Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Most philosophers of mind nowadays profess to be physicalists (or materialists) of one stripe or another. Generally, however, if not invariably, they regard their physicalism about the mind as a particular application to mental phenomena of a quite general thesis of physicalism to the effect that, in whatever sense of “physical” it is true to say that the mind is physical, everything is physical. It is with this quite general thesis of physicalism (henceforth, physicalism) that the present chapter will be concerned. One might be tempted to think that the only serious philosophical perplexities which physicalism provokes arise in the philosophy of mind; but it turns out, as we shall see, that physicalism provides much to think about even if one leaves aside the problem of giving physicalistically acceptable accounts of such traditionally recalcitrant mental phenomena as consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. In what follows, I shall first survey issues that arise in attempting even to formulate physicalism adequately; then consider attempts to justify physicalism; and finally discuss the character of objections to physicalism. Though I aspire to fair treatment of views opposed to my own, the reader is warned that my discussion will inevitably reflect substantive philosophical commitments that other writers in this area do not share. By way of background, however, let me ... log in or subscribe to read full text