Questions tagged [physicalism]
The physicalism tag has no usage guidance.
0
votes
0answers
59 views
Is “physicality precedes spiritual” a view or a state of nature?
Is "physicality precedes spiritual" a view or a state of nature?
Are there views that would question this kind of "physicalism"?
Perhaps one can find some dichotomy in expressing the idea through ...
5
votes
1answer
119 views
Does strong AI disprove physicalism?
This question is motivated by a comment to an answer I provided to another question about John Searle and the Chinese Room Argument: What relevance, if any, does collective memory in ants have to John ...
2
votes
1answer
89 views
What's the problem with taking physicalism as “all there is is physical, so no problem between abstract/conceptual and physical can exist”?
What's the problem with taking physicalism as "all there is is physical, so no problem between abstract/conceptual and physical can exist"?
Why is "all there is is physical" not enough? Why does one ...
3
votes
3answers
280 views
The philosophical relationship of morality, rationalism, atheism and physicalism
I am an atheist and I hold a physicalist view of the world, that the world is made but of one kind of stuff (call it "physical", if you want) and the universe is composed only of one kind of ...
5
votes
3answers
133 views
What is the definition of physical? Is that definition clear enough to make the a distinction between physical and non-physical?
Awkwardly synthesizing jobermark's old question Is there a boundary on 'physical'? with my (badly put) question Can physics talk about non-physical entities/concepts, and if not which academic ...
3
votes
3answers
103 views
Does physicalism imply everything can be defined?
Does physicalism imply everything can be defined at least to a certain extent?
2
votes
1answer
77 views
Do materialists today consider physical forces as created from matter?
The distinction from materialism and physicalism is usually that materialists believe everything is matter, and physicalists believe that everything is physical, which lets them include modern science ...
2
votes
0answers
91 views
Does the Knowledge argument refute physicalism?
Is there any research that disproves Jackson's three premises?
Is there any research which argues that Mary does not learn all the physical facts whilst in the room, because experience itself ...
1
vote
0answers
26 views
Is my personal identity physical? [duplicate]
In the context of physicalism, Is it consistent to think that I am what I experience and also the physical processes which give rise to my experiences?
3
votes
3answers
262 views
Physicalistic alternatives to utilitarianism?
In one episode, Doctor Who finds out he's trapped on a horror-like island and he finds out his time machine he could escape with is frozen in the hardest rock on earth. He also finds out that every ...
4
votes
2answers
508 views
If consciousness was an illusion, would it be less real?
Even though qualia are generally considered to be unexplainable, there are philosophers like Daniel Dennett attempting to get to the core of consciousness with scientific methods. In his view, ...
1
vote
2answers
203 views
Is the “speed of time” perception a quale we can share?
The perception of time seems to be a quale as every other else. Though, the unique thing about it could be that it's actually measurable.
People regulate their drowsiness by objective factors like ...
0
votes
1answer
85 views
Does physicalism think a priori knowledge exists?
Does physicalism think a priori knowledge exists? If so, how is this knowledge explained? Is the idea like morality being coded in DNA?
0
votes
0answers
78 views
Physicalism: If consciousness isn't an illusion, what's its nature? What are the best clues?
I'm asking very generally so I'm expecting very general answers. I've read the answers from the question: How can consciousness be an illusion? and I pretty much got understanding of how our brain ...
5
votes
4answers
238 views
Am I just a force of nature? (physicalist determinism)
I was pondering for a while on determinism and had a hard time explaining how we living things are seemingly able to change our surroundings by force of will. Inanimate object can change their ...
1
vote
2answers
130 views
How does Physicalism treat “non-physical” things such as ethics?
To me Physicalism seems to miss some aspects of animals, such as that their behavior may not be entirely physically explained.
How does Physicalism treat "non-physical" things such as ethics?
4
votes
1answer
353 views
How does the physicalism discuss the line between life and death?
