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Physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that everything is, in some important sense, physical. But in what sense is everything physical? Must everything reduce to physics? Must all terms be translatable into physical terms? What does it take for something to count as ''physical''? This category contains works that relate to the question ''What is physicalism?’’. These works utilize a wide variety of tools and approaches in their attempts to spell out what physicalism is.

Key works "Hempel's dilemma'' (Hempel 1969, Crane & Mellor 1990) claims that no non-trivial formulation of physicalism can be given. In this vein, Stoljar 2010 argues that there is no thesis that is both potentially true and deserving of the name 'physicalism'.  Discussions of Hempel's dilemma can also be found in Dowell 2006, Melnyk 1997, and Wilson 2006. All the above works, in addition to Stoljar 2001a, 2001b, Chalmers 2003 (section 7), and Wilson 2006 discuss what it takes for something to count as ''physical''. Classic statements of an early form of materialism, the mind-brain identity theory, can be found in Place 1956, Feigl 1958 and Smart 1959. Chalmers 1996, Jackson 1994, Kim 1993, and Lewis 1983 use the tools of metaphysical modality and supervenience to formulate physicalism. Wilson 2005 provides reasons to be skeptical of such accounts. Rabin forthcoming argues that these modal definitions implicitly rely on the notion of fundamentality, and proposes formulating physicalism using fundamentality instead. Melnyk 2003, 2006 formulates physicalism using the notion of realization, while Leuenberger 2008 uses ceteris absentibus sufficiency. Chalmers 2003 provides a useful taxonomy of physicalist positions, organized with respect to how they respond to the hard problem of consciousness. Kim 1998 covers a variety of topics relevant to both formulating and evaluating physicalism, including supervenience, reductive vs non-reductive physicalism, and the causal closure of the physical.
Introductions Stoljar 2015, Stoljar 2010, and Dowell 2006 are good starting places for the difficulties surrounding formulating physicalism. Smart 2007 offers an overview of the development of the mind-brain identity theory. Crane & Mellor 1990 contains a pressing formulation of Hempel's dilemma. Stoljar 2010 covers a wide variety of attempts to characterize ''the physical''.
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  1. Levels: descriptive, explanatory, and ontological.Christian List - 2017
    Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. This paper presents a framework for studying levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and discuss several applications, some of which refer to descriptive or explanatory levels while others refer to ontological levels. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework by bringing it to bear on some familiar philosophical questions. Is there a hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the (...)
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  2. Physicalism and cosmic hermeneutics: Comments on Horgan.Thomas W. Polger - manuscript
    It is commonly held that there are two obstacles to precisely formulating the doctrine of physicalism: Hempel’s Problem, and Hume’s Problem.2 Hempel’s Problem is that if physicalism is to be formulated in terms of physics—or in terms of any science, for the problem is fully general if it is a problem at all—whether to use the current or future science. If physicalism is formulated in terms of current physics, then it is most likely false because current physics is at least (...)
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  3. How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness: Identity or Grounding? (2020).Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of special, (...)
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  4. Fundamentality physicalism.Gabriel Oak Rabin - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (1):77-116.
    ABSTRACT This essay has three goals. The first is to introduce the notion of fundamentality and to argue that physicalism can usefully be conceived of as a thesis about fundamentality. The second is to argue for the advantages of fundamentality physicalism over modal formulations and that fundamentality physicalism is what many who endorse modal formulations of physicalism had in mind all along. Third, I describe what I take to be the main obstacle for a fundamentality-oriented formulation of physicalism: ‘the problem (...)
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  5. Why Jaegwon Kim's Physicalism is Not Near Enough: An Implicit Argument for a New Vedic Interactionism.David Scharf - forthcoming - Journal of Consciousness Studies.
  6. The Absentminded Professor.Justin Tiehen - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In this paper, I argue that absences pose a challenge to our understanding of physicalism that has not been properly appreciated. I do this by setting out a thought experiment involving a being in whom absence properties occupy the causal roles that functionalists take to define mental properties, in which case these absence properties realize the being’s mental properties. Such a being should be compatible with the truth of physicalism, I argue, even though its mental properties are neither themselves physical (...)
