I.

            I have this odd feeling about this concept of monism - particularly in terms of its present-day use. I remember thirty years ago, hanging out with the graduate students from a department focused in analytical philosophy. At that point, I was beginning to explore the Idealists. But my primary acquaintance dismissed them: 'Oh, they're monists.' I never quite found out the significance of the statement, since he was clearly unwilling to go there, as we say nowadays. I have some assurance that the analytical philosophers didn't view themselves as dualists, in response to this dreaded monism. And I assume that they dreaded monism, since it was not only obviously categorically proscribed by this dismissive buzzword, but the highhanded and arch dismissal, coupled with an unwillingness to discuss the issue, clearly suggested that monism was anathema as well as proscribed - that even a casual discussion might lead to heresy. But I was never quite clear what the analytical philosophers offered as counterpoise. Perhaps I could refer to their occasional self-characterization as 'pluralists'. But, given the facts, I think I would be more inclined to describe them as 'pulverists'. Their bits and pieces approach never seemed to link one short sequence with another. All of it seemed to float around like tiny lost fragments of DNA that could never quite locate themselves, much less assemble a whole chromosome. I understand that, now that analytical philosophy has grown somewhat top-heavy and attenuated - overborne by its own success, apparently - not a few young graduates have levelled the same argument.
            But what brings me to my odd feeling about monism is its most recent usage. I am discussing consciousness with a political science professor, no less, when he asserts that, in any case, he's a monist. Suddenly - for me, at least - the term somersaults from heresy to orthodoxy. But - again, for me - the new orthodoxy is just as confusing as the old heresy. The term is now used as a 'positive' by those who hope to 'rescue' consciousness studies from the terrible 'dualism' that distinguishes consciousness from the world - the fact that consciousness itself distinguishes itself from the world notwithstanding. Apparently this is one of those illusions created by the 'veil of perception'. I am serious when I say that I don't understand it. If consciousness insists that it is somehow distinct from the world, and consciousness as the basis of experience does this through experience, which is putatively the basis of science, where is the rationale, either philosophical or empirical, that justifies the assertion that consciousness and the universe are One. And precisely what is this One that is prior to both world and consciousness and therefore constitutes the monistic ground from which both apparently arise?
            The answer, of course, is not far to seek. Just as the analytical philosophers rejected monism when monism suggested the possibility of an 'immaterial' base to the universe, so the contemporary 'monists' reject a 'dualism' that suggests that the universe might have a non-materialistic base. What fascinates me, in both cases, is the psychology and not the arguments. What kind of psychology is involved in a rationale that rejects any basis to psychology? Or rather, any basis to psychology other than the mechanistic? Why would I argue that I am only a machine? And why would I argue that I am a machine that essentially lacks cogency? That owes its 'cogency' to something which is inherently other than cogency? There is no One in matter. In other words, if I espouse this kind of 'monism', I not only reject my self-awareness and experience as essentially illusory, I reject awareness itself, since it involves a functional cogency that cannot finally be derived from this 'monistic' definition of 'the material'.
            But, of course, the key here is the core focus and not its peripheral consequences. We could say that the problem is moral rather than metaphysical. And it's not too much of a stretch to point to the history of philosophy. The central question of philosophy today, as it has been for the last three centuries and more, is the question of solipsism. All of this is my awareness and my experience. Materialism is in fact the dualism, since, by positing materialism, I posit something other than the 'unified' field of my consciousness and experience - I break the inherent prior monism of experience. But solipsism, of course, also challenges any formalization or formal expression of validity. If all of this is my awareness and experience, how can I establish validity apart from my immediate sense of validity? And as we all know, a sense of conviction often proves erroneous. Without an external base, how do we assess validity?
            Science, as such, responds to the question, but does not answer it. I can take any piece of accepted science and analyze its history. And I seem to see a pattern of validation that ultimately stands outside the subjective - the frame of solipsism. But, of course, that too is only part of experience. And 'proven' science has also proven wrong. What we are actually pointing to, when we point to science, as a general rule, is our own experience of objective validity that has arisen through the study or practice of science. But what we are pointing to is an experience and not a fact. And, in order to arrive at that moment of validity, we had to buy into the skepticism which is not only the inherent corollary of scientific practice but is also the pragmatic expression of solipsistic understanding, regardless of our formal knowledge of philosophy and its history.
            I call it a moral issue, because, in a world without values, we will cling to the value we experience, even if the logical consequences wipe out all rational basis, not only for value, but for consciousness and experience as well. Historically, scientists have consistently tended to justify the categorical value of their conclusions in terms of the principle of sufficient reason - that every effect requires sufficient cause or causes to produce it - and the supposition that the only valid sufficient reason in science is material cause. Although the links are demonstrably false - since 'material cause' cannot under any circumstances provide sufficient cause for any tangible phenomena - the unique moment of validity justifies all solecisms. We are no longer in the realms of science, we are in the realms of self-validating fundamentalist moral 'truths'.

