create the Kingdom of God. This idea is his way of saying the goal of our lives is to resolve our conflicts without resorting to violence. In order to accomplish this purpose the Teacher advocates we depend on words and the arguments we can make with them.

There is an image that nicely contrasts the two views. This example goes as follows. We can imagine a group of people gathered in a room, all discussing what to do about a sandwich that sits on a table before them. It is the last sandwich that the group can make. There is no more bread, no meat or cheese left. The mustard and pickles are all used up. Everyone in the room is at some point going to get hungry.

In order to determine what they will do about their hunger and the sandwich all of those in this group have committed themselves to discussion and to agreeing to go along with a plan in which everyone will have participated. The virtue of the discussion, for everyone involved, is that they realize that their method of making a decision is more important to them than whatever may happen to the sandwich or to each of them individually. The reason they find their argumentation important is that as each of them expresses their own position and sees that everyone else hears and recognizes the virtues of what they have to say, they recognize that they have the respect of everyone else in the discussion. They all know that one sandwich will not satisfy their hunger for long. But, they see that they are respected. As the Teacher points out, those in this discussion do not live by sandwiches alone.

In the background, maybe lurking in a shadow, is someone who has hung back from the discussion. Maybe this person felt that they were not being heard. Maybe they thought that they would never be given their fair share of the sandwich. Maybe they thought that they needed to survive regardless of what others might say or do for them. So, this person pulls out a gun, or a big knife, and steals the sandwich from the others. He takes the sandwich and maybe he kills a few of the others who might have tried to object. Whatever might happen to the others was of no consequence to this thief and murderer, as his only concern was that with the sandwich he was going to survive.

This is the dispute between Socrates and the Teacher. Socrates advocates for thuggery while the Teacher pushes for the group's reliance on argumentation.

The thug's taking the sandwich here is just what Gyges does to the King and Queen of his country. Gyges uses the ring of invisibility to take what he thinks he needs to survive. It is this use of force by both the thug in my example and by Gyges in Socrates' example that makes the reliance on argumentation by the group and their kind of argumentation impossible. What's more, this example allows us to see the contrast between how the group would know what their plan would be about the sandwich, where their plan would be based on mutual respect for everyone in the group, and how the thug's stealing and killing would be only a matter of his own opinions and desires. This contrast is carried through into every variation of Socrates' position that we can consider.

The example of Gyges tells us that rationality is based on the model of how Gyges assures his survival. He supports any idea or citizen that supports the view he has of his own survival. He destroys any idea or citizen that gives even a hint of resistance. This is the situation that leads some to say that the world is divided into those few who wear the boots, and the many who kiss them. There is also an unrecognized few who also try to lift their lips up off those boots and who are destroyed for their efforts. It is this image that goes to characterize argument as a matter of either rhetorical or logical. Rhetorical argument is that part of argument where one considers issues and how people take different position or various claims about those issues. Logical argument is that complementary part of argument where one only considers the positions taken and the supports one might present to those positions. Socrates argues that reason is a matter of only logical argument.

The virtue of logical argument is that it is about how positions are considered valid because of their form. This makes logic something that seems to be systemetizable. One seems to be able to find out which are good arguments by examining just the form of an argument. One does not have to understand anything about their content.

The vice of logical argument has to do with the fact that they are not about issues or controversies, as are rhetorical arguments, and so cannot be compared or contrasted. Socrates argues that knowledge and values are matters of logical argument. This is the understanding of knowledge and values shared by Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Wittgenstein. It is the incomparability of logical arguments that makes knowledge and values impossible according to the accounts given by all these philosophers.

That is, thuggery makes knowledge and values impossible. The thug did not know he deserved the sandwich, nor did he kill those who objected out of any admirable value save the value he gave his own personal survival. As the thug made any discussion about what to do about the sandwich impossible, he made whatever knowledge and values obtained through having the discussion impossible.

One might argue, of course, that just because the thug took the sandwich and killed a few of those participating in the discussion he did not make the discussion impossible. It would still be possible for the group to continue their discussion and make a decision despite the fact that they did not have the sandwich anymore. One could continue the discussion. However, the reason I'm hard on Socrates is that he doesn't just advocate we steal what we need and kill those who object, he goes out of his way to argue that we should understand knowledge and values not in terms of the group's discussion but instead in terms of the thugs stealing and killing. He argues that we should define what we base our decisions on by looking at how the thug reasons, not by how the group does.