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  7. Physicalism, Foundationalism, and Infinite Descent.Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-6.
    This paper contributes to answering the question how physicalism can be defined for a world without fundamental physical phenomena. In a recent paper in this journal, Torin Alter, Sam Coleman, and Robert J. Howell propose a necessary condition on physicalism. They argue that physicalism is true only if there is no infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena. I argue that this alleged necessary condition faces counterexamples. An infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena is compatible with physicalism. Afterwards I (...)
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  8. Causalità del mentale: dall'argomento di Kim ai qualia in una prospettiva fisicalista.Leonardo Capitaneo - 2023 - Dissertation, Università Degli Studi di Torino
    Lo scopo dell’elaborato è presentare il problema della causalità del mentale e cercare di dare una soluzione fisicalista al problema che possa includere anche i qualia, da sempre considerati come l’ultima difesa a favore dell’irriducibilità della mente al fisico. Il primo capitolo ha il compito di trovare la teoria metafisica del mentale migliore che riesca sia a rendere conto della causalità del mentale e sia a resistere all’argomento di Kim. Dopo aver esposto in dettaglio l’argomento di Kim sono affrontati i (...)
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  9. Qualia share their correlates’ locations.Neil Sinhababu - 2023 - Synthese 202 (2):1-14.
    This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.
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  10. Studies in No-Self Physicalism.Feng Ye - 2023 - Springer Nature Singapore.
    This book demonstrates how a radical version of physicalism (‘No-Self Physicalism’) can offer an internally coherent and comprehensive philosophical worldview. It first argues that a coherent physicalist should explicitly treat a cognitive subject merely as a physical thing and should not vaguely assume an amorphous or even soul-like subject or self. This approach forces the physicalist to re-examine traditional core philosophical notions such as truth, analyticity, modality, apriority because our traditional understandings of them appear to be predicated on a cognitive (...)
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  11. Naturalism or Ontological Significance? Physicalism and Fundamental Mentality: a historical approach.Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht - 2022 - Journal of Philosophical Investigations 16 (38):154-185.
    Most physicalists believe that physicalism is a thesis that denies the existence of fundamental mentality either as a substance or as a property. Therefore, since most physicalists also endorse a posteriori physicalism, according to them, if the future physical theory posits fundamental mentality as a fundamental physical concept, then physicalism will be falsified. In contrast, there are those who believe that the core idea of physicalism is an ontological deference to science (especially physics); the idea that is usually called scientism (...)
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  12. Physicalism, Closure, and the Structure of Causal Arguments for Physicalism: A Naturalistic Formulation of the Physical.Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (4):1081-1096.
    Physicalism is the idea that everything either is physical or is nothing over and above the physical. For this formulation of physicalism to have determinate content, it should be identified what the “physical” refers to; i.e. the body problem. Some other closely related theses, especially the ones employed in the causal arguments for different versions of physicalism, and more especially the causal closure thesis, are also subject to the body problem. In this paper, I do two things. First, I explore (...)
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  13. Flat Physicalism.Meir Hemmo & Orly Shenker - 2022 - Theoria 88 (4):743-764.
    This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against identity theories. This identity theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations of physics, and in particular clar- ifies the notion of ‘physical kinds’ in light of a conceptual analysis of the paradigmatic case of reducing thermody- namics to statistical mechanics. We show how Flat Physi- calism is compatible with the appearance of multiple realisation (...)
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  14. On Characterizing Metaphysical Naturalism.Lok-Chi Chan - 2021 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 1:232-260.
    The disciplinary characterisation (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticised for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this paper, I propose and defend a novel version of DC that can be called a historical (...)
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  15. Russellian Physicalism and its Dilemma.Lok-Chi Chan - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178:2043-2062.
    Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927/1992) – is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (2001a, 2001b), Strawson (2008), Montero (2010, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (2012), and Chalmers (2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the (...)
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  16. A Dilemma about the Mental.Guy Dove & Andreas Elpidorou - 2021 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 1.
