Dual-aspect monism and neutral monism offer interesting alternatives to mainstream positions concerning the mind-matter problem. Both as-sume a domain underlying the mind-matter distinction, but they also differ in definitive ways. In the 20th century, variants of both positions have been advanced by a number of protagonists. One of these variants, the dual-aspect monism due to Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung, will be described and commented on in detail. As a unique feature in the Pauli-Jung conception, the duality of mental and material aspects is specified in terms of a complementarity. This sounds innocent, but en-tails a number of peculiarities distinguishing their conjecture from other
Dual-aspect monism and neutral monism offer interesting alternatives to mainstream positions concerning the mind-matter problem. Both as-sume a domain underlying the mind-matter distinction, but they also differ in definitive ways. In the 20th century, variants of both positions have been advanced by a number of protagonists. One of these variants, the dual-aspect monism due to Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung, will be described and commented on in detail. As a unique feature in the Pauli-Jung conception, the duality of mental and material aspects is specified in terms of a complementarity. This sounds innocent, but en-tails a number of peculiarities distinguishing their conjecture from other
Dual-aspect monism and neutral monism oer interesting alternatives to mainstream positions concerning the mind-matter problem. Both assume a domain underlying the mind-matter distinction, but they also dier in denitive ways. In the 20th century, variants of both positions have been advanced by a number of protagonists. One of these variants, the dual-aspect monism due to Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung, will be described and commented on in detail. As a unique feature in the Pauli-Jung conception, the duality of mental and material aspects is specied in terms of a complementarity. This sounds innocent, but entails a number of peculiarities distinguishing their conjecture from other approaches.
In the mid 19th century, the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung developed a philosophical position for the mind-matter problem that is today called dual-aspect monism. They conjectured a picture in which the mental and the material arise as two complementary aspects of one underlying psychophysically neutral reality to which they cannot be reduced and to which direct empirical access is impossible. This picture suggests structural, persistent,re-producible mind-matter correlations by splitting the underlying reality into aspects. In addition, it suggests induced, occasional, evasive mind-matter correlations above and below, respectively, those stable baseline correlations. These correlations, and the way they arise, suggest that the domain of the physical is not completely independent of the domain of the mental, and both are not independent from the assumed reality underlying them. Some ideas are presented of how these relationships might be conceived.
Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality. As an alternative to other positions – mainly dualism, physicalism, idealism – that have been proposed to understand consciousness and its place in nature, the decompositional version of dual-aspect monism considers the mental and the physical as two aspects of one underlying undivided reality that is psychophysically neutral. Inspired by analogies with modern physics and driven by its conceptual problems, Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Gustav Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler, David Bohm, and Basil Hiley are the originators of the approaches studied. A radically novel common theme in their approaches is the constitutive role of meaning and its deep structure, relating the mental and the physical to a psychophysically neutral base.The authors reconstruct the formal structure of these approaches, and compare their conceptual emphases as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses. They also address a number of challenging themes for current and future interdisciplinary research, both theoretical and empirical, that arise from the presented frameworks of thinking. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and the history of 20th-century philosophy and physics.
Abstract The dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some related approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization.
Abstract A key ingredient of the metaphysical doctrine of dual-aspect monism is a psychophysically neutral domain, of which mental and physical aspects arise as epistemic descendants that manifest themselves by decomposition. This primer first introduces some elementary notions to define the basic concepts needed to understand the approach, such as those of states, state spaces, observables, partitions and correlations. Using these notions, the concepts of decomposition and manifestation are explained, and a differentiated view of the mereological distinction of wholes and parts is outlined. Next, a number of historical and contemporary accounts of psychophysical neutrality with philosophical (Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Kant), scientific (Bohm, Pauli, Jung, Connes, Gibson), and artistic (sculpture, music) flavor are given as illustrative examples. Finally, correlations between the psychophysically neutral, the mental, and the physical domain of reality are discussed, in which these correlations are substantiated by meaning.
This chapter discusses what appears to be the first version of decompositional dual-aspect monism that assigns a crucial role to meaning. Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung’s view, mainly developed in their correspondence, involves an underlying psychophysically neutral realm called the Unus Mundus (i.e. unitary world). What emerges is a highly innovative blend of physics and depth psychology. We use the analogy with quantum entanglement (and quantum holism) to clarify the relationship of the mental to the physical and the relation of both to an undivided psychophysically neutral domain. The phenomenon of synchronicity (i.e. non-causal yet meaningful connections) is discussed from this point of view. Empirical evidence for such phenomena is investigated in some detail, along with the well-known problem of reproducibility facing the interpretation of such events. Some initial tentative applications are then discussed in light of this analysis, including evolution and mathematical creativity. Finally, metaphysical aspects of the Unus Mundus in relation to symbols and archetypes are discussed with respect to their significance for the deep structure of meaning.