On Characterizing the Physical∗
نویسنده
چکیده
In previous work (Wilson forthcoming), I have endorsed an account of the physical according to which an entity is physical just in case it is (approximately accurately) treated by current or future (in the limit of inquiry, ideal) physics, and is not fundamentally mental. Call this account of the physical the physics-based NFM (“no fundamental mentality”) account. The physics-based NFM account avoids (a plausible reading of) Hempel’s (1979) dilemma, which aims to show that no physics-based account of the physical is adequate for formulating physicalism. Moreover (and relatedly), when the account is input into the schematic physicalist thesis that ‘all broadly scientific entities are nothing over and above physical entities’, it preserves the traditional incompatibility between both physicalism and panor proto-psychism (the view that some fundamental entities—e.g., subatomic particles—are fundamentally mental), and physicalism and emergentism (the view that some non-fundamental entities—e.g., brains—are fundamentally mental). Here I want to consider two sorts of objections that may be addressed to the physicsbased NFM account. First are objections to this account that may be raised by those who accept (or in any case do not challenge) the NFM constraint. Objections of this sort are directed at showing that some aspect of the physics-based NFM account is either unnecessary or unsatisfactory for avoiding Hempel’s dilemma while satisfying the constraint. ∗Many thanks to Janice Dowell, both for inspiring this paper via her ‘The Physical: Empirical, Not Metaphysical’, and for comments on a previous draft. †Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; [email protected]
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