The next question is how we should understand logical arguments. Plato tells us that our lives are like those of his cave dwellers who are chained to the wall of his cave and can therefore experience only the shadows and echoes of objects that are carried in front of fires above and behind where they cannot see. We are being told that we seem to have lives because what we experience is not real. What we seem to have experiences of are just the reflections of real things in a real world.

The Teacher tries to warn us that the acceptance of this allegory as the true account of our lives makes us forget that we are selling our family cow for magic beans, so to speak. Jack went to market to sell the family cow for provisions so that his family could survive through the winter. He came back with a handful of beans. He was told by some sharp salesman they were magic beans. He gave up the cow for beans because he was gullible, and had visions of golden eggs from the goose. The Allegory promises the magic of an all powerful God who can give life after death and intervene in this life on our behalf. The Teacher warns us that magic beans are not a reasonable trade for that cow.

According to Plato, we have seeming lives, but we can find knowledge and values if we can unchain ourselves and turn around to see the forms. Aristotle may be read to argue that the forms are not in some other world beyond experience, but are available to us if we look carefully at our experiences before us. Plato provided another story where the prospect of having the ones chained free themselves was not promoted as much as the alternate possibility that someone who did experience the objects before the fire would be in a position to come back to the cave to save the cave dwellers with their account of what was really true about their lives. For Plato, as well as for Socrates in the Apology , this person would be a hero to those cave dwellers he would thereby save.

The Teacher argues against any view that begins with the Socratic account of knowledge and values as being matters of logical argument. This would include Plato's reading involving how each person is a matter of their own logical argument. The prospect of finding the forms in some world outside the cave, as in Plato, or in the world, as with Aristotle, makes their views no less problematic for the Teacher.

The problem for Plato's reading, which he recognizes, is that if each person is a matter of a logical argument, and no such argument can be compared with any other, then all such arguments are relativistic, there is no one overall account of everything from any person's point of view. No one can agree to anything.

Plato's solution is to provide for a Hero who sees the Forms who can then inform everyone in the cave of their true situation. This is the idea behind Christianity and Judaism, that God knows and has true values, whereas the rest of unshackled to a cave wall do not.

The solution for Spinoza is to argue that whereas each person for themselves knows what they want, what they see, how they feel, and what is true, when they are expected to match what they think up with anyone else, they are unable. They are unable to match what they know and value up with anyone else because logical arguments cannot be compared or contrasted. His solution is to argue that Plato misread what it means for knowledge and values to be matters of logical argument. Instead of everyone being a matter of their own logical arguments, the world is really a matter of only one logical argument.

How are Socrates, Plato, Spinoza and my Teacher of Righteousness related? They can be related as different answers to the question of what to do with that last sandwich. Each gives a different answer, most all of them depending first on Socrates' initial preference of force over words.

Socrates tells us that we should use force to take the sandwich. After all, the goal of this life is to survive and we cannot be sure that any discussion about the sandwich will end in our favor.

Plato agrees that force is the way to solve controversies. He agrees that one needs to use overwhelming force to make people agree with you. You need to use force to destroy any kind of dissent. The weak cannot be allowed to lift their lips up off our boots, so to speak. The weak, of course will want to resist. They will want to resist especially the claim that they should kiss boot, but that knowledge and values is a matter of kissing boot, or in other words, logical argument. Not only will they reject the idea that they need to give in to the powerful, but they will reject the Socratic attempt to make knowledge and values a matter of logical argument by definition. Their problem will involve the observation that if such a claim were true, then knowledge and values would be impossible, arguments whose point are to come to knowledge and values would be futile, the terms of what arguments one would be left with would be manipulable by the powerful, and so justice, love, and life in general so understood would not be worth living. They might argue that such things cannot be true, that Socrates' claim about knowledge and values could not be possible, because their lives contain all kinds of examples of knowledge and values, love and justice and so forth. But, to that argument Socrates tells us that such a response does not undermine his view at all because people only seem to have lives. Since they only seem to have lives they only seem to experience knowledge and values.