    Physicalism demands an explication of what it means for something to be physical. But the most popular way of providing one—viz., characterizing the physical in terms of the postulates of a scientifically derived physical theory—is met with serious trouble. Proponents of physicalism can either appeal to current physical theory or to some future physical theory (preferably an ideal and complete one). Neither option is promising: currentism almost assuredly renders physicalism false and futurism appears to render it indeterminate or trivial. The (...)
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  17. The Materialism of Roy Wood Sellars.Balázs Gimes - 2021 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 11 (1):166-182.
    Physicalism is often characterized as an empirical hypothesis. But according to an alternative conceptualization, it is instead a stance or an attitude. I analyze Roy Wood Sellars’s materialist philosophy in order to show that it is a counterexample to a specific physicalist empirical hypothesis: the minimal completeness of the physical. However, it is arguably not reducible to a stance: it is a meaningful metaphysical thesis with substantive cognitive content.
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  18. Naturalism, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy: Owen Flanagan and Beyond. [REVIEW]L. K. Gustin Law - 2021 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2021.
  19. The Fundamentality of Physics: Completeness or Maximality.Alyssa Ney - 2021 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 12.
    There is a standard way of interpreting physicalism. This is as a completeness thesis of some kind. Completeness physicalists believe there is or in principle could be some future physics that provides a complete explanatory or ontological basis for our universe. And this provides a sense in which physics is special among the sciences, the sense in which it is fundamental. This paper contrasts this standard completeness physicalism with what is a more plausible maximality physicalism. Maximality physicalists believe physics is (...)
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  20. Physicalisme et monisme russellien.Victor Tremblay-Baillargeon - 2021 - Ithaque 28:119-137.
    Dans cet article, je propose de défendre le monisme russellien, une théorie posant l’existence de quiddités phénoménologiques au fondement de la réalité. Je propose en particulier de montrer que le monisme russellien échappe aux objections qui en font une version inadéquate du physicalisme. Pour ce faire, j’identifie les trois raisons qui motivent le physicalisme, c’est-à-dire la parcimonie, le naturalisme et l’argument de la clôture causale, et j’argumente qu’il faut considérer que le monisme russellien satisfait ces trois motivations. Ainsi, si j’ai (...)
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  21. Metaphysical Emergence.Jessica M. Wilson - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to (...)
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  22. Fizikalizm, Bilgi Argümanı ve Felsefi Düşünce Deneyleri.Alper Bilgehan Yardımcı & Atilla Volkan Çam - 2021 - Nosyon: Uluslararası Toplum Ve Kültür Çalışmaları Dergisi 1 (8):1-11.
    Thought experiments, one of the most effective ways of acquiring knowledge, are an intellectual tool frequently used by scientists or thinkers in their fields of study. Thought experiments used to respond to scientific issues are considered scientific thought experiments, while thought experiments used for philosophical problems are called philosophical thought experiments. In this context, firstly, the differences between scientific and philosophical thought experiments are determined in the article. In particular, philosophical thought experiments are often needed in discussions within the field (...)
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  23. Material through and through.Andrew M. Bailey - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (8):2431-2450.
    Materialists about human persons think that we are material through and through—wholly material beings. Those who endorse materialism more widely think that everything is material through and through. But what is it to be wholly material? In this article, I answer that question. I identify and defend a definition or analysis of ‘wholly material’.
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  24. Fundamental mentality in a physical world.Christopher Devlin Brown - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2841-2860.
    Regardless of whatever else physicalism requires, nearly all philosophers agree that physicalism cannot be true in a world which contains fundamental mentality. I challenge this widely held attitude, and describe a world which is plausibly all-physical, yet which may contain fundamental mentality. This is a world in which priority monism is true—which is the view that the whole of the cosmos is fundamental, with dependence relations directed from the whole to the parts—and which contains only a single mental system, like (...)
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  25. Physicalism.Amanda Bryant - 2020 - In Michael J. Raven (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge. pp. 484-500.