            The problem with 'monistic' materialism is that it refers to a principle and not to 'matter'. Newtonian physics defines matter in terms of 'mass'. And when we speak of 'materialism', we are referring back to this Newtonian definition. What gives 'mass' causative force is 'inertia'. But, in fact, mass and inertia are interchangeable. What defines inertia is mass. What defines mass is inertia. We are looking at a principle and not a 'thing'. And the principle, of itself, can never become a 'thing'. Part of the attraction of the inertial principle of cause, as thus defined, is that it categorically avoids reference to objects. And it is this same 'metaphysical' aspect of the principle that makes it so useful in corrupting legitimate philosophical metaphysics.
            'Mass', of course, implies an object. Something that has mass, has cogency. But mass and cogency are not only not the same, they are radically distinct. You cannot get to the object from mass alone, and, as soon as you reduce the object to mass, you lose the object. To speak of 'material causality', then, in terms of 'causal inertia' is a metaphysical solecism. Causality is a function of objects and not of principles. While mechanical causality is no doubt largely governed by inertial cause as defined in terms of mass, we are looking at a condition of cause and not of objects. Objective causality is necessarily a distinct function.
            Of course, as long as mass was an inalterable constant, much of this sense of causality holds - although strictly in terms of mechanistic transfer of force. But, of course, relativity shows that mass is not a constant, but a function, a variable among variables, and explicitly dependent on speed. The same mass might appear as quite different to different observers, depending on their motion relative to the object. But even before relativity, at the beginning of modern physics, we understood that mass involves gravity. So our mechanistic precision was already skewed, by however fractional a moment, by the gravitational forces between colliding objects. And then too we have become aware of how the electro-magnetic spectra not only affect, but also define matter. Perhaps we could still maintain sufficient cause, but what has happened to our 'monism'? We had a brief respite with the atom. Even the tripartite atom still suggested a relatively 'monistic' matter. But subatomic physics, relativity and quantum phenomena have pretty well broken down the wall of monism in which 'materialism' originally immured itself.

            So where or what, exactly, is this monism that our 'monists' in the face of consciousness are referring to?

            The monist, of course, thinks he is clinging to a discrete moment of cause. And, in the radical sense he is. It is precisely the 'moment', but not the cause, that he is clinging to. Inertia is not cause, but a causal force. It is not simply a context of objects, but a context of cause itself that must be presupposed before we can assume the action of 'inertia'. Inertia no more defines cause than it defines objects.

            Again, where is the monism?

            II.

            If causality obtains only between objects and not simply in terms of isolated or abstract principles, then we have two interrelated questions. We have the question of cause itself. If cause is not the lineal transfer of force, how can we define it? And we have the question of object, not as an isolated 'thing', but as a generic condition of experience. Is an 'object' simply a perceptual convenience? Or does it have some legitimate 'ontological' standing? That is, is 'object' strictly a function of experience or does it have some standing in 'reality'?
            The question of the nature of cause is too complex for a short piece such as this. Suffice it to say that Aristotle had the right idea. We cannot reduce cause to a single principle. Cause is global. But in order to establish that cause is global, we first of all need to deal with the question concerning the nature of 'object'.
            Oddly enough, it is probably not a question we can answer categorically either by science or philosophy alone. The answer is tangential to both and involves a certain degree of the hypothetical, at this point. Perhaps someone will eventually come up with a positive test.

            In the psychology of self-awareness, I deal with 'object' as a function of the reflex. That is, reflective awareness is grounded in the moment of self-awareness, a moment that in its origins is prior to our present self-awareness and 'conscious' perceptual field. In that moment, we create the basis of 'the One', that is, of unity itself. This moment involves the simultaneous imputation of unity to 'self' and to the external, usually in terms of 'an object', but sometimes in terms of the whole field. From this perspective, it would appear that the cogency of the object, in perception, at least, is a function of consciousness and not 'the world'.
            But one of the problems I have with this whole issue is that the 'monists' nevertheless consistently want to deal with 'consciousness' in all its forms as something essentially extraneous to the process of evolution, as if awareness and self-awareness were somehow simply a final footnote in the mechanistic process of evolution - and a very persistent and annoying footnote at that. In other words they are monists on the side of matter - a monism that would exclude consciousness if it could, rather than integrating it into the process of evolution.
            But the issue that I keep returning to in my own mind is the amoeba. This little unicellular creature not only moves, it reacts to its environment. That is, it seems to have self-protective responses. Now, of course, when anyone makes a statement like this, the chemists and biochemists are avid to show that we can 'explain' these responses in terms of strictly lineal chemical reactions. The only problem is, all of this linear explanation does not explain away the fact that a tiny piece of protoplasm that lacks a nervous system nevertheless behaves like an entity. And the truth is, all the chemistry of the past and future will not explain that fact.
            In other words, 'entity' is a necessary condition of existence, and not just in terms of perception. If consciousness resorts to 'entity' as a pivot of abstraction, it has something to do with the fact that 'consciousness' actually has evolved 'out of matter'. The problem here is the question of whether the amoeba is 'on the way' to consciousness. And it's not a frivolous question. If something as necessarily without the 'instruments' of 'consciousness', namely, a nervous system, nevertheless behaves like an entity, then the entity nature of existence may well be closer to matter than the 'footnote' concept for 'conscious beings' would imply. And, of course, this is the issue of evolution that none of the 'evolutionary scientists' wants to touch with a long stick.
            What if the evolutionary conditions are indigenous in 'matter'? This does not presuppose a goal, a purpose or a plan. It returns us to 'monism'. But it forces us to look at matter differently. Or does it? Consistently, up to the 20th century, we regarded matter in terms of entity. And we do it still. The very tag of 'monist' implies it. But when we go into the physics lab, and the elfin photons - the little creatures of light - behave as if they were aware of us as observers, we have to question exactly what this monistic thing, this entity nature is that we are looking at.