The Allegory is a story that offers us an excuse to adopt the claims Socrates makes about knowledge and values, an excuse that pushes the idea that we only seem to have lives, and which suggests ways in which everything will come out alright in the end despite our initial reservations. That is, for Jack, it was alright for him to sell the family cow for a hand full of beans because, after all, they were magic beans.

Plato is therefore arguing that the thug was justified in his taking the sandwich and killing anyone who objected, because contrary to what the Teacher might claim about the meaning of life, it's about who survives at the end. The only thing that matters, that should matter to any of us, is who survives. There may be some question about whether the thug was justified in taking the sandwich for himself because there may be someone else who deserved better to survive. This question again raises the question whether the Teacher was right to let what happened to the sandwich be decided by argumentation. However, Plato can argue that for the thug, his own answer comes from his having a special relationship with someone who does have knowledge and values, by the thug's lights, and who offers that information to him. That information being absolute, on his account, thereby justifies his taking the sandwich from others who are not as deserving. They are not deserving, on the thug's view, because they do not have this special relationship with the one's in the know.

Aristotle tells us that the Forms are in this world, not in some other, and so one should be able to hunt for them and be able to find them. The problem for Plato as well as for Aristotle, is that one bad apple can spoil a barrel. So, if one guy thinks he can get away with stealing the sandwich and kill anyone who gets in his way, then there might be two or more guys who think they too can get away with it. In this case, then, there will erupt violent conflict between the thugs about what each of them wants and about which none of them are willing to haggle.

Aristotle tells us that we should rely on science and the investigation of the world of experience to come up with some account of it that might help us resolve conflicts between thugs. He thinks their conflicts are about not understanding what's going on in the world. Given that for them knowledge and values are impossible, on the Teacher's view, their conflicts occur because they cannot find out what's going on and they have no way to work together to come to any agreements. In order to resolve conflicts, on Aristotle's view, we need to discover what's real. We need to work out ways to agree. Unfortunately, the problem is that Aristotle begins by advocating that knowledge and values are best accomplished through thievery and murder. Even if people recognize they have a problem seeing their way about, so to speak, they have hobbled themselves with presumptions about logical argument which make any determination of what's true or how to cooperate impossible.

Plato's Allegory tells us that we cannot be in a position to know what life is really about or what we should really value because we only have experiences of shadows and echoes. Our lives are illusions. His solution is to argue that there is a "good cop" in the next world that will save us from the "bad cop" that has us by our short hairs in this one. So, even though we may think that the thug takes advantage of us and gets away with it, because there really is ultimate justice, things will come out alright in the end.

The problem with this response to the thug is that Plato tells us that even if we might think the thug is wrong to steal the sandwich and kill his detractors, this is the way things have been set up. Even though the thug is encouraged to steal and kill to satisfy what he takes to be his purpose in life, and we find that wrong, our opinion has no weight in this world where life is just about survival. After all, the thug was successful and he did survive. This is just what Ivan Karamazov complained about to his brother Alyosha. Ivan argues an honest person should not accept the way God set things up,

"...I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket." Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Chapter 35

Ivan suffered under the presumption that if one wanted to object to the way existing religions understand reality and the way God has set things up, there was no way to protest except to give back one's entrance ticket. However, we can inform Ivan that he need not be so drastic. He may not want to merely replace one metaphysical picture with another, each one predicated on the claim that the use of force is the best most effective way for one to succeed. Instead, Ivan can be informed that one can reject the Socratic account of the means and ends of life as promoting selfishness and the blindness of those without knowledge or values. He can reject that position and adopt the Teacher's position which argues that we must base our decisions on knowledge and values and shows how that can be accomplished.

Spinoza agrees with Socrates that reason is a matter of logic. He too would agree that it was reasonable for the thug to take what he needed and kill who was necessary to kill in order to attain his goals. The problem for Spinoza is that in a world with many thugs then there is too much needless suffering. Spinoza is like a peacemaker among thieves and mafia dons. The problem with Plato is that he makes it seem that everyone is about their own logical argument. Since logical arguments cannot be compared or contrasted, then the conflicts we find with so many such arguments can never be resolved. That is, Spinoza thinks that conflict comes from the fact that there are turf wars. His solution is to show that if there was only one logical argument, or one supreme mafia don, then there would be no conflicts between logical arguments. There would not be violence between lawless gangs.