    This chapter considers potential applications of grounding to the formulation of physicalism. I begin with an overview of competing conceptions of the physical and of physicalism. I then consider whether grounding physicalism overcomes well-known and seemingly fatal problems with supervenience physicalism. I conclude that while grounding physicalism improves upon supervenience physicalism in certain respects, it arguably falls victim to some of the same difficulties.
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  26. Denialism: What Do the so-called Consciousness Deniers Deny?Orly Shenker - 2020 - Iyyun 68:307-337.
    Some philosophers consider that some of their colleagues deny that consciousness exists. We shall call the latter ‘deniers’, adopting a term that was initially meant pejoratively. What do the deniers deny? In order to answer this question, we shall examine arguments, both of some deniers and of their critics, and present denialism as a systematic highly non-trivial position that has had some interesting achievements. We will show that the denialist project concerns the epistemology of the mind and specifically of consciousness: (...)
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  27. Review of Physicalism Deconstructed: Levels of Reality and the Mind-Body Problem, by Kevin Morris. [REVIEW]Jessica M. Wilson - 2020 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1.
    Morris’s book is a valuable contribution. For the reasons below, I don’t think his case against NRP succeeds, and his version of EP faces a serious difficulty. Even so, this is an admirably clear, subtle, and well-informed brief, and philosophers interested in the structure of natural reality have much to gain from Morris’s insightful discussion and argumentation.
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  28. Physicalism without supervenience.Lei Zhong - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (5):1529-1544.
    It is widely accepted that supervenience is a minimal commitment of physicalism. In this article, however, I aim to argue that physicalism should be exempted from the supervenience requirement. My arguments rely on a parallel between ontological dependence and causal dependence. Since causal dependence does not require causal determination, ontological dependence should not require ontological determination either. Moreover, my approach has a significant theoretical advantage: if physicalism is not committed to supervenience, then the metaphysical possibility of zombies—which is still wide (...)
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  29. Taking Emergentism Seriously.Lei Zhong - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (1):31-46.
    The Exclusion Argument has afflicted non-reductionists for decades. In this article, I attempt to show that emergentism—the view that mental entities can downwardly cause physical entities in a non-overdetermining way—is the most plausible approach to solving the exclusion problem. The emergentist approach is largely absent in contemporary philosophy of mind, because emergentism rejects the Causal Closure of Physics, a doctrine embraced by almost all physicalists. This article, however, challenges the consensus on causal closure and defends a physicalist version of emergentism. (...)
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  30. The Physical as the Nomalous.J. Goldwater - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (5-6):65-88.
    I argue physicalism should be characterized as the thesis that all behavior is law-governed. This characterization captures crucial desiderata for a formulation of physicalism, including its broad import and worldview defining features. It also has more local virtues, such as avoiding Hempel’s dilemma. A particularly important implication, I argue, is that this thesis makes the question of the mind’s physicality turn on what the mind can do- rather than what experience is like.
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  31. Emergence and Non-reductive Physicalism.Cynthia Macdonald & Graham Frank Macdonald - 2019 - In Sophie Gibb, Robin Findlay Hendry & Tom Lancaster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Emergence. New York, NY, USA; Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 195-205.
  32. Fisicalismo e o problema mente-cérebro: uma questão de definição.Julio César Martins Mazzoni - 2019 - Sofia 8 (1):146-170.
    O Fisicalismo tem sido a posição filosófica monista mais aceita no mainstream do debate contemporâneo sobre a natureza do mental. Mas o que significa dizer que tudo o que existe é “físico”? O presente trabalho busca responder à pergunta: Como as teses fisicalistas contemporâneas têm definido o termo ‘físico’ em suas proposições? Para respondê-la foi realizada uma investigação teórico-filosófica baseada em revisão bibliográfica e análise lógica e conceitual. Quatro categorias gerais de definição do termo ‘físico’ foram identificadas numa revisão da (...)
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  33. Causal Exclusion and Physical Causal Completeness.Dwayne Moore - 2019 - Dialectica 73 (4):479-505.
