Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015)
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Abstract |
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.
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Keywords | Materialism |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
Reprint years | 2010, 2015, 2016 |
Call number | B825.S85 2010 |
ISBN(s) | 9780415452625 0415452627 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.David J. Chalmers - 1996 - Oxford University Press.
From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis.Frank Jackson - 1998 - Oxford University Press.
Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind–Body Problem and Mental Causation.Jaegwon Kim - 1998 - MIT Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
If Materialism is True, the United States is Probably Conscious.Eric Schwitzgebel - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1697-1721.
Methodological Individualism and Holism in Political Science: A Reconciliation.Christian List & Kai Spiekermann - 2013 - American Political Science Review 107 (4):629-643.
A Posteriori Physicalism and Introspection.Andreas Elpidorou - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (1):474-500.
Imagining as a Guide to Possibility.Peter Kung - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3):620-663.
The Myth of Cognitive Agency: Subpersonal Thinking as a Cyclically Recurring Loss of Mental Autonomy.Thomas Metzinger - 2013 - Frontiers in Psychology 4:931.
View all 78 citations / Add more citations
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