Of course, Spinoza talks about how the one logical argument is really God, or Nature,. But, peace in the world comes from there being only one don. Peace does not come from there being peaceable dons.

I find it interesting to hear John Cook argue that Wittgenstein was actually a neutral monist. He says in his latest book,

"Those who have read my earlier books on Ludwig Wittgenstein will be familiar with my claim that by 1916 he had embraced neutral monism, called "pure realism" in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (5.64), and that he remained a neutral monist throughout his life. I do not mean, of course, that he thought of himself as embracing a doctrine; rather, he thought of the central theses of neutral monism as a reflection of common sense. (These are the theses that, as he put it, could never be debated because if they were stated, "everyone would agree to them" [PI, #128].) That may sound odd today, but Wittgenstein and a number of his contemporaries regarded neutral monism, which includes both phenomenalism and a phenomenalistic version of behaviorism, as the only credible alternative to the other views that were then in favor, dualism and various forms of idealism...." John W. Cook, The Undiscovered Wittgenstein , Humanity Books 2005, Page21.

It is interesting because even if he is wrong to characterize Wittgenstein in this way his claim supports my understanding that it is reasonable to presume neutral monism is a response to dualism, Plato's Allegory, and the problems consequent to those views. It would seem to me Cook would have to make an argument to justify why one would think such a view was a relevant response to dualism and Plato, and why it was a better response.

My argument would be that Wittgenstein as a neutral monist would have to agree with Socrates that knowledge and values were matters of logical argument, thus making his argument relevant, and that his neutral monism solved the problems accompanying the many-isms of Plato and dualism by being a one-ist.

Cook developed his own method called "Investigative Ordinary Language Philosophy." In his previous books he seemed to criticize Wittgenstein on the basis of the tools his IOLP method gave him. For example, his "backtracking" and "unraveling" of empiricist philosophical ideas. I wonder now whether Cook believed he needed to reject the metaphysical reading he saw in Wittgenstein, or in his empiricist foes, on the basis of his own method, a method which itself implied a "better" metaphysical reading. He did spend time and effort trying to show that his own method wasn't itself infected with metaphysical presuppositions. It seemed Spinoza tried to reject existing religions because they seemed dependent on some bad metaphysical reading, Plato's Allegory of the Cave. He was concerned to reject the bad and happy to accept a better metaphysical view. Whereas Cook thinks we can just get rid of all the philosophical ideas we've based on bad metaphysics, Spinoza does not want to do the same. He seems reluctant to throw out the baby with the bathwater. That is, he thought that any self respecting view of reality must include a place for God. Throwing God out with everything else would not have been acceptable. This is what separates Spinoza from John Cook and Kai Nielsen.

This difference of opinion between Cook and Spinoza raises the question about just how one should reject a reading of Socrates' account of knowledge and values. Like Spinoza, can one agree to Socrates' definition of knowledge and values as matters of logical argument, and then go on to pick and choose amongst a number of varied interpretations of that definition. We don't like the Allegory's many-isms so instead we pick Spinoza's one-ism? Do we have to have an interpretation of Socrates' basic account of knowledge and values so can't we just reject theories about how such an account is supposed to be interpreted? If we choose one reading instead of another is our choice made on the basis of some reading of the basic account? Do we have to have a non-metaphysical place to stand from which we must choose which reading is best?

The Teacher's answer to these questions involves his rejection of the initial account of knowledge and values as matters of logical argument. He's like to say that knowledge and values were matters of argument, understood as involving issues or controversies, positions taken on those issues, and support given to those positions. However, logical arguments are not real arguments because they are not about issues. Their positions are not real positions because they are not contrasted with the positions of anyone else on some issue. Their support or evidence is not real evidence because we cannot compare what one logical argument calls support with what any other argument calls support. The Teacher would say that one of the big differences between logical arguments and real arguments is that real arguers love and respect the views of their opponents just as they expect their opponents to love and respect their own views, the purveyors of logical arguments do not allow themselves to respect the views of others. The problem with Spinoza's view, from the Teacher's viewpoint, is that though he saw problems with one interpretation of the Socratic account of knowledge and values, he did not dig far enough into the views of existing religions. They did not just have trouble with adopting one reading of the Socratic account of knowledge and values. Their problem was in adopting any part of the Socratic account of the means and ends of life.