Russellian Monist Properties and Causality. The second objection attacks the idea that Russellian monism succeeds in integrating consciousness into the physical world. For example, Xxxxxx Xxxxxx (2015) claims that, on Russellian monism, a single type of physical disposition might have been grounded by a categorical nature or quiddity different from the one that actually grounds it, which means that this grounding relation is metaphysically contingent. Moreover, as Xxxxxx (2015: 32) argues, a Russellian monist property has a phenomenal categorical ground and some causal dispositions, which means that there are two distinct aspects of such properties: one that grounds phenomenal resemblance relations, and one that grounds resemblances between causal profiles. If all physical events have sufficient causes due to the aspects that ground causal profile resemblances, then the phenomenal aspect of Russellian monist properties makes “no unique causal contribution to the physical world” (Xxxxxx 2015: 32). To clarify, the aspect grounding phenomenal resemblance relations is just the consciousness-involving categorical nature that Russellian monists postulate, while the aspect grounding causal profile resemblances just is a dispositional property (or a set of dispositional properties). Simply put, the argument is that the categorical nature is causally inefficacious, with all causality resting on the dispositional aspect. Furthermore, even if the categorical natures somehow contribute to physical causation, consciousness does not necessarily inherit any physical efficacy from them, which is in contrast to the claim of Russellian monists (Xxxxxxxx 2018). As Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx (2018: 102) argues, Russellian monism violates the causal intuition that sensations of certain kinds have effects on our behaviour in virtue of being sensations of relevant kinds. Russellian monists claim that physical structural relations are grounded in categorical natures, but these natures are not like the sensations that cause our behaviour, so it is unclear whether our sensations gain a causal role from the physical ultimates or ‘inscrutables’ (Xxxxxxxx 2018: 107). That is, Xxxxxxxx (2018: 106) states that there is already a complete causal explanation of behaviour available, in terms of physical elements, their structural relations, and laws of nature, so the addition of consciousness-related categorical properties to our ontology by the Russellian monist seems to be redundant and it does not have an explanatory contribution. Among ot...
