 But this is not how the neutral monist (who follows Russell’s lead) starts out. Our percepts are our initial data, and they are qualitative through and through. The existence of quality is not something that we have to deduce from other known facts. On the contrary, it is the initial datum. Such other events as we may believe in, whose intrinsic qualities we do not know, are all inferred from this bedrock of qualitatively loaded percepts. It is therefore a mistake to try to explain the existence of qualitative characteristics (or qualia) as emerging from complex brain states. These characteristics are there, in the form of our percepts, at the very foundation of Russell’s neutral monism.