    Nonreductive physicalists endorse the principle of mental causation, according to which some events have mental causes: Sid climbs the hill because he wants to. Nonreductive physicalists also endorse the principle of physical causal completeness, according to which physical events have sufficient physical causes: Sid climbs the hill because a complex neural process in his brain triggered his climbing. Critics typically level the causal exclusion problem against this nonreductive physicalist model, according to which the physical cause is a sufficient cause of (...)
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  34. Underestimating the Physical.G. Strawson - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (9-10):228-240.
    Many hold that (1) consciousness poses a uniquely hard problem. Why is this so? Chalmers considers 12 main answers in 'The Meta-Problem of Consciousness'. This paper focuses on number 11, and is principally addressed to those who endorse (1) because they think that (2) consciousness can't possibly be physical. It argues that to hold (2) is to make the mistake of underestimating the physical, and that almost all who make this mistake do so because they think they know more about (...)
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  35. Correction to: Grounding-Based Formulations of Physicalism.Jessica M. Wilson - 2019 - Topoi 38 (1):261-261.
    This correction reflects that I forgot to cite Stephan Leuenberger's unpublished work in the paragraph beginning "More promising, perhaps, is the orthodox view ..." in Section 5. The overall argument of Section 5 is a development of an argument I gave in footnote 27 of 'No Work for a Theory of Grounding' (Inquiry, 2014). At issue in the relevant sections of 'No Work...' and 'Grounding-based Formulations...' is whether a proponent of Grounding has resources to accommodate strongly emergent phenomena, where strong (...)
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  36. Physical Properties.Alexander D. Carruth - 2018 - In Mihretu P. Guta (ed.), Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties. New York: Routledge. pp. 24-38.
    Physicalism can be roughly characterised as the view that everything is physical, or that everything that is fundamental is physical, or that any non-physical entity—property, substance, fact, event, kind and what have you—is both dependent upon and fully determined by physical entities. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing physicalism is to explain how conscious experience can be accounted for within the physicalist framework. Given these rough characterisations of physicalism, before setting out to address the problem posed by consciousness, there is some (...)
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  37. Redefining Physicalism.Guy Dove - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):513-522.
    Philosophers have traditionally treated physicalism as an empirically informed metaphysical thesis. This approach faces a well-known problem often referred to as Hempel’s dilemma: formulations of physicalism tend to be either false or indeterminate. The generally preferred strategy to address this problem involves an appeal to a hypothetical complete and ideal physical theory. After demonstrating that this strategy is not viable, I argue that we should redefine physicalism as an interdisciplinary research program seeking to explain the mental in terms of the (...)
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  38. Introduction: The Character of Physicalism.Andreas Elpidorou - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):435-455.
    The aim of this editorial introduction is twofold. First, Sects. 1–8 offer a critical introduction to the metaphysical character of physicalism. In those sections, I present and evaluate different ways in which proponents of physicalism have made explicit the metaphysical dependence that is said to hold between the non-physical and the physical. Some of these accounts are found to be problematic; others are shown to be somewhat more promising. In the end, some important lessons are drawn and different options for (...)
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  39. Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.Andreas Elpidorou & Guy Dove - 2018 - New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
    Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of a Research Program explores the nature of consciousness and its place in the world, offering a revisionist account of what it means to say that consciousness is nothing over and above the physical. By synthesizing work in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science from the last twenty years and forging a dialogue with contemporary research in the empirical sciences of the mind, Andreas Elpidorou and Guy Dove advance and defend a novel (...)
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  40. In Defense of a Realization Formulation of Physicalism.Andrew Melnyk - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):483-493.
    In earlier work, I proposed and defended a formulation of physicalism that was distinctive in appealing to a carefully-defined relation of physical realization. Various philosophers (Robert Francescotti, Daniel Stoljar, Carl Gillett, and Susan Schneider) have since presented challenges to this formulation. In the present paper, I aim to show that these challenges can be overcome.
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  41. Physicalism Deconstructed: Levels of Reality and the Mind–Body Problem.Kevin Morris - 2018 - New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
    How should thought and consciousness be understood within a view of the world as being through-and-through physical? Many philosophers have proposed non-reductive, levels-based positions, according to which the physical domain is fundamental, while thought and consciousness are higher-level processes, dependent on and determined by physical processes. In this book, Kevin Morris's careful philosophical and historical critique shows that it is very difficult to make good metaphysical sense of this idea - notions like supervenience, physical realization, and grounding all fail to (...)
