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Physicalism UnBlocked

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2020

D. Gene Witmer Open the ORCID record for D. Gene Witmer [Opens in a new window]
D. Gene Witmer*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
*
Email: gwitmer@ufl.edu
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Abstract

What has become known as the blockers problem is an alleged difficulty facing attempts to formulate physicalism as a supervenience thesis. A blocker is an entity, itself contrary to physicalism, with the power to disrupt an otherwise necessary connection between physical and nonphysical conditions. I argue that there is no distinct blockers problem. Insofar as a problem can be identified, it turns out to be just a rather baroque version of a distinct and familiar objection to supervenience formulations and to be of no independent interest. Work on the formulation of physicalism can thus proceed without worrying about blockers.

Keywords

Blockersgroundingmetaphysicsnecessityphysicalismsupervenience
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 7 , October 2020 , pp. 890 - 904
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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