In this day and age with modern medicine, the line between life and death are blurred, as the brain dead may act as if it's alive, and the alive, due to being comatose may be reposed as if dead. What ...
7
votes
4answers
207 views
Physicalism versus dualism: is it reasonable to assign a burden of proof to one party?
I've been watching some video lectures online, and in some of the videos, the professor argues essentially as follows:
Both the dualist and the physicalist believe in the body. This is
status quo....
0
votes
2answers
326 views
My thought experiment on consciousness
Scenario 1:
Somebody removed your brain, destroyed it, and then replaced it with another which was identical (and replaced all the connections as they were). Essentially every atom/molecule would be ...
3
votes
3answers
1k views
What is the difference between hard determinism and compatibilism, under the assumption of physicalism?
(For the purposes of this question, I am assuming that some form of physicalism holds.)
When I read about hard determinism and compatibilism, it struck me that they seem to be placing different ...
1
vote
1answer
114 views
Does physicalism imply no truth?
It seems to me that the act of searching for truth, finding truth, and expressing truth is all just transformations of matter (and energy). For example, suppose I am proving some mathematical theorem....
4
votes
1answer
150 views
does exclusion + supervenience + pairing necessitate reductionism?
If one accepts the exclusion argument (no physical event has a non-physical cause), the supervenience argument (no mental event causes any other mental event), and the pairing problem (no physical ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views
What's the problem with physicalism in philosophy of mind?
It seems that physicalism and functionalism in philosophy of mind has fallen out of popularity and into much criticism. I haven't delved too deeply into the literature, but I find it somewhat strange ...
3
votes
2answers
261 views
What would non-reductive physicalists say about the mind and teleportation? [closed]
Non-reductive physicalists have a view in dualism that creates an idea of mental properties that can be mapped to neurobiological properties, but said mental properties are not ontologically reduced ...
14
votes
7answers
759 views
Is there a causal influence of the mental on the physical?
Regardless of whether the mental is ultimately physical or not... doesn't the impact of human knowledge (science, mathematics, etc) on the world (ie: technology, agriculture, basically everything), ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
What is the difference between type identity physicalism and eliminativism?
Type identity physicalism says mental states are identical with brain states. Eliminativism on the other hand states that mental states don't exist at all.
Isn't this just a word game? Does it ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
What is the difference between Naturalism and Physicalism?
I am trying to figure the difference between Naturalism and Physicalism. As far as I could tell, they were the same thing, except that physicalism (physicalist vs dualist) was the term used when ...
6
votes
1answer
456 views
Does materialism presuppose that a self is a bundle of mental states and perceptions?
The physicalist/materialist (going forward I'll use the two interchangeably) position on the mind body problem is the following:
Nothing exits besides the physical and therefore the mind is just a ...
5
votes
2answers
4k views
What is the difference between functionalism and property dualism?
Functionalism and property dualism are both physicalist theories of the mind in that they don't admit any substances other than physical substance.
Property dualism holds that mental states are non-...
2
votes
0answers
107 views
Are you familiar with a similar argument against the (nomological) supervenience of the mental on the physical?
The SEP article on supervenience claims "Just about everyone, even a Cartesian dualist, believes some version of this supervenience claim [that the mental nomologically supervenes on the physical]." ...
4
votes
1answer
120 views
Please recommend a good book on Physicalism
Can you recommend a good contemporary book that is considered a definitive or classical exposition of Physicalism?
I have started reading Daniel Stoljar's Physicalism, but while it seems good, it is ...
-1
votes
1answer
102 views
Does mental incapacity imply physical incapacity? [closed]
If someone is mentally incapable of doing something, does that also mean they are physically incapable of doing it? My argument is that since the brain is a physical and material object, assuming that ...
7
votes
4answers
1k views
Why is Multiple Realizability considered to have refuted the type-identity theory of the mind?
Def 1: Type-identity theory: brain states and mental states are the same thing. The mental state "I love Metallica" is nothing more than the neural configuration of a Metallica fan.
