On Russell's Neutral Monism

The idea of "neutral monism" is a demarcation point of Russell’s philosophy.It has an extremely important role in the whole philosophy of Russell and the philosophical history of empiricism.The main purpose of this paper is to show Russell’s idea of neutral monism clearly to the readers with the logical construction of mind and matter as the clue,and discuss the various problems and influences extended by this thought through this presentation.The core of Russell’s Neutral Monism is the logical structure.Although Russell is generally regarded as an analytical philosopher,Russell is more interested in structure.This is particularly evident in Russell’s neutral monism.Russell believes that the mind substance and material substance cannot be tested by our experience,the product they are deduced,such substance will only make our knowledge become more uncertain,so Russell proposed to deal with the mental and physical problem by “replacing inferences in way of structure”.In this way,Russell started the structure of matter and mind.Russell for the mental and physical structure of the material is sensation,sensation has different meanings in different periods of Russell,Russell said that the sensation is individual in the moment of the perceived color in the monism period,like sound,smell and so on,those things are indifferent of John Locke’s "second properties",but Russell distinguished between sensation and perception,sensation is the core,and the core was not affected by memory and habit.It can be said that the starting point and foundation of Russell’ mental and material structure is the sensation in a private world,the sensation is in the "Perspectives"(the only vision),the so-called "Perspectives" is the observed “scenery"in a moment and in a given place.Through this perspectives of the private world,Russell believes that countless other perspectives can be deduced.For example,in a room,I saw a table,the sensation of the table is in my perspective,it can be imagined that there are other people in the room,they also have their own perspective and the sensation of the table,Russell called this perceived and not perceived sensations particulars.According to Russell,these particulars can be assembled according to the "perspective law",which is the collection of the table itself.In the same way,from the individual world,Russell constructed the time and space.The main steps of Russell’s logical construction of mind is to restore variousmental events first,to restore all kinds of mental time analysis to sensation and image,and observed behaviors,the images can be regarded as a subclass of sensation.In this way,the mind lost it’s reality and can be regarded as a fictional thing constructed by sensation.The reason why people think that mind and matter are different.The root cause is the difference of the orders of neutral materials and they follow different law of causation.Although many philosophers believe that Russell’s neutral monism is a failure,the theory itself has many contradictions and cannot explain,but it is used for logic construction of the principle of Russell has an important position in the history of Empiricism philosophy,and the theories of Carnap,Quin and other philosophers were influenced by Russell.Meanwhile the rise of the philosophy of mind in the Anglo American philosophical circles made Russell’s neutral monism more concerned.Therefore,whether the principle of Russell’s logical structure or the theory of neutral monism,they all have great value in the history of philosophy.