Does matter have an intrinsic nature?

Question

Russell posits that matter has an intrinsic as well as an extrinsic nature. There is being as well as doing. He says "We know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when there are mental events that we directly experience." in Mind and Matter. He goes on to claim that conscious experience has a physical nature.

Answer 1

The complete reference is to Mind and Matter essay into Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (Simon & Schuster, 1956), page 164.

For Russell's epistemology, see Bertrand Russell. 1919-1927: Neutral Monism, Science, and Language: "Because of his neutral monism, Russell can no longer maintain the distinction between a mental sensation and a material sense-datum. Consciousness is no longer seen as a relation between something psychical, a subject of consciousness, and something physical, a sense datum (Analysis of Mind, pp. 142-43). Instead, the so-called mental and so-called physical dimensions are both constructed out of classes of classes of perceived events, between which there exist – or may exist – correlations."

In the essay Russell describes and rejects the dualistic tradition, from Plato to Descartes, based on the radical distinction between mind and matter.

Russell (page 158): "suggest[s], as a hypothesis which is simple and unifying though not demonstrable, a theory which I prefer to that of correspondence advanced by the Cartesians. We have agreed that mind and matter alike consist of series of events. We have also agreed that we know nothing about the events that make matter, except their space-time structure. What I suggest is that the events that make a living brain are actually identical with those that make the corresponding mind."

"The difference between mind and brain does not consist in the raw material of which they are composed, but in the manner of grouping. A mind and a piece of matter alike are to be considered as groups of events, or rather series of groups of events. The events that are grouped to make a given mind are, according to my theory, the very same events that are grouped to make its brain."

And see page 161:

I will therefore recapitulate [the] main points [of] the theory which I have been trying to set forth [...] .First: the world is composed of events, not of things with changing states, or rather, everything that we have a right to say about the world can be said on the assumption that there are only events and not things. Things, as opposed to events, are an unnecessary hypothesis. [...] Second: sensible objects, as immediately experienced, that is to say, what we see when we see chairs and tables and the sun and the moon and so on, are parts of our minds and are not either the whole or part of the physical objects that we think we are seeing.

Third: I should admit that there may be no such thing as a physical world distinct from my experiences [...] Fifth: a piece of matter is a group of events connected by causal laws, namely, the causal laws of physics. A mind is a group of events connected by causal laws, namely, the causal laws of psychology. An event is not rendered either mental or material by any intrinsic quality, but only by its causal relations.

And see page 164: "Since we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience, we cannot say either that the physical world outside our heads is different from the mental world or that it is not. The supposed problem of the relations of mind and matter arises only through mistakenly treating both as "things" and not as groups of events. With the theory that I have been suggesting, the whole problem vanishes."

This is the gist of Russell's neutral monism: (i) monism because there is only one "stuff": events, instead of two: mental and material. And neutral because he does not assert the ultimate "essence" of that stuff: either mental or material.

The conclusion is "since we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience, we cannot say either that the physical world outside our heads is different from the mental world or that it is not."