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Erik C. Banks. The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell: Neutral Monism Reconceived. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. viii + 217. Cloth, $95.00.
It is high time to reopen the discussion of one of the most interesting and complex theories in empiricist philosophy, neutral monism, which, with a few exceptions, has been mostly ignored, particularly in scholarship on Bertrand Russell. The book under review is a pleasure to read-competently written, clear, and thorough. The author also manages to keep up the interplay among the philosophies of Ernst Mach, William James, and Russell throughout, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. Banks lives up to the promises in his preface, namely, to provide a historico-philosophical overview of the empiricist tradition, with emphasis on its state in the early twentieth century, as well as to give a glimpse of naturalist philosophical accounts of causality and space, particularly in chapters 5 and 6.
The introduction is an excellent overview of the many faces of the neutral monist program and its roots to be traced as far back as...