What Is Fodor Type Physicalism

Moreland refutes physicalism through is argument of personal identity. His argument starts out with an example. (pg. 311)

There are many dorm buildings on Taylor University's campus, some more well known than others. The most predominantly known dorm buildings on campus are most likely Wengatz Hall, Olson Hall, and Samuel Morris Hall. One of the lesser known halls on Taylor’s campus is Les Gerig Hall, or just Gerig for short. This dorm is co-ed, with the first two floors being occupied by women, while the top floor is reserved for men. We will be focusing on the men’s floor of Gerig Hall, the fourth floor, which is affectionately known as FoSo. FoSo is a group of men on campus that not very many people are aware of, but it is a group that people should take the time to inform themselves of and get to know.

Keep in mind that a substance dualist argues that mental entities can exist separately from physical entities, and that physical entities can exist separately from mental entities. However, for there to be changes in a physical form, the object causing those changes must have two features that nonphysical objects lack: a spatial location and the ability to transfer energy. This is because in the process of physical causation, energy is being transferred from one location to another. There are many examples in which energy has been transferred from one spatial location to another. For example, when a stationary book on a table is being pushed, energy from the person pushing is being transferred to the book, which causes the book to move.

Another essential concept for the understanding of dualism and its superiority over physicalism is the idea of ‘dualist interactionism’². Essentially, dualist interactionism explains how the “two-way causal connection” that is held between a person, Jane for example, and her body—that body is Jane’s and Jane’s only because both it can affect Jane and Jane can affect it. In his reflection on dualistic interactionism, Van Inwagen notes potential objections to the dualist belief. Van Inwagen describes a scenario in which he opens a window causing cold air to flood the room; the cold air makes ‘Jane’s’ body cold and thus, makes Jane cold. He describes another scenario in which he steps on a tac, causing himself to feel pain and thus, Jane to feel concern². These scenarios fail to negate the idea of dualist interactionism. In the first scenario, Van Inwagen’s mind is unable to cause a change in the organism and person of Jane unless he triggers an

The problem with this for physicalism is that fact Mary would realize how mistaken her knowledge of other's conceptions has been. Even though Mary would have known all of the neurological processes in a person's mind, she would not have known the person's actual experience involved in the process. There would also be facts she did not know about objects, but she would know all physical facts about them. For this reason it is not any experience the object may have, but a fact about the object itself.

Property dualism proclaims the existence of a single, physical substance (unlike Cartesian dualism), but argues that this single

Physicalism is a philosophical theory that attempts to solve the mind-body problem with its explanation of the results of the interactions between our brains and our bodies. Physicalism explains that everything in the universe is made up of

On page 111 of “Special Sciences”, Fodor is talking about the unity of science via reductionism. Reductionism is the idea that mental phenomena can be reduced to/explained by physical phenomena. For example, being scared can be explained as the physical process of one's heart rate increasing, or as a heightening of one's awareness to his or her surroundings, or a series of neurons firing in a specific pattern, among other physical characteristics. To make this easier to follow, from this point forward, ‘an individual being scared’ will be represented as S1. Moreover, S1 can be explained as/is identical to the physical phenomenon of one’s heart rate increasing, which will be represented as P1, or a heightening of one’s awareness to his or her

An objection to this statement would be that we are not actually gaining any new knowledge after experiencing events. What if, in reality, all we are doing is obtaining a new ability? Since we already know all the physical information about experiencing the color red, the physicalist would say that there would not be any new knowledge to obtained from this event, but instead, we just know the ability to see the color red now.

There are two main theories that make up the knowledge argument. The first is Physicalism, (or better known as materialism) which is the thesis that “All facts are dependent upon physical processes.”(Smart) The other main stance taken is property dualism. The thesis of property dualism states that there are “Non-physical properties of physical substances” (Calef) or that there are physical and mental properties. In this article, I will defend the stance of property dualism by acknowledging objections and replying to these objections to show why the argument for property dualism works.

To begin we must understand where both of these ideas stem from. Interactionism and physicalism come from the idea of metaphysical dualism. In short this is the belief that “one part of reality is physical and another part is nonphysical” (Lawhead 208). When you look up at

This leads to the idea of functionalism, which we see is used to make sense of how our mental life can be explained as an entirely physical phenomenon. Under functionalism, the mental states we have are identical to functional states, which is what makes something a belief, desire, experience, etc. Unlike dualism, which explains that there is a difference in kind between the mind, which is immaterial, and the body, which is material, functionalism maintains that to talk about mental states is just to talk about ways that physical systems function. With this idea, functionalism is a form of

In denying that the mind and mental properties, like qualia, are nonphysical things, mind-brain theory objects to both substance and property dualism. Therefore it is a physicalist approach to the philosophy of

A physicalist is one who believes that all information is physical. This is a view that sees all factual knowledge as that which can be formulated as a statement about physical objects and activities. Thus, the language of science can be reduced to third

the physical body. In addition, Smart's theory is a posteriori claim, which is to say that