The Physical: Empirical, Not Metaphysical

2018

This paper aims at exposing a strategy to organize the debate around physicalism. Our starting point (following Stoljar 2010) is the pre-philosophical notion of physicalism, which is typically formulated in the form of slogans. Indeed, philosophers debating metaphysics have paradigmatically introduced the subject with aid of slogans such as "there is nothing over and above the physical", "once every physical aspect of the world is settled, every other aspect will follow", "physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical". These ideas are very intuitive but they are, of course, far from being a satisfactory metaphysical conception of Physicalism. For that end, we will begin with the definition of physicalism as the thesis that everything is physical, following Stoljar, we should be able to respond to one central question: how to interpret the physicalist claim that everything in physical.

Abstract: Many failed attempts to solve the problem of characterizing what is physical in physicalism were based on one or another aspect of our (cluster) concept of physical, such as the intuitive notion of physical object or the notion of physical as corresponding to the subject matter of physics. The paper presents an original attempt to solve the mentioned problem by considering our concept of physical in a more comprehensive way. It argues that the intuitive notion of physical object plays a role in determining an explanatory task of current physics. Since ideal physics is an idealization of current physics in respect to the success in the pursuit of its aims, we know an explanatory task of the ideal physics and, thus, part of its content. By appealing to ideal physics, whose content is known to us to a certain extent, the paper attempts to characterize what is physical in physicalism.

Synthese, 1995

Two ways are considered of formulating a version of retentive physicalism, the view that in some important sense everything is physical, even though there do exist properties, e.g. higher-level scientific ones, which cannot be type-identified with physical properties. Tile first way makes use of disjunction, but is rejected on the grounds that the results yield claims that are either false or insufficiently materialist. The second way, realisation physicalism, appeals to the correlative notions of a functional property and its realisation, and states, roughly, that any actual property whatsoever is either itself a physical property or else is, ultimately, realised by instances of physical properties. Realisation physicalism is distinctive since it makes no claims of identity whatsoever, and involves no appeal to the dubious concept of supervenience. After an attempt to formulate reatisation physicalism more precisely, I explore a way in which, in principle, we could obtain evidence of its truth. My aim in this paper is to discuss two suggestions concerning how best to formulate a doctrine of retentive physicalism. Let me now elucidate this statement of intention, by explaining what doctrines of retentive physicalism are. If scientific knowledge is an edifice, then it seems to be a multi-story one: when one notices how many different branches of science there are, one is tempted to arrange the many sciences into a hierarchy of levels of scientific description and explanation. 1 Starting at the lowest level, one could very crudely characterise the hierarchy as follows: fundamental physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology (to include neurobiology), psychology, economics, ecology. If one has this hierarchical picture of the many sciences, and if in particular one is inclined to locate fundamental physics at the bottom of this hierarchy, then one will want to trade the metaphors of levels and hierarchy for a non-metaphysical and clear answer to the following question: in what sense, precisely, can it be claimed that fundamental physics is the basic science, the science at the deepest level, the ground-floor science that sustains and supports all the other sciences? Rival doctrines of retentive physicalism, I suggest, can illuminatingly be viewed as rival attempts to answer exactly this question, i.e. to explain the precise sense in which physics is the basic science. Their answer is that physics is the basic science because the ontology of physics-the entities and properties it postulates-is in some metaphysical sense basic or fundamental or most deep. In short, the many sciences are related in the way they are because the portions of reality they deal with are related in a certain way. Doctrines of retentive physicalism, therefore, are largescale metaphysical views about the nature of the reality described by the many sciences and, in particular, about the privileged place occupied by

