What Is Physicalism?

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

Brian Loar rejects Jackson’s conclusion on the basis that he has misinterpreted Mary’s learning. He suggests the knowledge she acquires is merely “new concepts of the same properties that she learned about before her release,” and not necessarily proof of ‘non physical’ knowledge. Arguably, Jackson’s aim is too rigid to add anything considerable to knowledge of the nature of consciousness. All it requires to be discredited is that one of its premises be disproven, which predisposes it to destruction in a way that Nagel’s more circumspect argument does not. Furthermore, how can we accept an argument as useful whose advocate later completely abandoned his view and reverted to a physicalist position?

However, Mary just learned something new. This new knowledge is not explainable in physical terms; it is something that must be experienced, and therefore Jackson creates an argument against the supposed truth of physicalism.

1. The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is based on the principle of cause and effect. What this basically means is that the universe was the effect of a cause, which was God. One of the oldest and most well known advocates of the Cosmological Argument was Thomas Aquinas who outlines his argument for the existence of God in his article entitled The Five Ways. The first way in his argument is deals with motion. Aquinas says that in order for something to be in motion something had to move it because it is impossible for something to move without the presence of some sort of outside force upon it. Therefore the world around us, nature, and our very existence could not have been put into motion without the influence of the

One of the most talked about concepts of philosophy is that of the mind-body problem. In short, the mind-body problem is the relationship between the mind and the body. Specifically, it’s the connection between our mental realm of thoughts, including beliefs, ideas, sensations, emotions, and our physical realm, the actual matter of which we are made up of the atoms, neurons. The problem comes when we put the emphasis on mind and body. Are the mind and body one physical thing, or two separate entities. Two arguments have stood amongst the rest, Interactionism and physicalism. Interactionism claims that mind and matter are two separate categories with a casual integration between the two. By contrast, physicalism draws from the idea that all aspects of the human body are under one physical being, there are no nonphysical connections that come into play. While both state a clear and arguable statement regarding mind-body problem, Interactionism gives a more plausible answer to the mind-body problem because although it may seem like we are tied as one, our minds have a subconscious that influence our thoughts, actions, ideas, and beliefs, which is completely independent from the realm of our physical matter.

     There is, however, a way to fix Aquinas’ theory. If we take his logic into account we can say that there was a time when the universe did not exist. But, the universe exists now therefore it must have had a beginning. By definition a necessary being has no beginning and now end. Due to this definition we can say that the universe is not a necessary being. This leaves us with one of three options: there is a necessary being, the universe has always existed, or something can come into existence out of nothing. Due to the big bang theory we can eliminate the theory of the universe always existing. Therefore, there is a necessary being or something can come into existence out of nothing. Because we know that something cannot come into existence out of nothing we determine that there must be a necessary being. However, the necessary being is either God or the universe. Because the universe had a beginning it can not be necessary, therefore God is the necessary being and he must exist.

Although she has trouble believing in the second premise that brain states are not knowable by introspection. This brings the main argument “are mental states identical to brain states”.

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

Furthermore, if there were a necessary being, the fact that this being is immediately labeled God based solely on the fact that such beings are classified as eternal, self-explanatory and self-sufficient doesn't mean these attributes can be applied to that of God under all religions. In addition, even if this necessary being was God, these attributes aren't the only important traits that apply to God. It is widely known across religions that God is much more than just a self-sufficient, and eternal being. In fact, I don't think that a necessary being exists at all especially when we have no experience or evidence of something eternal or self-sufficient to prove it. Thus, stating that not only is there a necessary being but also that this necessary being is God seems like a far stretch. The idea of basing something like why the world exists off the experiences known from objects and beings in the world and applying that knowledge to something completely off that scale, such as the universe, seems rather illogical. It seems to me that a necessary being is something that seems like a good explanation for the cause of the totality of the world we live in; however, in my opinion, it is only a good idea and nothing more. It's something that leaves one with a good impression, but under closer inspection, it's seen that we actually

This essay assesses property dualism, a theory of mind. It proclaims the existence of a single, physical substance (unlike Cartesian dualism), but argues that this single substance has two potential properties: physical and mental states that are not reducible.

The following is a thought experiment by Jackson to undermine Physicalism. “Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specialises in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina...What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false” (Jackson 130). At this point of time, Mary supposedly

The cosmological argument is an a posteriori argument which intends to prove that there is an intelligent being that exists; the being is distinct from the universe, explains the existence of the universe, and is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. The basic notion of cosmological arguments is that the world and everything in it is dependent on something other than itself for its existence. It explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused.

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.

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.

The physicalist that employs such strategy needs the phenomenal concepts to be essentially different from ordinary physical concepts, but nevertheless to co-refer to physical properties. One candidate to play the special role of phenomenal concepts vis-à-vis physical concepts is the so-called "experience thesis", that is, the thesis these concepts are experience-dependent: *one can only possess a phenomenal concept C if one undergoes the relevant experience about what the concept is about*. Besides the experience thesis, a second candidate to play the special feature in phenomenal concepts are their different *reference-fixing mechanisms*. Now we want to explore both of those features. I will begin by exploring the experience thesis, for it seems to be a general commitment shared by some of the phenomenal concept