Def 2: Multiple ...
3
votes
2answers
185 views
Is there a term for materialistic non-determinism?
I was trying to explain to someone that an underlying assumption of science is ... and then couldn't come up with a term to describe it.
What I'm hoping to give a name to, is the idea that the world ...
3
votes
2answers
868 views
If materialism is true, then what accounts for pleasure and pain?
[I went and wrote a long answer to a question that was in the interim deleted, so rather than waste that, I thought I'd do my best to reproduce it here. Credit to Micheal Lee for the original, some ...
6
votes
4answers
271 views
Is there a boundary on 'physical'?
I have asserted many times here that physicalism as degraded into an undecidable question, and I would like to see how strong my understanding is.
It seems to me that whenever we approach the ...
6
votes
2answers
362 views
Are there thought experiments about physicalism?
Other than Mary's Room and maybe Searle's Chinese Room are there any other interesting thought experiments against the ideas of physicalism, and the idea our minds are identical to our brains?
2
votes
2answers
825 views
How do res cogitans and res extensa interact?
In all religions that ever existed, there is a soul and a God - two intangible things. From physics we know that there is no difference between a particle without the electrical charge, mass and ...
3
votes
3answers
195 views
Not Turing reducible = non-physical?
According to the following question, it is likely the physical universe can be simulated on a Turing machine.
Is the universe isomorphic to a universal turing machine?
If so, does this imply ...
5
votes
3answers
361 views
Existence of abstract objects for a physicalist
Let's say I'm a physicalist. Usually then, I will think of abstract objects as mental constructs, which are dictated by mental states, which, as a physicalist will say, are manifestations of physical ...
2
votes
1answer
384 views
Nomologically possible worlds and physicalism
As I understand, nomologically possible world is a world which is governed by the laws of physics of the actual world, but doesn't that kind of entail that in all nomologically possible worlds (...
3
votes
1answer
98 views
What speaks for — and against — elimiative physicalism?
In the body-mind-problem, I myself stand on the side of eliminative physicalism.
I find this position to be the easiest to argue for: We saw persons changing their minds when their brains changed, ...
0
votes
2answers
526 views
How is physicalism true? [closed]
Assumptions:
Human auras exist.
There is a subset of the population who are capable of discerning their properties, by whatever means.
Machines can not sense human auras.
Following these ...
3
votes
5answers
444 views
Would rebuilding a human body rebuild the person it was?
I have zero background in philosophy, so forgive me for...asking this in an informal manner.
We have a hypothetical scenario. Suppose that our consciousness at
some time were reducible to ...
4
votes
2answers
371 views
How do correspondence theories handle statements like these?
I have a number of true statements. Each of these statements is a case where I have difficulty seeing how (assuming physicalism) the statement could correspond to a state of affairs. My question is: ...
2
votes
3answers
334 views
Is materialism actually material?
physicalism allows for forces such as gravity which on the face of it are not material as say the cup of tea I have to hand. So materialism literally taken seems to be wrong.
But looking at this more ...
4
votes
3answers
369 views
Does physicalism *prove* that the universe is self-subsistent?
I've often heard/read people (Hawking, Dawkins etc) making out that Physics or Physicalism proves that there is no God, or no need for one.
Yet it seems to me that it's an assumption that is ...
9
votes
1answer
1k views
Why does Chalmers' argument about “the hard problem” not entail idealism?
Chalmers famously argues in Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness:
At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we ...
20
votes
3answers
14k views
What is the difference between naturalism and materialism?
What is the difference between naturalism and materialism, if any?
I see definitions of naturalism that say, in effect, it is the belief that there is no supernatural. But what is the supernatural ...
13
votes
4answers
978 views
If zombies are possible would that imply that physicalism is false?
The SEP article on Zombies writes:
Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures used to illuminate
problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world.
Unlike those in films or ...