2009

The subject of this thesis is physicalism, understood not as some particular doctrine pertaining narrowly to the philosophy of mind, but rather as a quite general metaphysical claim to the effect that everything is, or is fundamentally, physical. Thus physicalism explicates the thought that in some sense physics is the basic science. The aim of the thesis is to defend a particular brand of physicalism, which I call eliminative type physicalism. It claims, roughly, that every property is a physical property, a property mentioned in the laws of physics, and hence that any putative property not identifiable with a physical property must be eliminated from our ontology. Eliminative type physicalism is apt to face three objections, and so my thesis, like Caesar's Gaul, falls into three parts. In the first, I argue against the idea that there are tenable positions, both physicalist and non-physicalist, alternative to eliminative type physicalism. I argue that each of these positions token physicalism (Fodor, middle Putnam), supervenience physicalism (Lewis, Horgan) and and a non-physicalist view I call pluralism (Goodman, late Putnam) is defective. In the second part, responding to the objection that there is just no reason to be a physicalist, I develop a positive argument for eliminative type physicalism, an argument resting upon a strong version of the explanatory test for reality according to which only explanatorily indispensable properties can justifiably be said to exist. In the third and final part, I argue, against the charge that eliminative type physicalism cannot accommodate what I call phenomenal properties (qualia, raw feels etc.), that there is no good reason to deny, and one good reason to affirm, that phenomenal properties just are physical properties.

Erkenntnis, 2005

Any position that promises genuine progress on the mind-body problem deserves attention. Recently, Daniel Stoljar has identified a physicalist version of Russell's notion of neutral monism; he elegantly argues that with this type of physicalism it is possible to disambiguate on the notion of physicalism in such a way that the problem is resolved. The further issue then arises of whether we have reason to believe that this type of physicalism is in fact true. Ultimately, one needs to argue for this position by inference to the best explanation, and I show that this new type of physicalism does not hold promise of more explanatory prowess than its relevant rivals, and that, whether it is better than its rivals or not, it is doubtful whether it would furnish us with genuine explanations of the phenomenal at all.

Topoi, 2016

2001

Many contemporary philosophers claim to be ‘physicalists’; many of these philosophers take themselves to be heirs to Greek atomism and seventeenth century materialism. Many other contemporary philosophers hold that ‘physicalism’ either admits of no intelligible formulation, or else is hopelessly vulgar and undeserving of serious philosophical attention. Before we can arbitrate this apparent dispute, we need to get clearer about what ‘physicalism’ might mean. In the circumstances, it would not be surprising to learn that those who claim to be ‘physicalists’ defend a far more modest doctrine than those ‘physicalist’ views which others allege to be hopelessly vulgar and undeserving of serious philosophical attention. The plan of the discussion is as follows. In the first section of the paper, I consider some initial difficulties which arise in the formulation of a statement of what it is that ‘physicalists’ believe. These difficulties concern the range of entities which are quantified over—objects or properties?—and ways of handling mathematics, logic, and the like. In the second section of the paper, questions about the status of ‘physicalism’ are considered: should it be taken to be necessary, and/or analytic, and/or a priori; and should it be taken to be telling physicists how to conduct their investigations? This section includes some discussion of microphysicalism, and some discussion of the doctrine of Humean supervenience. The third section of the paper is devoted to consideration of issues concerning reduction and elimination: what should ‘physicalists’ say about everything which lies outside of physics, or their favoured part of physics, or the physical sciences more broadly construed? Here, I argue that the most promising form of ‘physicalism’ provides for non–analytic reduction of the non–physical to the physical. In the fourth section of the paper, a range of supervenience theses is canvassed. One aim is to show that there are no decent prospects for ‘non–reductive physicalism’. Another aim is to exhibit a new supervenience claim which, I argue, succeeds in capturing what it is that ‘physicalists’ should want to say about the relation between the physical and the non–physical. The fifth section of the paper takes up some questions about the importance of physicalism as thus characterised. I shall suggest that physicalism is a relatively anodyne doctrine, without much importance for anything other than fundamental metaphysics. In the sixth section of the paper, I turn to a brief examination of reasons for supposing that non–analytic reductive physicalism is true. Finally, I conclude with some brief remarks about the spirit in which this investigation has been conducted.