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  42. Physicalism, Truthmaking, and Levels of Reality: Prospects and Problems.Kevin Morris - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):473-482.
    This paper considers the extent to which the notion of truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining physicalism. While a truthmaking-based approach to physicalism is prima facie attractive, there is some reason to doubt that truthmaking can do much work when it comes to understanding physicalism, and perhaps austere metaphysical frameworks in general. First, despite promising to dispense with higher-level properties and states, truthmaking appears to make little progress on issues concerning higher-level items and how they are related to (...)
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  43. What's Wrong With Brute Supervenience? A Defense of Horgan on Physicalism and Superdupervenience.Kevin Morris - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (2):256-280.
    This paper offers a qualified defense of Terry Horgan’s view of brute, inexplicable supervenience theses as physically unacceptable—as having no place in physicalist metaphysics—and his corresponding emphasis on the importance of “superdupervenience”, metaphysical supervenience that can be explained in a “materialistically acceptable” way. I argue, in response to Tom Polger, that it may be possible to ground the physical unacceptability of brute supervenience in its relation physically unacceptable properties supervening on physical properties; moreover, I argue that Horgan’s emphasis on the (...)
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  44. Physicalism, not scientism.Alyssa Ney - 2018 - In Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels & Rene van Woudenberg (eds.), Scientism: Prospects and Problems. Oxford University Press.
  45. Recent Work on Physicalism.Justin Tiehen - 2018 - Analysis 78 (3):537-551.
    A review of recent work on physicalism, focusing on what it means to say nothing exists over and above the physical, how "the physical" should be defined, and the causal argument for physicalism.
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  46. Physicalism.Justin Tiehen - 2018 - Analysis 78 (3):537-551.
    As a first pass, physicalism is the doctrine that there is nothing over and above the physical. Much recent philosophical work has been devoted to spelling out what this means in more rigorous terms and to assessing the case for the view. What follows is a survey of such work. I begin by looking at competing accounts of what is meant by nothing over and above and then turn to how the physical should be understood. Once we are clear on (...)
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  47. Consciousness, Conceivability, and Intrinsic Reduction.Jonathon VandenHombergh - 2018 - Erkenntnis 85 (5):1129-1151.
    Conceivability arguments constitute a serious threat against reductive physicalism. Recently, a number of authors have proven and characterized a devastating logical truth, centered on these arguments: namely, that their soundness entails the inconceivability of reductive physicalism. In this paper, I demonstrate that is only a logical truth when reductive physicalism is interpreted in its stronger, intrinsic sense, as opposed to its weaker—yet considerably more popular—extrinsic sense. The basic idea generalizes: perhaps surprisingly, stronger forms of reduction are uniquely resistant to the (...)
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  48. Physicality for Physicalists.D. Gene Witmer - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):457-472.
    How should the “physical” in “physicalism” be understood? I here set out systematic criteria of adequacy, propose an account, and show how the account meets those criteria. The criteria of adequacy focus on the idea of rational management: to vindicate philosophical practice, the account must make it plausible that we can assess various questions about physicalism. The account on offer is dubbed the “Ideal Naturalist Physics” account, according to which the physical is that which appears in an ideal theory that (...)
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  49. Review of Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett’s Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Grounding. [REVIEW]Michael Bertrand - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books:N/A.
  50. Minds Within Minds: An Infinite Descent of Mentality in a Physical World.Christopher Devlin Brown - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (6):1339-1350.
    Physicalism is frequently understood as the thesis that everything depends upon a fundamental physical level. This standard formulation of physicalism has a rarely noted and arguably unacceptable consequence—it makes physicalism come out false in worlds which have no fundamental level, for instance worlds containing things which can infinitely decompose into smaller and smaller parts. If physicalism is false, it should not be for this reason. Thus far, there is only one proposed solution to this problem, and it comes from the (...)
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